Arthur Miller Quotes

I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.

It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.

A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.

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.

Now hell and heaven grapple on our backs and all our old pretense is ripped away. Aye, and God's icy wind will blow.

A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime.

Show them a stony heart and sink them with it

The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone ...

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I'd find you coming through some door.

There are many who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.

The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

Self-realization and self-fulfilment are the sine qua non for human existence.

There is prodigious fear in seeking loose spirits

It occurs to me that with all the television people watch, most of their acquaintances are actors.

I am still feeling kinda temporary about myself

On the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you

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.

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.

To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.

What a woman! They broke the mould when they made her.

When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.

When today fails to offer the justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing.

PROCTOR, his mind wild, breathless: I say
I say
God is dead!

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.

The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

When a deposit bottle is broken, you don't get your nickel back.

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 ...

He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!

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.

It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves

I may think of you softly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.

I still feel-kind of temporary about myself.

I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop?

That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?

You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore

I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

it's the proper morning to fly into Hell.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

Knowing smile on his face: What's this mischief here?

If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.

In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.

What work you do! It's strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!

There is unquestionably a contradiction between an efficient technological machine and the flowering of human nature, of the human personality.

Rise early. Write. Disappoint your sons. Read the newspaper. Go to bed early. Success.

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard.

Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.

I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.

All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen.

You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.

John Proctor: I will fall like an ocean on that court!

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.

I'll tell u boys it's tough to be alone,
and it's tough to love a doll that's not ur own.

You have made your magic now

But you didn't rest your mind. your mind is overactive, and the mind is what counts, dear

Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.

Suicide kills two people.

The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.

Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians.

The world is always ending; the exact date depends on when you came into it.

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.

Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men.

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.

When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, just as we shall be pitied some day.

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.

A suicide kills two people ... that's what it's for.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.

I don't know a critic who penetrates the center of anything.

You want to live? You better figure out your life.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.

I am a good woman. I know it.

An everlasting funeral marches round your heart.

Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked.

I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

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 only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell.

There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they'll take blame.

we are only what we always were

The brain heals the past like an injury ...

How can they whip cheese?

You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.

Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

Yes, the day the world ended and nobody was innocent again. God, how swiftly it all fell down!

Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.

In a dream, we are simply confronted with various loaded symbols, and where one is exhausted, it gives way to another.

All organisation is and must be grounded on the idea of exclusion and prohibition just as two objects cannot occupy the same space

You want somethin' else, Eddie, and you can never have her!

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain.

I love her too, but our neuroses just don't match.

I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress