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Quotes by Playwright
"Name, no, nothing is namable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun."
29
"Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it."
29
"In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised - but by things that they expect."
28
"Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to."
28
"That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front."
War,
28
"The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain."
28
"The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that."
28
"Even though a number of people have tried, no one has ever found a way to drink for a living."
28
"God made man in his own image, and man returned the favour."
27
"Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well."
27
"The silence was enchanting. Infinite space seemed to enter it, and my spirit, alone with the stars, seemed capable of any adventure."
27
"And yet sometimes it seems to me I am there, among the incriminated scenes, tottering under the attributes peculiar to the lords of creation ... Yes, more than once I almost took myself for the other, all but suffered after his fashion, the space of an instant."
27
"Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, respect me, I'm a respectable grown-up, and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death."
27
"In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of popular entertainment."
27
"One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter."
27
"When we are not sure we are alive."
26
"Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle."
26
"There are two kinds of marriages - where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband."
26
"The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have a choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe it was inevitable from all eternity.''What do you deduce from that?''Why merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it."
26
"I'd the upbringing a nun would envy. Until I was fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body."
25
"I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life."
25
"He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction, he had on the contrary an engaging modesty."
25
"Men and women of high professional standing have been reduced to the status of vagrants."
25
"I write plays for people who wouldn't be seen dead in the theatre."
25
"One night some short weeks ago, for the first time in her not always happy life, Marilyn Monroe's soul sat down alone to a quiet supper from which it did not rise."
25
"We all come from our own little planets. That's why we're all different. That's what makes life interesting."
Life,
24
"In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."
24
"The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasn't it better to take part even in the crimes of people you loved, if it was necessary hate as they did, and if that were the end of everything suffer damnation with them rather than be saved alone?"
24
"When he asked me, with obvious self-satisfaction, what I thought of the scenario, I hardly knew how to answer. I asked if he had seen the play and was hardly surprised when he said no."
24
"A man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself - like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks."
24
"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit."
24
"People ask for criticism, but they only want praise."
24
"A man does not automatically become a public figure because he happens to build an empire out of chicken fat."
24
"How silly men were! Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the child through long months of uneasiness and bore it with pain, and yet a man because of his momentary connection made such preposterous claims. Why should that make any difference to him in his feelings towards the child?"
24
"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young."
23
"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
23
"In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!"
23
"I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide for his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them."
23
"The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an adventure, the second is a duty. The first is like a sprint which leaves you exhausted and triumphant beside the track. With the second the writer has been transformed into a long-distance runner - the finishing tape is out of sight, at the end of life. He must guard his energies and plan ahead. A long endurance is more exhausting than a sprint, and less heroic."
23
"Spend the years of learning squanderingCourage for the years of wanderingThrough a world politely turningFrom the loutishness of learning."
23
"When I hear the word culture - I release the safety-catch of my Browning."
23
"Innocence is a kind of insanity."
23
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