Quotes by Playwrights - Page 121

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.
David Mamet
But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice.
Graham Greene
Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heardSome do it with a bitter lookSome with a flattering wordThe coward does it with a kissThe brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde
The best thing is to walk on the right path without looking back, without knowing who is following you because you must walk with your own speed, with your own freedom! Your followers will catch you or your ideas somehow somewhere ahead, somewhere in time!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Melt all the tanks in the world and make them rubbish bins. They will be much more useful for the humanity!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The only incorruptible thing about us.
Henry Fielding
I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.
Anna Deavere Smith
How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said.I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.
Cormac McCarthy
You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didn’t. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I think I done the best with it I knew how but it still wasn’t mine. It never has been.
Cormac McCarthy
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
Honoré de Balzac
There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good nature or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity which is what we express by the word Good Breeding.
Joseph Addison
Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for time.
Eugene O'Neill
Wisdom is to internalise the experiences of other things, of everything! By observing the birds, you internalise the wisdom of the birds; by observing the Moon, you internalise the wisdom of the Moon! Wisdom is a process of adding the experiences of the universe to our minds!
Mehmet Murat ildan
No honest work of man or woman "fails" it feeds the sum of all human action.
Michelene Wandor
Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.
George Bernard Shaw
To honor and celebrate; or to balance and rectify, drawing what you want or need into your life. A third mode is less personal, involving a desire to know more deeply, involving a desire to know more deeply, to grow in knowledge and understanding of the cards--breathing in the wisdom of the tarot for its own sake and to learn more about life and the human condition.
Cait Johnson
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
T.S Eliot
For a cheerful spirit, a dark street is just another bright street!
Mehmet Murat ildan
I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
William Shakespeare
There is always danger for those who are afraid.
George Bernard Shaw
Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.
Honoré de Balzac
I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.
Oscar Wilde
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
Oliver Goldsmith
There are two gods in this universe: God and Imagination. Both of them can design and create infinite creations.
Mehmet Murat ildan
What point is there in dying in a ward, listening to the moans and rasps of the terminally ill? Wouldn't it be better to spend the twenty-seven thousand on a banquet, then, after taking poison, depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by intoxicated beautiful women and dashing friends?
Mikhail Bulgakov
What decides whether a man will become immortal, is not his character but his vitality. Nothing save intensity confers immortality. A man manifests himself more vividly, in proportion as he is strong and unified, effective and unique. Immortality knows nothing of morality or immorality, of good or evil; it measures only work and strength; it demands from a man not purity but unity. Here, morality is nothing; intensity, all.
Stefan Zweig
You can lose a man like that by your own death but not by his.
George Bernard Shaw
words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
Seamus Heaney
We all die one day, but jewels never fade or perish. Through our children we live. That’s how we cheat death.
Diane Samuels
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.
Oscar Wilde
Hey, bodyguard. You better get down to the gymnasium. This jumbo pixie guy is killing your sister." "Really?" said Butler, unconvinced. "Really. Juliet just does not seem to be herself. She can't put two moves together. It's pathetic, really. Everybody is betting against her." "I see," said Butler, straightening. Mulch held the door. "It's going to make things really interesting when you show up to help." Butler grinned. "I'm not coming to help. I just want to be there when she stops faking." "Ah," said Mulch, comprehension dawning on his face. "So I should switch my bet to Juliet?" "You certainly should" said Butler.
Eoin Colfer
I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen's costume, a forgotten crown on her head.She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand from under his arm. Vera seized me cruelly by the arm and led me off... She led me through murky, dusty expanses, between strange machinery and constructions, through valleys and mountains and past a precarious wood to her dressing-room. And she still held me cruelly by the arm. There she slammed the door shut, rudely chasing away some handsome women with the amorous eyes of worshipers.I do not recall her words. It was as though she were all aflame. She kissed my hands and I realized then that she had seen only me that evening, that she had performed for only me, that she loved me and that this was all such madness.("Thirty-Three Abominations")
Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal
Unfathomable mind: now beacon, now sea.
Samuel Beckett
I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.
Samuel Beckett
nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen.
Gertrude Stein
Some are born great some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
William Shakespeare
It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it.
W Somerset Maugham
Some looks are heavier than the thickest books because they carry the saddest stories of life!
Mehmet Murat ildan
That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.
Oscar Wilde
n the treetops, this powerful vision was built for speed—seeing and reacting quickly. On the open grassland, it was the opposite. Safety and finding food relied upon slow, patient observation of the environment, on the ability to pick out details and focus on what they might mean. Our ancestors’ survival depended on the intensity of their attention. The longer and harder they looked, the more they could distinguish between an opportunity and a danger. If they simply scanned the horizon quickly they could see a lot more, but this would overload the mind with information—too many details for such sharp vision. The human visual system is not built for scanning, as a cow’s is, but for depth of focus.
Robert Greene
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
John Dryden
What the reason of the ant laboriously drags into a heap the wind of accident will collect in one breath.
J. C. F. von Schiller
Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.
Federico García Lorca
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
William Shakespeare
The most clear-sided view of the darkest possible situation is itself an act of optimism
Jean-Paul Sartre
We cannot respect something just because millions or billions believe in it! We can respect something only if it is complying with the high intelligence and the ethics!
Mehmet Murat ildan
She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
When you trust yourself, you will come out like a beautiful sunbeam through the dark clouds!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Your culture is your limit; if you can’t go beyond it, you will remain as a frog of your little lake!
Mehmet Murat ildan
So I sang out the barbarous words - karaoke from Hell.
Grant Morrison
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?And shall I couple Hell?
William Shakespeare
You would have realized that it wasn't Mumtaz, a muslim, a friend of yours, but a human being you had killed. I mean, if he was a bastard, by killing him you wouldn't have killed the bastard in him; similarly, assuming that he was a Muslim, you wouldn't have killed his Muslimness, but him.
Saadat Hasan Manto
We are victims of our history and our present. They place too many obstacles in the way of love. And we cannot enjoy even our differences in peace.
Ama Ata Aidoo
I am disgrac'd impeach'd and baffled here - Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear.
William Shakespeare
I read a page of Plato's great work. I can no longer understand anything, because behind the words on the page, which have their own heavenly brightness, to be sure, there shines an even brighter, an enormous, dazzling -why- that blots out everything, cancels out, destroys all meaning. All individual intelligence. When one has understood, one stops, satisfied with what one has understood. I do not understand. Understanding is far too little. To have understood is to be fixed, immobilized. It is as though one wanted to stop on one step in the middle of a staircase, or with one foot in the void and the other on the endless stair. But a mere why, a new why can set one off again, can unpetrify what was petrified and everything starts flowing afresh. How can one understand? One cannot.
Eugène Ionesco
When I am alone, I drink my tea with pinkie raised, like a kid playing "tea party." At times, a fancy British accent is involved. Dahling!
Christy Hall
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett
And thus I clothe my naked villainyWith odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
William Shakespeare
As a breath on glass, -As witch-fires that burn,The gods and monsters pass,Are dust, and return.(“The Face of the Skies”)
George Sterling
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.
Graham Greene