Arthur Miller Quotes

26 quotes

American playwright and essayist (1915–2005)

“Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.”

"Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world."

on Art

"The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always."

on Writing

"An era can be considered over when its basic illusions have been exhausted."

on Philosophy

"Without alienation, there can be no politics."

on Politics

"A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself."

on Truth

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

on Critical Thinking

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

on Art

"Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears."

on Fear

"A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from."

on Character

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

on Life

"Work a lifetime to pay off a house. you finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it."

on Life

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

on Media

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

on Self Awareness

"Betrayal is the only truth that sticks."

on Truth

"When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now"

on Law

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

on Art

"The word "now" is like a bomb thrown through the window and it ticks."

on Time

"You never do any good until you get into some trouble."

on Courage

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

on Self Awareness

"The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can’t get out of within."

on Self Awareness