If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.
Lonely. I always thought loneliness meant alone, without people. It means something else.
Unjust. How many times I've used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don't have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.
Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.
The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in 19th-century France and England, or 20th-century Russia and America.
The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.
I am suspicious of guilt in myself and in other people; it is usually a way of not thinking, or of announcing one's own fine sensibilities the better to be rid of them fast.
Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.
I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced-although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world-what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.
We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth.
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.
A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.
You lose your manners when you're poor.
We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end.
One sits uncomfortably on a too comfortable cushion.
Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.
The world is out of shapewhen there are hungry men.
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?
A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.
I live in a room and I go to work and I play a game called getting through the day while you wait for the night.
I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.
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