Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is one regard in which bullies show real perception when compared with their victims; it is their silent good-natured pleasure of the moment.
I'd forgotten how arrogant people are in the theater, I'm agreeing to starve for a year and he seems to think I should be pleased to have the part.
We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.
The thing about talking about human rights is that when one bears in mind the sharp end of it, one does not want to worry too much about semantics.
The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]
The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.
Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt . . .
When any creativity becomes useful, it is sucked into the vortex of commercialism, and when a thing becomes commercial, it becomes the enemy of man.
Nevertheless, one learned very early that books had to be respected; they were all putative Bibles and to some small degree had a share in holiness.
Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty.
I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.
Every new writing project, every new artistic project, needs to be protected so it can grow on its own before it begins to creep out into the world.
I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.
I'd stop calling it "chemotherapy." I'd call it "transformational juice." Infusion suites would become "transformational suites" or "journey rooms."
I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.
I think we have to get bolder. Why after Fukushima didn't we all go out and shut down all the nuclear power plants and stay there until it happened?
Difference of opinion has never been sufficiently appreciated. It is the unexpected, the unknowable, the divine irrationality of life that saves us.
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.
It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.
What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.
I can't sleep with you tonight, baby, my head's all messed up, you've no idea. It's somewhere else and it's full of voices and songs and bad things.
The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.
I don't intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.
You don't push the button that says "Now I will write something that resonates in time." You don't know. It's what happens after a play is finished.
I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.
I became a playwright and screenwriter. Italian-Americans were my particular specialty. I liked the way they talked. There was something free in it.
I think being an actor makes me a better writer and vice versa. I know the kinds of roles I would kill to play, and I try to create them for others.
I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.
No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.
The maturing process of becoming a writer is akin to that of a harlot. First you do it for love, then for a few friends, and finally only for money.
I do not understand those who spend hours at the theater watching scenes between people whom they would not listen to for five minutes in real life.
I'll kind of get interested in a subject and I won't know why. It'll be in my head for many years and I'll say, 'Do I know enough here to research?'
Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.
When you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it ... What we're searching for is what we lack.
There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.
To err is common to all mankind, but having erred he is no longer reckless nor unblest who haven fallen into evil seeks a cure, nor remains unmoved.
I had just done something in TV, but my real love is theater. I had won this award and I was up at Yale, and I was happy because it came with money.
Im an American. Weve translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success - and thats getting Americanised.
A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.
Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.
Switch clicking off in my head, turning the hot light off and the cool night on and — [He looks up, smiling sadly.] — all of a sudden there's—peace!
Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your uncle becomes king." "Yes." "Unorthodox.
Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.
The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.