Arthur Miller Quotes & Sayings

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. — Arthur Miller

The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims. — Arthur Miller

Knowing smile on his face: What's this mischief here? — Arthur Miller

The closer they come to transcending technique and the memorization of lines
the closer to really beginning to act, in short
the more Chinese they begin to seem. Happy now approaches Miss Forsythe to pick her up in the restaurant with a wonderful formality, his back straight, head high, his hand-gestures even more precise and formal, but with a comic undertone that ironically comes closer to conveying the original American idea of the scene than when he was trying to be physically sloppy and "relaxed"
that is, imitating an American. I think that by some unplanned magic we may end up creating something not quite American or Chinese but a pure style springing from the heart of the play itself
the play as a nonnational event, that is, a human circumstance. — Arthur Miller

One can't stand forever on the shore. At some point, filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere — Arthur Miller

John Proctor: I will fall like an ocean on that court! — Arthur Miller

A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors. — Arthur Miller

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard. — Arthur Miller

The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks. — Arthur Miller

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility. — Arthur Miller

I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing
his sense of personal dignity. — Arthur Miller

To admit what you see endangers principles. — Arthur Miller

Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain. — Arthur Miller

We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! — Arthur Miller

It is the essence of power that it accrues to those with the ability to determine the nature of the real. — Arthur Miller

There is prodigious fear in seeking loose spirits — Arthur Miller

He's just a big stupid man to you, but I tell you there's more good in him than in may other people. — Arthur Miller

Life is an endless, truly endless struggle. There's no time when we're going to arrive at a plateau where the whole thing gets sorted. It's a struggle in the way every plant has to find it's own way to stand up straight. A lot of the time it's a failure. And yet it's not a failure if some enlightenment comes from it. — Arthur Miller

Willy: I am building something with this firm, Ben, and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he?
Ben: What are you building? Lay your hand on it. where is it?
Willy [hesitantly]: That's true, Linda, there's nothing. — Arthur Miller

There might be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever seen it. — Arthur Miller

Yes, the day the world ended and nobody was innocent again. God, how swiftly it all fell down! — Arthur Miller

My plays are always involved with society, but I'm writing about people, too, and it's clear over the years that audiences understand them and care about them. The political landscape changes, the issues change, but the people are still there. People don't really change that much. — Arthur Miller

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line. — Arthur Miller

If you love your country why is it necessary to hate other countries? — Arthur Miller

To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. — Arthur Miller

It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not? — Arthur Miller

Most of the time we settle for half and i like it better, even as i know how wrong he was and his death useless, i tremble for i confess that something peversley pure calls to me from his memory — Arthur Miller

Now hell and heaven grapple on our backs and all our old pretense is ripped away. Aye, and God's icy wind will blow. — Arthur Miller

A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime. — Arthur Miller

If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked. — Arthur Miller

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. — Arthur Miller

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions. — Arthur Miller

It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe. — Arthur Miller

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that. — Arthur Miller

On the day the world is blown up, the playwright whose show opened the night before will be leafing past the news section of the Times to find his review
as he ascends through the stratosphere, oblivious. — Arthur Miller

Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven. — Arthur Miller

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. — Arthur Miller

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. — Arthur Miller

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians. — Arthur Miller

The two greatest plays ever written were Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, and they're both about father-son relationships. — Arthur Miller

Everything we are is at every moment alive in us. — Arthur Miller

I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman! — Arthur Miller

Americans don't speak foreign languages, by and large. Their interest in anything beyond the borders of the country is limited. A European of any cultivation has to speak a couple of languages; he inevitably without being very thoughtful about it gets to understand what other people think about him. — Arthur Miller

Suicide kills two people. — Arthur Miller

Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public ... The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise. — Arthur Miller

Data is a lot like humans: It is born. Matures. Gets married to other data,
divorced. Gets old. One thing that it doesn't do is die. It has to be killed. — Arthur Miller

If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp ... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment. — Arthur Miller

Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero? — Arthur Miller

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal. — Arthur Miller

Show them a stony heart and sink them with it — Arthur Miller

When a deposit bottle is broken, you don't get your nickel back. — Arthur Miller

I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act. — Arthur Miller

I am amazed all over again by how magnified this project's importance has become, far beyond its being a play or an artwork. It is now a test of some kind; but of what, precisely? The incommunicability of the Chinese? If I can't claim to know my actors, I know them as well or as little as I would an American cast. I can no longer call up the notion of Chinese mysteriousness. — Arthur Miller

Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all. — Arthur Miller

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. — Arthur Miller

When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regardded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapsesl when we see the steady methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man's worthlesseness - until redeemed - the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church state. — Arthur Miller

But you didn't rest your mind. your mind is overactive, and the mind is what counts, dear — Arthur Miller

Because most people ain't people. — Arthur Miller

A suicide kills two people ... that's what it's for. — Arthur Miller

A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back. — Arthur Miller

Be loving to him. Because he's only a little boat looking for a harbor. — Arthur Miller

In a dream, we are simply confronted with various loaded symbols, and where one is exhausted, it gives way to another. — Arthur Miller

You have made your magic now — Arthur Miller

I'll tell u boys it's tough to be alone,
and it's tough to love a doll that's not ur own. — Arthur Miller

it's the proper morning to fly into Hell. — Arthur Miller

They tried to escape technology, to stay away from that and still have relationships with their fellow humans. Very difficult. — Arthur Miller

Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears. — Arthur Miller

He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back
that's an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. — Arthur Miller

Willy Loman: I don't want change, I want Swiss cheese! — Arthur Miller

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story. — Arthur Miller

In moments of exhaustion, I think for some reason of writing an autobiography
proper work for tired artists
but every autobiographer must secretly believe he has triumphed in life. Maybe, incidentally, this accounts for the paucity of women's autobiographies
they know better. — Arthur Miller

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author. — Arthur Miller

When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich. — Arthur Miller

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood. — Arthur Miller

Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. — Arthur Miller

To go, Pop. Every muscle is ready. WILLY [at the edge of the apron]: You realize what — Arthur Miller

How to live had started out as an analytical problem of how to place himself so as to intercept the flow of money in the society. — Arthur Miller

I may think of you softly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again. — Arthur Miller

Political opposition ... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence. — Arthur Miller

Immortality is like trying to carve your initials in a block of ice in the middle of July. — Arthur Miller

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money. — Arthur Miller

You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore — Arthur Miller

I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget. — Arthur Miller

Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order ... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed. — Arthur Miller

People do look to others for some leadership, and it's not bad for them to supply it when they feel that way. — Arthur Miller

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. — Arthur Miller

Charley: He won't starve. None a them starve. Forget about him.
Willy: Then what have I got to remember? — Arthur Miller

On the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you — Arthur Miller

I love her too, but our neuroses just don't match. — Arthur Miller

In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell. — Arthur Miller

There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they'll take blame. — Arthur Miller

All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen. — Arthur Miller

The writer must be in it; he can't be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing himself, always. — Arthur Miller

The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality. — Arthur Miller

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary. — Arthur Miller

The brain heals the past like an injury ... — Arthur Miller

I know what's wrong with me - I could never stand still for death! Which you've got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous - you've got to stand there nobly and serene, and let death run his tape on your arms and around your belly and up your crotch until he's got you fitted for that black suit. And I can't, I won't! ... So I'm left with wrestling with this anachronistic energy which God has charged me with and I will use it till the dirt is shoveled in my mouth! Life! Life! Fuck death and dying! — Arthur Miller

You cannot catch a child's spirit by running after it; you must stand still and for love it will soon itself return. — Arthur Miller

Willie was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life?. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake. — Arthur Miller

Property breeds lawyers, I said, forbearing to add a belief that unfortunately property now seemed the only thing palpable enough to demand the respect of governments, and perhaps was the generating clout against encroachments on the spiritual protections for speech, assembly, and so on. It might turn out that without the right to possess we are not sure we really have the right to speak and to be. — Arthur Miller