Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Vulgarity is a necessary part of a complete author's equipment; and the clown is sometimes the best part of the circus.
Children, who have yet to learn our ways, are notoriously promiscuous in their affection. They’ll sit on anyone’s knee.
Quite often, I have a compelling sense of how a role should be played. And I'm proved - equally as often - quite wrong.
FAY: The British police force used to be run by men of integrity. TRUSCOTT: That is a mistake which has been rectified.
Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it; like Joan Littlewood with her theatre.
The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.
I hate all men, the ones because they are mean and vicious, and the others for being complaisant with the vicious ones.
People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.
Howard Beale is processed, instant God, and right now it looks like he might just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.
Man's fortune is usually changed at once; life is changeable. [Lat., Actutum fortunae solent mutarier; varia vita est.]
I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.
I'm half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home.
I keep my horses out in the open, but when I was working the ranches, I had to clean the stalls. It was a horrible job.
Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
All art emulates the condition of ritual. That is what it comes from and to that it must always return for nourishment.
There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.
Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee.
At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.
How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should be always adding to the treasury of the wealthy.
I have always worked consistently, even in small ways and even in smaller theaters where I'll do One Acts or something.
Sometimes I feel that my job on earth is to put Julie White through horrible things, watch her writhe and then recover.
Poetry is the honey of all flowers, the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit, and the very phrase of angels.
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.
It is much more exquisite to be blown from the tree as a flower than to be shaken down as a shriveled and bitter fruit.
With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows.
Squander your riches far from this unfeeling body to which no season, either spiritual or sensual, makes any difference.
The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians.
Success produces confidence; confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which accuracy had raised.
It is a note Of upstart greatness to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns.
You cant get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.
I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.
I grew up in a village of about 800 people surrounded by lakes and woods, and I think it's made a definite impact on me.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?
To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.
My guess is that she is uncomfortable in such an intransigent world but is unable to live accordingly to her own desire.
It's such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string — when one slips off, all the rest follow.
Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.
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.
I do choose to write for a living - in addition to writing plays. I no longer write sitcoms, and I no longer feel shame.
The past is such a subtle thing. [But] in the end, nothing else exists, everything is made of the past, even the future.
Man finds happiness only in the superfluous. Under communism, he has only the essentials. How abominable and ridiculous!
A thunderous boo is one thousand times stronger, nobler, and more powerful than a standing ovation. Admiration corrupts.
Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.