457 Quotes by Arthur Miller

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw – the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?

MONCEAU: In my opinion you’re hysterical. After all, they were picking up Jews in Germany for years before the war, they’ve been doing it in Paris since they came in – are you telling me all those people are dead? Is that really conceivable to you? War is war, but you still have to keep a certain sense of proportion. I mean Germans are still people.

Eddie Carbone had never expected to have a destiny. A man works, raises his family, goes bowling, eats, gets old, and then he dies. Now, as the weeks passed, there was a future, there was a trouble that would not go away.

John – tell me, are we lost?

MOTHER: You think just because you like everybody, they like you!

The only thing you’ve got in this world is what you can sell.

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.

Who worked for nothin’ in that war? When they work for nothin’, I’ll work for nothin’. Did they ship a gun or a truck outa Detroit before they got their price? Is that clean? It’s dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clean? Half the Goddam country is gotta go if I go! That’s why you can’t tell me.

What victory would the Devil have to win a soul already bad? It is the best the Devil wants, and who is better than the minister.” – Rev. John Hale.