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Quotes by Playwright
"He's very concealed, Polanski. We became very close friends, but I don't think I ever saw him drop his guard. I didn't see him upset or anything like that, we just did the work."
51
"But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own."
51
"Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?"
51
"Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own."
51
"Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail."
51
"That is ever the way. 'Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse."
51
"With a cluther of limbs and organs, all that is needed to live again, to hold out a little time, I'll call that living, I'll say it's me, I'll get standing, I'll stop thinking, I'll be too busy, getting standing, staying standing, stirring about, holding out, getting to tomorrow, tomorrow week, that will be ample, a week will be ample, a week in spring, that puts the jizz in you."
51
"Sports is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending."
51
"When there was a choice between love of a woman and hate of a man, her mind could cherish only one emotion, for her love might be a subject for laughter, but no one ever had ever mocked her hatred."
51
"The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected."
51
"Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does."
51
"For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds."
51
"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history."
51
"Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor."
50
"Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right."
50
"A man never feels more important than when he receives a telegram containing more than ten words."
50
"God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies."
50
"Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment."
50
"Remember that when you meet your antagonist, to do everything in a mild agreeable manner. Let your courage be keen, but, at the same time, as polished as your sword."
50
"There are still a lot of cases in the world where you order something and then you see 'Delivery will be in 8-12 weeks.' This is because of the faxes and forms that still exist."
50
"It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."
50
"I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner."
50
"Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not."
50
"It's called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn't realize what a rage I was in."
50
"You can't just go in there and open your mouth until the cast and director feel comfortable with you."
Open,
50
"The government has once again made the right socially acceptable."
50
"It's always such a joy that you wake up in the morning and there's work to do."
50
"'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion."
50
"Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yesterday - an illusion tomorrow."
50
"I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist."
50
"Someday I suspect, when Jesus has definitely got me for a sunbeam, my works may be adequately assessed."
May,
50
"Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither."
50
"I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing."
50
"Communists have committed great crimes but at least they have not stood aside like an established society and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate."
50
"Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can."
50
"But there are people who take salt with their coffee. They say it gives a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment you experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly more interesting. Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu..."
50
"If you're going to make a musical, don't cartoon it from the play. Make it better than the play. Have a reason for making it sing."
50
"The defeat of the Americans in Canada and the advantages gained by the British arms in the Jerseys, and indeed for some months in every other quarter, gave to the royal cause an air of triumph."
50
"A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table."
50
"Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears."
50
"My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language."
50
"My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak."
50
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