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

I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget.

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

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!

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

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

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

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

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence

The problem is that I am in the wrong century to burn things. I am the wrong generation to let it go.

She would only make me take my seat if I didn't act calm and Swiss about it all.

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments.

it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.

The problem of an atomic war must not be confused by minor problems such as Communism versus capitalism. An atomic war would kill everyone, left, right, or center.

You need some knowledge to recognize knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from?

Thou shalt not let a day pass without rereading something great.

Our own cast-off sorrows are not sufficient to constitute sympathy for others.

Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?