American Playwright Quotes

Kurt Vonnegut

Arthur Miller

Tennessee Williams

Gore Vidal

Edward Albee

Steve Martin

Thornton Wilder

There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way. No day but today!

Jonathan Larson

You're a grand old flag;
You're a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.

George M. Cohan

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholem Aleichem

Every one-night-stand or man in a one-night-stand is like every other one-night-stand or man in a one-night-stand because the sex in a one-night-stand is without time and only time allows value.

Opportunity knocks once at every man's door and then keeps on knocking.

I don't feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.

Doubt seems the only purity for those who are too fervent to deny, and too lucid to affirm.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Lovers are Like walking ghosts, they always haunt the spot Of their misdeeds.

George Henry Boker

The love that previously dared not speak its name has now grown hoarse from screaming it.

Robert Brustein

I know that back in the twenties everyone who saw it judged John Barrymore's Hamlet to be unforgettable. Great though it was, I found his Richard III even more impressive. Barrymore's sinister, half-mad hunchback became incandescent as he gleefully anticipated his conquest of the Lady Anne. The genius of the actor contrived a slight but inspired alteration of Shakespeare's: 'Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?' The change to 'Never was woman in this manner wooed; never was woman in this manner won' heightened the deviltry in Richard's gloating.

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

Glory glory alleluia
I'm the luckiest of females
For I've danced with a man
Who's danced with a girl
Who's danced with the Prince of Wales.

Herbert Farjeon

Adults must remember that they look like insane giants to children.

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.

Lorraine Hansberry

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

William Dean Howells

Just because you're living in blissful oblivion doesn't mean you're not responsible.

Arthur M. Jolly

There oughta be a woman can break down
Sit down, break down, sit down.

That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.

These days it's hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.

It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.

Anybody who can write home for money can write for the magazines.

Reverend Lawson: You men are homosexual!
Bob (correcting The Reverend): Homosexuals.

Wednesday (as Pocahontas): You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations; your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation; your people will have stick-shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."
Becky (as Sarah Miller): Gary, she's changing the words!
Wednesday (as Pocahontas): And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.