Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain.
The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.
... if you love your country why is it necessary to hate other countries?
I'm sure there are writers who are great businessmen, but I never met any.
You cant get very far in this world without your dossier being there first.
What work you do! It's strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!
The world is always ending; the exact date depends on when you came into it.
You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.
The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can't get out of within.
... so many tremendous decisions in life are made because it is five o'clock.
Self-realization and self-fulfilment are the sine qua non for human existence.
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.
There might be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever seen it.
You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.
Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.
I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget.
The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.
Rise early. Write. Disappoint your sons. Read the newspaper. Go to bed early. Success.
Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.
Work a lifetime to pay off a house You finally own it and there's nobody to live in it.
A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay.
Immortality is like trying to carve your initials in a block of ice in the middle of July.
Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.
Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves
A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.
Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.
Witch-hunts are always spooked by women's horrifying sexuality awakened by the superstud Devil.
Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation.
A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.
There are many who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.
It occurs to me that with all the television people watch, most of their acquaintances are actors.
The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.
The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.
When today fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing.
I am older than everyone I ever knew. All my dogs are dead. Half a dozen cats, parakeets... all gone.
Charley: He won't starve. None a them starve. Forget about him. Willy: Then what have I got to remember?
The famous are balloons far up in the sky, to be envied for their quiet freedom or shot down as enemies.
PROCTOR--he knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what i sign to is not the same!
Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.
People do look to others for some leadership, and it's not bad for them to supply it when they feel that way.
Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.
Poor brain! How helplessly it dissolves when willing eyes meet and the nose warms to those old jungle scents.
In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.
I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.
I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.
Like every writer, I am asked where my work originates, and if I knew I would go there more often to find more.