The good die young but not always. The wicked prevail but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre.

In this remark Hayes juxtaposes two familiar moral clichés—“the good die young” and “the wicked prevail”—only to qualify both, underscoring her skepticism about neat moral accounting in real life. The admission “I am confused by life” frames existence as inconsistent and resistant to simple lessons. Against that uncertainty, she contrasts the theatre as a bounded, intelligible world: a place with scripts, roles, and an aesthetic order that can make human motives legible even when life does not. The line suggests why performance can feel like refuge: art offers structure, meaning-making, and emotional truth without pretending to solve life’s moral chaos.