I knew I couldn't live in America, and I wasn't ready to move to Europe, so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City... It was tolerant. It was a place that tolerated differences and could incorporate them and embrace them, which was what America was supposed to be about and wasn't.

Spalding Gray

One of the ways to reincarnate is to tell your story.

Spalding Gray

storytelling stories way

I knew I couldn't live in America and I wasn't ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City .

Spalding Gray

new-york travel moving

I'm kind of this control freak that likes to create his own hells before the real one can get to him

Spalding Gray

freak likes real

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

Spalding Gray

chaos complexity

How theraputic it is to surrond yourself with people stranger than yourself.

Spalding Gray

stranger people

I see [my pen] as an extension of my musculature. It's like being a painter. It's the closest I can get to my breath.

Spalding Gray

painter breaths extensions

When I was in therapy about two years ago, one day I noticed that I hadn't had any children. And I like children at a distance. I wondered if I'd like them up close. I wondered why I didn't have any. I wondered if it was a mistake, or if I'd done it on purpose, or what. And I noticed my therapist didn't have any children either. He had pictures of his cats on the wall. Framed.

Spalding Gray

wall mistake children

Real life has always let me down. That's why I do the monologues. I have always said I would rather tell a life than live a life. But I have to live a life in order to tell one.

Spalding Gray

crafts real order

I say that I can't make anything up. I think of myself as a collage artist. I'm cutting and pasting memories of my life. And I say, I have to live a life in order to tell a life. I would prefer to tell it because telling you're always in control, you're like God.

Spalding Gray

cutting artist memories

The only thing I don't doubt is my doubt.

Spalding Gray

doubt

And just as I was climbing into that first-class seat, and wrapping myself in a blanket, just as I was adjusting my pillow behind my head, and having a sip of that champagne, and just as I was bringing down and adjusting my Thai purple sleep mask, I had an inkling. I had a flash. I suddenly thought I knew what it was that had killed Marilyn Monroe.

Spalding Gray

climbing sleep class

To be famous is to be stuck in an inflexible place. But at least it is to be stuck with money.

Spalding Gray

stuck

I hadn't had a perfect moment yet. And it's very important for me to have perfect moments in exotic countries like that... it kind of lets you know when it's time to go home.

Spalding Gray

home country travel

I understood once I held a baby in my arms, why some people have the need to keep having them.

Spalding Gray

baby inspirational people

If I can make people laugh it's like being a good lover.

Spalding Gray

good-love laughing people

Skiing is better than sex actually, because for me a good round of sex might be seven minutes. Skiing you can do for seven hours.

Spalding Gray

skiing might sex

The fact that New York continues in the face of all of the chaos, of the crime, of the madness, you just think that it would just pop and vanish, just explode.

Spalding Gray

new-york faces thinking

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.

Spalding Gray

suicide mother waiting

I fantasize about going back to high school with the knowledge I have now. I would shine. I would have a good time, I would have a girlfriend. I think that's where a lot of my pain comes from. I think I never had any teenage years to go back to.

Spalding Gray

teenage girlfriend pain

He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation.

Spalding Gray

pilots believe travel