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Quotes by Playwright
"Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value."
58
"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs."
58
"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet."
58
"Many dotcoms recruited people from existing companies who were quite experienced in finance, marketing, distribution and other disciplines but not necessarily experienced in the Web culture."
58
"You must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us."
58
"To be always what I am - and so changed from what I was."
58
"To write simply is as difficult as to be good."
58
"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."
58
"What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating."
58
"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."
57
"Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance."
57
"Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed."
57
"The lines marking a penalty area are a disgrace to the playing fields of a public school."
56
"A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard."
56
"Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed."
56
"I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment."
56
"Before this address to my countrymen is closed, I beg leave to observe, that as a new century has dawned upon us, the mind is naturally led ot contemplate the great events that have run parallel with and have just closed the last."
56
"You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences."
56
"Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment."
56
"It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be detrimental to keep it."
55
"I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them."
55
"It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it."
55
"We poison our lives with fear of burglary and shipwreck, and, ask anyone, the house is never burgled, and the ship never goes down."
55
"I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth."
55
"Our only competition in the theater is boredom, because if I'm bored with a play, if I'm revolted by a play on stage, with the Broadway prices, especially today, I'm going to walk out and not come back and pay that price again."
55
"In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn't sing. It's an intellectual play."
55
"A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent."
Man,
55
"The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature."
55
"Disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible."
55
"I think the Irish woman was freed from slavery by bingo. They can go out now, dressed up, with their handbags and have a drink and play bingo. And they deserve it."
55
"My actual childhood, as opposed to my adolescence, was not spent in London."
54
"I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg."
54
"At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self."
54
"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
54
"To smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief."
54
"Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action."
54
"Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them."
54
"It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas."
54
"One ought to look a good deal at oneself before thinking of condemning others."
54
"Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together."
54
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