457 Quotes by Arthur Miller

The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The worst is exploiting and wallowing in the self-pity of adolescence and obsessive keyhole sexuality. The way out, as the poet says, is always through.

He wants to live on through something - and in his case, his masterpiece is his son. All of us want that, and it gets more poignant as we get more anonymous in this world.

They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.

The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! - Abigail