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When Irrational Terror Takes To Itself The Fiat Of Moral Goodness Somebody Has To Die. ... No Man Lives Who Has Not Got A Panic Button, And When It Is Pressed By The Clean White Hand Of Moral Duty, A Certain Murderous Train Is Set In Motion.

-Arthur Miller

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When Irrational Terror Takes

Arthur Miller

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When Irrational Terror Takes To Itself The Fiat Of Moral Goodness Somebody Has To Die. ... No Man Lives Who Has Not Got A Panic Button, And When It Is Pressed By The Clean White Hand Of Moral Duty, A Certain Murderous Train Is Set In Motion.

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

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

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The Writer Must Be In It; He Can't Be To One Side Of It, Ever. He Has To Be Endangered By It. His Own Attitudes Have To Be Tested In It. The Best Work That Anybody Ever Writes Is The Work That Is On The Verge Of Embarrassing Himself, Always.

The Devil Is Precise; The Marks Of His Presence Are Definite As Stone.

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A Play's An Interpretation. It Is Not A Report. And That Is The Beginning Of Its Poetry Because, In Order To Interpret, You Have To Distort Toward A Symbolic Construction Of What Happened, And As That Distortion Takes Place, You Begin To Leave Out And Overemphasize And Consequently Deliver Up Life As A Unity Rather Than As A Chaos, And Any Such Attempt, The More Intense It Is, The More Poetic It Becomes.

Now Hell And Heaven Grapple On Our Backs And All Our Old Pretense Is Ripped Away. Aye, And God's Icy Wind Will Blow.

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

Memory Inevitably Romanticizes, Pressing Reality To Recede Like Pain.

In A Dream, We Are Simply Confronted With Various Loaded Symbols, And Where One Is Exhausted, It Gives Way To Another.

I'm Sure There Are Writers Who Are Great Businessmen, But I Never Met Any.

Everybody Likes A Kidder, But Nobody Lends Him Money.

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.

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

Amos Oz Is One Of The Finest Novelists Of This Entire Period. My Michael Is A Beautiful Work Of Great Depth And In Some Indescribable Way Lingers In The Mind As A Lyric Song To His Country's People As Much As A Moving Love Story.

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.

Peace. It Is A Providence, And No Great Change; We Are Only What We Always Were, But Naked Now.

Can Anyone Remember Love? It's Like Trying To Summon Up The Smell Of Roses In A Cellar. You Might See A Rose, But Never The Perfume.

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I Still Feel-kind Of Temporary About Myself.

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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.

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

A Character Is Defined By The Kinds Of Challenges He Cannot Walk Away From. And By Those He Has Walked Away From That Cause Him Remorse.

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

Tragedy Enlightens - And It Must, In That It Points The Heroic Finger At The Enemy Of Man's Freedom. The Thrust For Freedom Is The Quality In Tragedy Which Exalts. The Revolutionary Questioning Of The Stable Environment Is What Terrifies.

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.

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

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

We Are What We Always Were In Salem, But Now The Little Crazy Children Are Jangling The Keys Of The Kingdom, And Common Vengeance Writes The Law!

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Quotation Marks

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Serious Business

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Pathos Truly Is The Mode For The Pessimist. But Tragedy Requires A Nicer Balance Between What Is Possible And What Is Impossible. And It Is Curious, Although Edifying, That The Plays We Revere, Century After Century, Are The Tragedies. In Them, And In Them Alone, Lies The Belief-optimistic, If You Will, In The Perfectibility Of Man.

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!

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

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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The Brain Heals The Past Like An Injury.

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

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Man Must Shape His Tools Lest They Shape Him.

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Everything We Are Is At Every Moment Alive In Us.

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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.

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Studies Show That A Trusting Workplace Increases Employees' Level Of Happiness, Work Effort, Productivity, And Engagement. It Also Provides An Environment That Encourages Open Communication And Promotes People To Share Their Ideas.

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

The Wedding Of Christianity Or Judaism With Nationalism Is Lethal.

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.

If A Person Measures His Spiritual Fulfillment In Terms Of Cosmic Visions, Surpassing Peace Of Mind, Or Ecstasy, Then He Is Not Likely To Know Much Spiritual Fulfillment. If, However, He Measures It In Terms Of Enjoying A Sunrise, Being Warmed By A Child's Smile, Or Being Able To Help Someone Have A Better Day, Then He Is Likely To Know Much Spiritual Fulfillment.

For The Political World, I Have Come To Believe, Is Fundamentally Beyond Anyone's Control, Yet We All Go On As Though It Were A Kind Of Vehicle That Only Needs A Change Of Drivers In Order To Steer It Away From Its Frequent Hair-raising Visits To The Edge Of The Cliff.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

It Was Not Really Possible To Understand Oneself, Let Alone Another Human Being.

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

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

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.

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

The Closer A Man Approaches Tragedy The More Intense Is His Concentration Of Emotion Upon The Fixed Point Of His Commitment, Which Is To Say The Closer He Approaches What In Life We Call Fanaticism.

Betrayal Is The Only Truth That Sticks.

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

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.

Well, All The Plays That I Was Trying To Write Were Plays That Would Grab An Audience By The Throat And Not Release Them, Rather Than Presenting An Emotion Which You Could Observe And Walk Away From.

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.

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

Oh,elizabeth, Your Justice Would Freeze Beer.

Be Liked And You Will Never Want.

As A Writer, I've Always Believed That While My Work And I Myself Are Embedded In Whatever Period I Am Writing About, Clearly I Am Sensitive To The Winds That Are Blowing In The Culture. At The Same Time, I Have Always Felt That The Issue Was Not To Deal With The Problem In The Abstract, But To Deal With The People Who Are In That Problem. The Emphasis Is On The People. The General Problem Begins To Resolve Itself Even Before The Play Is Finished.

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.

...an Everlasting Funeral Marches Round Your Heart.

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

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

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

A Friend Of Mine Once Said That There Were Only Two Truly National Events In The History Of The United States. One Was The Civil War And The Other One Was The Depression.

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.

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

There Is Unquestionably A Contradiction Between An Efficient Technological Machine And The Flowering Of Human Nature, Of The Human Personality.

They Tried To Escape Technology, To Stay Away From That And Still Have Relationships With Their Fellow Humans. Very Difficult.

A Lot Of My Work Goes To The Center Of Where We Belong--if There Is Any Root To Life -because Nowadays The Family Is Broken Up, And People Don't Live In The Same Place For Very Long.

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

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

The Culture Of The United States Has Flooded The World. It's The Inevitable Result Of A Powerful Culture, Art. We've Got An Instinctive Touch When It Comes To The Popular Mind Because We've Had No Aristocracy. It Is A Democratic Country. And We Know Without Knowing It, Without Bothering To Understand It, How To Reach Ordinary People, Sometimes With The Most Vulgar, Worthless Junk On The Face Of The Earth, But We Know How To Do It [laughter].

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

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

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.

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.

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

Controlled Hysteria Is What's Required. To Exist Constantly In A State Of Controlled Hysteria. It's Agony. But Everyone Has Agony. The Difference Is That I Try To Take My Agony Home And Teach It To Sing.

The Job Is To Ask Questions - It Always Was - And To Ask Them As Inexorably As I Can. And To Face The Absence Of Precise Answers With A Certain Humility.

Questions And Answers

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

He Have His Goodness Now. God Forbid I Take It From Him!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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