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I Would Be Twenty Before I Learned How To Be Fifteen, Thirty Before I Knew What It Meant To Be Twenty, And Now At Seventy-two I Have To Stop Myself From Thinking Like A Man Of Fifty Who Has Plenty Of Time Ahead.

-Arthur Miller

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I Would Be Twenty

Arthur Miller

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I Would Be Twenty Before I Learned How To Be Fifteen, Thirty Before I Knew What It Meant To Be Twenty, And Now At Seventy-two I Have To Stop Myself From Thinking Like A Man Of Fifty Who Has Plenty Of Time Ahead.

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The Witch-hunt Was A Perverse Manifestation Of The Panic Which Set In Among All Classes When The Balance Began To Turn Toward Greater Individual Freedom. The Witch-hunt Was Not, However, A Mere Repression. It Was Also, And As Importantly, A Long Overdue Opportunity For Everyone So Inclined To Express Publicly His Guilt And Sins, Under The Cover Of Accusations Against The Victims.

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Like Every Writer, I Am Asked Where My Work Originates, And If I Knew I Would Go There More Often To Find More.

I Figure I've Done What I Could Do, More Or Less, And Now I'm Going Back To Being A Chemical; All We Are Is A Lot Of Talking Nitrogen, You Know.

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...when The Government Goes Into The Business Of Destroying Trust, It Goes Into The Business Of Destroying Itself.

Let Either Of You Breathe A Word, Or The Edge Of A Word, About The Other Things, And I Will Come To You In The Black Of Some Terrible Night And I Will Bring A Pointy Reckoning That Will Shudder You. And You Know I Can Do It; I Saw Indians Smash My Dear Parents' Heads On The Pillow Next To Mine, And I Have Seen Some Reddish Work Done At Night, And I Can Make You Wish You Had Never Seen The Sun Go Down! - Abigail

Jerusalem Is ... The Fabled City Which For The Western Mind Is As Much Dream As Stone ... A Compressed Symbol Of Our Most Sublime Aspirations Along With Our Most Disgusting, Hatefully Brainless Excursions Into Religious Bigotry And Fratricide.

Why Am I Trying To Become What I Don’t Want To Be … When All I Want Is Out There, Waiting For Me The Minute I Say I Know Who I Am.

Every Time I Am Reading Actors I Can Pretty Well Tell Which Ones Have Studied With Meisner. It Is Because They Are Honest And Simple And Don't Lay On Complications That Aren't Necessary.

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The Shadow Of A Cornstalk On The Ground Is Lovely, But It Is No Denial Of Its Loveliness To See As One Looks On It That It Is Telling The Time Of Day, The Position Of The Earth And The Sun, The Size Of Our Planet And Its Shape, And Perhaps Even The Length Of Its Life And Ours Among The Stars.

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He's Not The Finest Character That Ever Lived. But He's A Human Being, And A Terrible Thing Is Happening To Him. So Attention Must Be Paid.

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In His Play Depicting The Salem Witch Trials, The Author Illustrates Profound Psychological Bullying. The Ringleader Of Young Girls Suspected Of Unsavory Conduct, Frightens Her Friends Into Silence By Warning: Now, Look You; All Of You. We Danced. And Tituba Conjured Ruth Putnam's Dead Sisters, And That Was All. ... Let Either Of You Breathe A Word, Or The Edge Of A Word, About The Other Things, And I Will Come To You In The Black Of Some Terrible Night, And I Will Bring A Pointy Reckoning That Will Shudder You.

I'm The End Of The Line; Absurd And Appalling As It May Seem, Serious New York Theater Has Died In My Lifetime.

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More Weight -giles Corey-

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But We Are Mostly What We Are, And The Turtle Stretching Toward Delicious Buds On High Does Not Lighten His Carapace By His Resolve.

A Good Newspaper, I Suppose, Is A Nation Talking To Itself.

That Is A Very Good Question. I Don't Know The Answer. But Can You Tell Me The Name Of A Classical Greek Shoemaker?

Glamour, That Trans-human Aura Or Power To Attract Imitation, Is A Kind Of Vessel Into Which Dreams Are Poured, And Some Vessels Are Simply Worthier Than Others... A Beautiful Woman Can Turn Heads But Real Glamour Has A Deeper Pull... Glamour Is The Power To Rearrange People's Emotions, Which, In Effect, Is The Power To Control One's Environment.

I Regard The Theatre As A Serious Business, One That Makes Or Should Make Man More Human, Which Is To Say, Less Alone.

