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Quotes by Playwright
"One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is that assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind."
Mind,
6
"To have been always what I am - and so changed from what I was."
6
"They killed him because he was too innocent to live."
6
"Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother."
6
"A man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself - like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks."
6
"It's risky in a marriage for a man to come home too late, but it can sometimes pose an even greater risk if he comes home too early."
6
"I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life."
6
"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."
6
"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance."
6
"Say, the next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you, will you?"
6
"I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited."
6
"Take away the violence and who will hear the men of peace?"
6
"Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything."
6
"I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought."
6
"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young."
5
"The world is not black and white. More like black and grey."
5
"Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other."
5
"So much of a novelist's writing, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them."
5
"I've never tried to define my states of mind when I write."
5
"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
5
"Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application."
5
"Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.We have time to grow old.The air is full of our cries.But habit is a great deadener.At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing.Let him sleep on."
5
"In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!"
5
"The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize."
5
"He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he caused others."
5
"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."
5
"Opium makes you quick-witted - perhaps only because it calms the nerves and stills the emotions. Nothing, not even death, seems so important."
5
"I'm not involved, not involved," I repeated. It has been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action " even an opinion is a kind of action."
5
"Women like silent men. They think they're listening."
5
"We do not write because we want to, we write because we have to."
5
"Poverty is apt to strike suddenly like influenza, it is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for bad times."
5
"Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea."
5
"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit."
5
"To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten."
5
"I don't believe anyone who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self."
5
"No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul."
5
"You can't have everything, I've often noticed it."
5
"God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution."
4
"And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another."
4
"The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish but that they cease to love."
4
"The world 's a theatre, the earth a stage, Which God and Nature do with actors fill."
4
"I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written."
4
"Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part."
4
"He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague . . . He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightening on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands."
4
"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?"
4
"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
4
"Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust."
4
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