Quotes by Playwrights - Page 70

Questions of absolute good and evil are much better not opened to public debate these days, when so few people are sure of their absolutes

Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep...I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta...And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you?...Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?

A pity to survive night flights over St. Georges Channel only to crack my skull falling from a ladder.

Every true genius is bound to be naive.

To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be, it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

Being laughed at is excellent preparation for marriage.

If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay.

There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.

She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there.

If you are not happy with your life, it is most probably because you have eagle eyes to see the negative parts of your life and almost blind to the beautiful side!

It seems to me a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and nature have made free.

Your path will shine when you shine on your path!

--All that because Promethea is a woman? All this uproar, this trembling, this resistance?--Yes. No. Y-Yes...Naynayno. Whynoyes.Yes, Promethea is a woman.Yes, but "because is a woman," that is not important.But no it precisely its not being important that is so important.

In moments when you feel that life is unbearably heavy, surrender yourself to the circumstances for a while! When life hits you hard and makes you fall down, take a rest on the ground for a while! Momentaneous non-resistance will give you time to gather your strength!

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held me upon that next best bed.

If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.

Love is often a fruit of marriage.

Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

LEAR: ...yet you see how this world goes.GLOS.: I see it feelingly.

You're thoughtful, Barbara, but you're not open. You're passionate, but you're hard. You're a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman, and I love you, but you're a pain in the ass.

What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.

We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.Even longer,' Pooh answered.” Winnie-the-Pooh

Did you have any yourself?" she said."Just one."Harold thought of David, but it was too much to explain. He saw the boy as a toddler and how his face darkened in sunshine like a ripe nut. He wanted to describe the soft dimples of flesh at his knees, and the way he walked in his first pair of shoes, staring down, as if unable to credit they were still attached to his feet. He thought of him lying in hit cot, his fingers so appallingly small and perfect over his wool blanket. You could look at them and fear they might dissolve beneath your touch.Mothering had come so naturally to Maureen. It was as if another woman had been waiting inside her all along, ready to slip out. She knew how to swing her body so that a baby slept; how to soften her voice; how to curl her hand to support his head. She knew what temperature the water should be in his bath, and when he needed to nap, and how to knit him blue wool socks. He had no idea she knew these things and he had watched with awe, like a spectator from the shadows. It both deepened his love for her and lifted her apart, so that just at the moment when he thought their marriage would intensify, it seemed to lose its way, or at least set them in different places. He peered at his baby son, with his solemn eyes, and felt consumed with fear. What if he was hungry? What if he was unhappy? What if other boys hit him when he went to school? There was so much to protect him from, Harold was overwhelmed. He wondered if other men had found the new responsibility of parenting as terrifying, or whether it had been a fault that was only in himself. It was different these days. You saw men pushing buggies and feeding babies with no worries at all.

Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

Those who want to get wet need no umbrella!

Sometimes I want to clean up my desk and go out and say, “Respect me; I’m a respectable grown-up!" and other times I just want to jump into a paper bag and shake and bake myself to death.

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

My liege, and madam, to expostulateWhat majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time,Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief.

My Crown is in my heart, not on my head:Not deck'd with Diamonds, and Indian stones:Nor to be seen: my Crown is call'd Content,A Crown it is, that seldom Kings enjoy.

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.

As it is with the love of the body, so with the friendship of the mind, the full is only reached by admittance to the most retired places.

Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,Help us to seeThat without the dust the rainbowWould not be.

Sometimes I see myself driving through hell with this wagon and selling brimstone. And sometimes I’m driving through heaven handing our provisions to wandering souls! If only we could find a place where there’s no shooting, me and my children—what’s left of ‘em—we might rest a while.

music heard so deeplyThat it is not heard at all, butyou are the musicWhile the music lasts.

Man lives in the midst of images. Literature offers him a critical image of himself.

He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.

I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

When you sit tranquilly, you set a great example to the people who rush around in panic and thus you show the crazy waves the beauty of being a calm lake!

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatin this distracted globe. Remember thee?

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. I human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

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.

I am better than my reputation.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

... the sort of smiles used at weddings, turned on very carefully to half pressure to prevent them wearing out.

The more you spend time in a herd, the more you will move away from yourself! So you must move away from your herd to get closer to yourself, to find your true self you have lost in the herd!

To look beautiful and innocent all the time, keep your heart beautiful and innocent all the time!

You will never be lonely on the right path because the truth itself is the best companion a person can ever have!

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.

Journalism is the art of coming too late as early as possible. I’ll never master that.