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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“We're free and clear, Willy. We're free, we're free, we're free…”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Linda
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“Now hell and heaven grapple on our backs and all our old pretense is ripped away. Aye, and God's icy wind will blow.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

“And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. 'Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“Look, we're all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house — in the bedroom he's asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he's rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he's paying his taxes, in the yard he's raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he's making a bomb to blow it all up.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Lyman, Act 2
The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991)

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

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

The Times (11 January 1989)

“The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Harper's (August 1958)

“I'm very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“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.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

National Observer (20 January 1964)

“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.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

On Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as quoted in The New York Times (9 May 1984)

“Nothing's Planted, I don't have a thing in the ground.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“Spite, spite, is the word of your undoing!”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“They don't need me in New York. I'm the New England man. I'm vital in New England.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play — but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

National Observer (20 January 1964)

“A playwright lives in an occupied country… And if you can't live that way you don't stay.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

The New York Times (9 Feb 1986)

“I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs. Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

John Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

“In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims — and they do testify, the children certainly do testify. As for the witches, none will deny that we are most eager for all their confessions. Therefore, what is left for a lawyer to bring out? I think I have made my point. Have I not?”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Deputy Governor Danforth
The Crucible (1953)

“I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

The New York Herald Tribune (31 March 1954)

“A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance — you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"The State of the Theatre" an interview by Henry Brandon in Harpers 221 (November 1960)

“The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Charley
Death of a Salesman (1949)