the Heart Approaches What It Yearns

• Anton in Show Business: Jane Martin
Lisabette Cartwright, from LaVernia, Texas. SMU graduate and third grade teacher on the verge of her first break in Show Business. She gets the part because Holly the TV Star fires the casting director and doesn’t want anyone to upstage her in a serious production of Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov. A great part.

“I mean. Here I am, just out of drama school and I am completely drunk, talking with real actors in a real way, including a great actress of the stage and a great actress from TV, and it makes me just want to cry.”

• Collected Stories: Donald Margulies
Lisa, the writing professor’s student/assistant. She is such a huge fan of Ruth’s, her writing professor in a graduate program. Lisa takes a personal episode of Ruth’s life and writes a great piece of fiction out of it.

“I mean, I’m in treatment, okay?, and moved to Chelsea? So now what do I do? I’ve done my parents. I’ve done my family. I’m not angry with them anymore. Fuck them. I write all day, allegedly. I don’t see anybody. I don’t go anywhere because I’m allegedly writing all the time. My boyfriend’s a lawyer; need I say more? My friends are all boring because they’re all in exactly the place I am. My life? I have no life. Every little quasi-idea that pops into my brain seems so banal, so television.”

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“If something captures your eye, you told me, grab it. Remember? Like a good photojournalist: Go in and shoot. Remember Ruth? — Don’t walk away! — That’s the way you taught me! Don’t worry about feelings, you taught me that, worrying about feelings is sentimental and God knows we mustn’t be sentimental.”