Serious Business

Playwriting Is An Oral Art; It's Not An Art Of A Writer Expecting To Be Read But A Writer Expecting To Be Heard.

Let You Look Sometimes For The Goodness In Me, And Judge Me Not.

The Word "now" Is Like A Bomb Through The Window, And It Ticks.

A Man Is Not A Bird, To Come And Go With The Springtime.

Maybe All One Can Do Is Hope To End Up With The Right Regrets.

Immortality Is Like Trying To Carve Your Initials In A Block Of Ice In The Middle Of July.

I Don't Say He's A Great Man. Willie Loman Never Made A Lot Of Money. His Name Was Never In The Paper. He's Not The Finest Character That Ever Lived. But He's A Human Being, And A Terrible Thing Is Happening To Him. So Attention Must Be Paid. He's Not To Be Allowed To Fall In His Grave Like An Old Dog. Attention, Attention Must Finally Be Paid To Such A Person.

Success, Instead Of Giving Freedom Of Choice, Becomes A Way Of Life. There's No Country I've Been To Where People, When You Come Into A Room And Sit Down With Them, So Often Ask You, "what Do You Do?" And, Being American, Many's The Time I've Almost Asked That Question, Then Realized It's Good For My Soul Not To Know. For A While! Just To Let The Evening Wear On And See What I Think Of This Person Without Knowing What He Does And How Successful He Is, Or What A Failure. We're Ranking Everybody Every Minute Of The Day.

And Yet One Can't Forever Stand On The Shore; At Some Point, Even If Filled With Indecision, Skepticism, Reservation And Doubt, You Either Jump In Or Concede That Life Is Forever Elsewhere.

Great Drama Is Great Questions Or It Is Nothing But Technique. I Could Not Imagine A Theater Worth My Time That Did Not Want To Change The World.

How To Live Had Started Out As An Analytical Problem Of How To Place Himself So As To Intercept The Flow Of Money In The Society.

There Is A Misconception Of Tragedy With Which I Have Been Struck In Review After Review, And In Many Conversations With Writers And Readers Alike. It Is The Idea That Tragedy Is Of Necessity Allied To Pessimism.

I Love Her Too, But Our Neuroses Just Don't Match.

... If You Love Your Country Why Is It Necessary To Hate Other Countries?

My Plays Are Always Involved With Society, But I'm Writing About People, Too, And It's Clear Over The Years That Audiences Understand Them And Care About Them. The Political Landscape Changes, The Issues Change, But The People Are Still There. People Don't Really Change That Much.

Everybody Likes A Kidder, But Nobody Lends Him Money.

A Little Man Makes A Mistake And They Hang Him By The Thumbs; The Big Ones Become Ambassadors.

The Problem Was To Sustain At Any Cost The Feeling You Had In The Theater That You Were Watching A Real Person, Yes, But An Intense Condensation Of His Experience, Not Simply A Realistic Series Of Episodes.

People Do Look To Others For Some Leadership, And It's Not Bad For Them To Supply It When They Feel That Way.

The World Is Always Ending; The Exact Date Depends On When You Came Into It.

I Don't Know A Critic Who Penetrates The Center Of Anything.

When Any Creativity Becomes Useful, It Is Sucked Into The Vortex Of Commercialism, And When A Thing Becomes Commercial, It Becomes The Enemy Of Man.

... Vulgarity Has No Nation.

Charley: He Won't Starve. None A Them Starve. Forget About Him. Willy: Then What Have I Got To Remember?

Willy Loman: I Don't Want Change, I Want Swiss Cheese!

It Is Rare For People To Be Asked The Question Which Puts Them Squarely In Front Of Themselves

By Whatever Means It Is Accomplished, The Prime Business Of A Play Is To Arouse The Passions Of Its Audience So That By The Route Of Passion May Be Opened Up New Relationships Between A Man And Men, And Between Men And Man. Drama Is Akin To The Other Inventions Of Man In That It Ought To Help Us To Know More, And Not Merely To Spend Our Feelings.

When The Guns Roar, The Arts Die.

The Car, The Furniture, The Wife, The Children - Everything Has To Be Disposable. Because You See The Main Thing Today Is - Shopping.

Today, [theatre's] More Likely To Be Consciously Not Aimed At The Public, But At A More Sophisticated Or Educated Public. . . . The Result Is That Some Of The Sheer Humanity Has Leaked Out Of The Enterprise.

Proctor, His Mind Wild, Breathless: I Say--i Say--god Is Dead!

I Realized What A Ridiculous Lie My Whole Life Has Been.

