"If I see an ending, I can work backward."
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Arthur Miller quotes (page 6 of 11)
219 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water -- that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you."
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"Memory inevitably romanticizes, pressing reality to recede like pain."
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"A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong--if there is any root to life -because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long."
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"The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning."
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"If I have to be alone I want to be by myself."
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"A friend of mine once said that there were only two truly national events in the history of the United States. One was the Civil War and the other one was the Depression."
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"A suicide kills two people, that's what it's for!"
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"I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theatre, or the play - but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem."
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"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."
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"I love her too, but our neuroses just don't match."
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"I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been."
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"I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life."
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"Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it."
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"I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. 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. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."
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"Poor brain! How helplessly it dissolves when willing eyes meet and the nose warms to those old jungle scents."
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"The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy."
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"There might be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever seen it."
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"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit."
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"Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. 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 yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."
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