Anything you put in a play – any speech – has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.
Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn’t so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you’ll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.
Audiences and, to a large extent, critics who want less from theater than it is possible for it to give. If everybody’s encouraged to want less, you’ll end up with less.
Martha:... I cry allllll the time; but deep inside, so no one can see me. I cry all the time. And Georgie cries all the time, too. We both cry all the time, and then what we do, we cry, and we take our tears, and we put ’em in the ice box, in the goddamn ice trays until they’re all frozen and then... we put them... in our... drinks.
There’s no limit to you, is there?
To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.
If you spend a hundred bucks, or more, to go to the theatre, something should happen to you. Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values, or about the way you think about things. Maybe you should come out of the theatre, something having happened to you. Maybe you should be changing, or thinking about changing. But if you just go there, and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted a hundred bucks.
Awww, ’tis the refuge we take when the unreality of the world weighs too heavy on our tiny heads.
I have learned that neither kindness nor cruelty by themselves; independent of each other, creates any effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two combined, together, at the same time, are the teaching emotion. And what is gained is loss.
People can’t have everything they want. You should know that; it’s a rule; people can have some of the things they want, but they can’t have everything.
Alright... what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it’s funny, so you can contradict me and say it’s sad? Or do you want me to say it’s sad so you can turn around and say no, it’s funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know!
Addiction is a repeated temporary... stilling. I am concerned with peace... not mere relief.
But the landlady is a fat, ugly, mean, stupid, unwashed, misanthropic, cheap, drunken bag of garbage. And you may have noticed that I very seldom use profanity, so I can’t describe her as well as I might.
Writers have this schizophrenic ability to both participate in their lives and, at the same time, observe themselves participating in their lives.
All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they’re never going to die.
Knowing it – knowing it’s true is one thing, but believing what you know... well, there’s the tough part.
The most profound indication of social malignancy... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
Honey: I know these people...