Success, Instead Of Giving Freedom Ofchoice, Becomes A Way Of Life.

The Success Of A Play, Especially One's First Success, Is Somewhat Like Pushing Against A Door Which Is Suddenly Opened That Was Always Securely Shut Until Then. For Myself, The Experience Was Invigorating. It Suddenly Seemed That The Audience Was A Mass Of Blood Relations, And I Sensed A Warmth In The World That Had Not Been There Before. It Made It Possible To Dream Of Daring More And Risking More.

Memory Inevitably Romanticizes, Pressing Reality To Recede Like Pain.

Hale, With A Tasty Love Of Intellectual Pursuit

Whether For Good Or Evil, It Is Sadly Inevitable That All Political Leadership Requires The Artifices Of Theatrical Illusion. In The Politics Of A Democracy, The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is Often A Crooked Line.

A Genuine Invention In The Realm Of Ideas Must First Emerge As An Abstruse And Even Partial Concept? At First Blusha New Idea Appearstobe Verycloseto Insanity Because To Be New It Must Reverse Important Basic Beliefs And Assumptions Which, In Turn, Have Been Institutionalized And Are Administered By One Or Another Kind Of Priesthood With A Vested Interest In An Old Idea.

I've Always Made A Point Of Not Wasting My Life, And Every Time I Come Back Here I Know That All I've Done Is To Waste My Life.

Few Occasions Are As Joyous To Small Children As Funerals, Almost Better Than The Big Wedding Blowouts That Take Place At Night When It's Hard To Stay Awake. A Small Boy Will Never Be Harshly Criticized At A Funeral; He Is More Treasured As Death Comes Close And All His Wickedness Vanishes Before The Inescapable Fact That Thank God, He Is Healthy.

The Very Impulse To Write Springs From An Inner Chaos Crying For Order - For Meaning.

The Concentration Camp Is The Final Expression Of Human Separateness And Its Ultimate Consequence. It Is Organized Abandonment.

Chris: I Don't Know Why It Is, But Every Time I Reach Out For Something I Want, I Have To Pull Back Because Other People Will Suffer.

A Suicide Kills Two People, That's What It's For!

The Mission Of The Theatre, After All, Is To Change, To Raise The Consciousness Of People To Their Human Possibilities.

It Occurs To Me That With All The Television People Watch, Most Of Their Acquaintances Are Actors.

The Greeks Used To Use The Same Stories, The Same Mythology, Time After Time, Different Authors. There Was No Premium Placed Upon An Original Story, And Indeed, Shakespeare Likewise. A Lot Of People Wrote Plays About Great Kings. They Didn't Expect A Brand-new Story. It Was What That New Author Made Of The Old Story. It Is Probably The Same Now. We Disguise It By Inventing What Seem To Be New Stories, But They're Basically The Same Story Anyway.

If I Have To Be Alone I Want To Be By Myself.

Most Of The Time We Settle For Half And I Like It Better, Even As I Know How Wrong He Was And His Death Useless, I Tremble For I Confess That Something Peversley Pure Calls To Me From His Memory

In The Theater, While You Recognized That You Were Looking At A House, It Was A House In Quotation Marks. On Screen, The Quotation Marks Tend To Be Blotted Out By The Camera.

Quotation Marks

Because It Is My Name! Because I Cannot Have Another In My Life! Because I Lie And Sign Myself To Lies! Because I Am Not Worth The Dust On The Feet Of Them That Hang! How May I Live Without My Name? I Have Given You My Soul; Leave Me My Name!

I Think The Job Of The Artist Is To Remind People Of What They Have Chosen To Forget.

A Playwright... Is... The Litmus Paper Of The Arts. He's Got To Be, Because If He Isn't Working On The Same Wave Length As The Audience, No One Would Know What In Hell He Was Talking About.

I Think Now That The Great Thing Is Not So Much The Formulation Of An Answer For Myself, For The Theatre, Or The Play - But Rather The Most Accurate Possible Statement Of The Problem.

The Enemy Is Within, And Within Stays Within, And We Can't Get Out Of Within.

Don't Be Seduced Into Thinking That That Which Does Not Make A Profit Is Without Value.

He's Liked, But He's Not Well Liked.

Data Is A Lot Like Humans: It Is Born. Matures. Gets Married To Other Data, Divorced. Gets Old. One Thing That It Doesn't Do Is Die. It Has To Be Killed.

Try To Keep The Rebel Artist Alive In You, No Matter How Attractive Or Exhausting The Temptation.

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