Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.
I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.
The man who would be fully employed should procure a ship or a woman, for no two things produce more trouble.
The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.
You don't have to do anything in the movies. You just sit there. Well, that's not entirely true. You do less.
What I'm after is something different than supplying people with the idea that I'm writing an important play.
Men of perverse opinion do not know the excellence of what is in their hands, till someone dash it from them.
Fate has terrible power. You cannot escape it by wealth or war. No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it.
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
Not less of love, but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the Future as well as the past.
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.
Only animals have to satisfy instincts! Surely your aims are somewhat higher than theirs! Than monkeys! Pigs!
The ridiculous way that workplace politics are conducted completely gets in the way of excellence in America.
Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in.
When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, but 6mm shells.
It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable ... it's better to be quotable than honest.
My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.
An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
From beasts we scorn as soulless, In forest, field and den, The cry goes up to witness The soulessness of men
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.
Popularity is exhausting. The life of the party almost always winds up in a corner with an overcoat over him.
I think there is a difference between connecting with a character and supporting and believing their policies.
I spent most of the Seventies living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and most of the Eighties living in Stoke-on-Trent.
There is a school of thought that believes that sleep is for the night. You appear to be out to disprove them.
I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.
I'm terrible at speaking extemporaneously about my work - I get completely tongue-tied and consumed with fear.
The fixation of the theater in one language--written words, music, lights, noises--betokens its imminent ruin.
Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .
In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.
I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.
Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.
I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.
'Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
A wise traveler never despises his own country. [It., Un viaggiatore prudente non disprezza mai il suo paese.]
They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.
I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.
Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars.
The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.
It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.
Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.
O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.
Hurried and worried until we're buried, and there's no curtain call, Lifes a very funny proposition after all.
The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.
I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.
It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.