Arthur Miller Quotes (89 Quotes)

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

Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.

PROCTOR, his mind wild, breathless: I say--I say--God is dead!

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.

PROCTOR--he knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what i sign to is not the same!

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked.

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?

The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone...

It's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And still-that's how you build a future.

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

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.

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!

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

What work you do! It's strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!

Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be à when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore

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

You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.

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!

HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit

I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.

It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves

Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.

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.

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.

Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

A suicide kills two people, Maggie, that's what it's for!

A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.

If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that.

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other.

I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I'd find you coming through some door.

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.

I couldn't have predicted that a work like 'Death of a Salesman' would take on the proportions it has

All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self.

The car, the furniture, the wife, the children - everything has to be disposable. Because you see the main thing today is - shopping.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

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

The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress.

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes

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

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.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

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

Without alienation, there can be no politics.