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Quotes by Playwright
"As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity."
38
"As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites."
38
"Perhaps we are all fictions, father, in the mind of God."
38
"I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles."
38
"It is not time for mirth and laughter, the cold, gray dawn of the morning after."
38
"We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets."
38
"The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive."
38
"It never became an act in the sense of an act. It was always, no matter where we worked, little revues."
38
"If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women."
38
"The first temptation, upon meeting an old friend after many years, is always to - look the other way."
38
"Everything we feel is made of Time. All the beauties of life are shaped by it."
38
"I don't think it's the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it."
38
"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."
38
"If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday."
38
"My father knew the charming side of my mother, and my mother thought that he was attentive and pleasant and was an architect, which was a respectable profession, but I don't think that they actually got to know one another deeply."
38
"Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?"
38
"But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck."
38
"Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class."
38
"Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that."
38
"I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age - which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday."
38
"We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?"
38
"Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers."
38
"Dreaming of a tomorrow, which tomorrow, will be as distant then as 'tis today."
38
"Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books same reviews."
38
"Mistakes can be good things, because it is an unexpected thing."
38
"The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force."
38
"It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame!"
38
"Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century."
38
"I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me."
38
"She was willing a little bit of sweated labour, incapable of betraying the slogan of her slavers, that since the customer or sucker was paying for his gutrot ten times what it cost to produce and five times what it cost to fling in his face, it was only reasonable to defer to his complaints up to but not exceeding fifty per cent of his exploitation."
38
"But mostly not for nothing never quite for nothing even stillest night when air too still for even the lightest leaf to sound no not to sound to carry too still for even the lightest leaf to carry the brief way here and not die the sound not die on the brief way the wave not die away."
38
"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
38
"Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth."
37
"Children see things very well sometimes - and idealists even better."
37
"Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics."
37
"James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can."
37
"My mother always used to say, 'There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.'"
37
"Some people have such a talent for making the best of a bad situation that they go around creating bad situations so they can make the best of them."
37
"There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success."
37
"The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much."
37
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