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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

-Arthur Miller

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Let Either Of You

Arthur Miller

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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

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Proctor--he Knows It Is Insane: No, It Is Not The Same! What Others Say And What I Sign To Is Not The Same!

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More Weight -giles Corey-

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

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.

Man Must Shape His Tools Lest They Shape Him.

You Can't Eat The Orange And Throw The Peel Away - A Man Is Not A Piece Of Fruit.

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

Until An Hour Before The Devil Fell, God Thought Him Beautiful In Heaven.

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

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

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.

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

Americans Don't Speak Foreign Languages, By And Large. Their Interest In Anything Beyond The Borders Of The Country Is Limited. A European Of Any Cultivation Has To Speak A Couple Of Languages; He Inevitably Without Being Very Thoughtful About It Gets To Understand What Other People Think About Him.

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.

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

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

Don't Take It On Yourself. Forget Now. Live.

There Is A Problem On The So-called Commercial Stage In New York. The Price Of A Ticket Is Exorbitant, And There Are No Longer Original Productions Possible, Apparently, On The Commercial Stage. They Are All Plays That Were Taken From Either England Or Smaller Theaters, Off-broadway Theaters, And So On. The One Justification There Used To Be For The Commercial Theater Was That It Originated Everything We Had, And Now It Originates Nothing. But The Powers That Be Seem Perfectly Content To Have It That Way. They Don't Risk Anything Anymore, And They Simply Pick Off The Cream.

Sometimes...it's Better For A Man Just To Walk Away. But If You Can't Walk Away? I Guess That's When It's Tough.

I Know That My Works Are A Credit To This Nation And I Dare Say They Will Endure Longer Than The Mccarran Act.

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

A Doctor Could Make A Million Dollars If He Could Figure Out A Way To Bring A Boy Into The World Without A Trigger Finger.

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I Speak My Own Sins; I Cannot Judge Another. I Have No Tongue For It.

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

Down Deep In His Heart God Is A Comedian Who Loves To Make Us Laugh.

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.

In America, Any Man Who Is Not A Reactionary In His Views Is Open To The Charge Of Alliance With The Red Hell.

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

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.

The American Dream Is The Largely Unacknowledged Screen In Front Of Which All American Writing Plays Itself Out.

Oh,elizabeth, Your Justice Would Freeze Beer.

Poor Brain! How Helplessly It Dissolves When Willing Eyes Meet And The Nose Warms To Those Old Jungle Scents.

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The Arts Can Do More To Sustain The Peace Than All The Wars, The Armaments, And The Threats And Warnings Of Politicians.

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

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

There Is A Kind Of Perverse Unity Forming Among Us, Born, I Think, Of The Discontent Of All Classes Of People With The Endless Frustration Of Life.

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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The Need Of Man To Wholly Realize Himself Is The Only Fixed Star.

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A Political Policy Is Equated With Moral Right, And Opposition To It With Diabolical Malevolence.

Great Stones They Lay Upon His Chest Until He Plead Aye Or Nay. They Say He Give Them But Two Words. "more Weight," He Says. And Died.

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.

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.

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Witch-hunts Are Always Spooked By Women's Horrifying Sexuality Awakened By The Superstud Devil.

Where Choice Begins, Paradise Ends, Innocence Ends, For What Is Paradise But The Absence Of Any Need To Choose This Action?

The Brain Heals The Past Like An Injury.

Memory Inevitably Romanticizes, Pressing Reality To Recede Like Pain.

They Know Your Name, Address, Telephone Number, Credit Card Numbers, Who Else Is Driving The Car "for Insurance", ... Your Driver's License Number. In The State Of Massachusetts, This Is The Same Number As That Used For Social Security, Unless You Object To Such Use. In That Case, You Are Assigned A Number And You Reside Forever More On The List Of "weird People Who Don't Give Out Their Social Security Number In Massachusetts."

There Are Many Who Stay Away From Church These Days Because You Hardly Ever Mention God Any More.

He Wants To Live On Through Something - And In His Case, His Masterpiece Is His Son. All Of Us Want That, And It Gets More Poignant As We Get More Anonymous In This World.

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.

Pop, I'm Nothing! I'm Nothing, Pop. Can't You Understand That? There's No Spite In It Any More. I'm Just What I Am, That's All.

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

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

If I Have Any Justification For Having Lived It's Simply, I'm Nothing But Faults, Failures And So On, But I Have Tried To Make A Good Pair Of Shoes. There's Some Value In That.

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.

Hale, With A Tasty Love Of Intellectual Pursuit

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

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

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

The Parochial Snobbery Of These People Was Partly Responsible For Their Failure To Convert The Indians. Probably They Also Preferred To Take Land From Heathens Rather Than From Fellow Christians. At Any Rate, Very Few Indians Were Converted, And The Salem Folk Believed That The Virgin Forest Was The Devil's Last Preserve, His Home Base And The Citadel Of His Final Stand. To The Best Of Their Knowledge The American Forest Was The Last Place On Earth That Was Not Paying Homage To God.

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Questions And Answers

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.

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

The Camera Has Its Own Kind Of Consciousness; In The Lens The Garden Of Eden Itself Would Become Ever So Slightly Too Perfect.

Cleave To No Faith When Faith Brings Blood.

And Old Dave, He'd Go Up To His Room, Y'understand, Put On His Green Velvet Slippers - I'll Never Forget - And Pick Up His Phone And Call The Buyers, And Without Leaving His Room, At The Age Of Eighty-four, He Made His Living. And When I Saw That, I Realized That Selling Was The Greatest Career A Man Could Want.

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!

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.

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.

After All The Highways, And The Trains, And The Appointments, And The Years, You End Up Worth More Dead Than Alive.

A Child's Spirit Is Like A Child, You Can Never Catch It By Running After It; You Must Stand Still, And, For Love, It Will Soon Itself Come Back.

An Idol Tells People Exactly What To Believe, God Presents Them With Choices They Have To Make For Themselves. The Difference Is Far From Insignificant; Before The Idol Men Remain Dependent Children, Before God They Are Burdened And At The Same Time Liberated To Participate In The Decisions Of Endless Creation.

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

The Wedding Of Christianity Or Judaism With Nationalism Is Lethal.

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.

A Playwright Lives In An Occupied Country. And If You Can't Live That Way You Don't Stay.

What Is The Most Innocent Place In Any Country? Is It Not The Insane Asylum? These People Drift Through Life Truly Innocent, Unable To See Into Themselves At All.

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

The Structure Of A Play Is Always The Story Of How The Birds Came Home To Roost.

Rise Early. Write. Disappoint Your Sons. Read The Newspaper. Go To Bed Early. Success.

I Still Feel-kind Of Temporary About Myself.

The Best Work That Anybody Ever Writes Is The Work That Is On The Verge Of Embarrassing Him, Always.

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.

Everything We Are Is At Every Moment Alive In Us.

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

I Am A Good Woman. I Know It.

...an Everlasting Funeral Marches Round Your Heart.

What Work You Do! It's Strange Work For A Christian Girl To Hang Old Women!

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