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Wit

by Margaret Edson · 1995

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer AwardMargaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer… more

7 quotes ★ 4.14 (17,750) Fiction

Quotes from the Book

Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.
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My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.
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……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there.
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It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end.
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The attention was flattering. For the first five minutes. Now I know how poems feel.
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You cannot imagine how time … can be … so still.             It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it.             It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce.
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You cannot imagine how time … can be … so still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce." — Margaret Edson (Wit: A Play)
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About Margaret Edson

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About the book

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer AwardMargaret Edson’s powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence’s unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships.

What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.” In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: Ho

Book details

First published
1995
Genre
Fiction
Goodreads rating
4.14 (18k ratings)

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