black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If I have any justification for having lived it’s simply, I’m nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There’s some value in that.

Arthur Miller

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.
ARTHUR MILLER

Himself Shape Tools
The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.
ARTHUR MILLER

Beginning Challenge Knowledge Strength Tree
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.
ARTHUR MILLER

Audience Emotion Observation Play Present Try Writing Yourself
It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?
ARTHUR MILLER

Age Art Better Focus Necessary Yourself
Without alienation, there can be no politics.
ARTHUR MILLER

Alien Politics
The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes.
ARTHUR MILLER

Cost Episode Experience Feeling Problem Realization
The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.
ARTHUR MILLER

Absence Face Humility Question
You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.
ARTHUR MILLER

Finding Passion Specialization Work Yourself
Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.
ARTHUR MILLER

Money Profit Seduction Value
The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
ARTHUR MILLER

Close Commitment Intense Life Man Ourselves Tragedy
A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
ARTHUR MILLER

Catch Children Love Return Run Spirit Stand
You cannot catch a child’s spirit by running after it; you must stand still and for love it will soon itself return.
ARTHUR MILLER

Catch Children Love Return Run
I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play-but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.
ARTHUR MILLER

Greatness Myself Possible Theatre Thinking
He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.
ARTHUR MILLER

Attention Character Himself Live Paid
Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?
ARTHUR MILLER

Action Beginning Choice Innocent
I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn’t very difficult.
ARTHUR MILLER

Culture Department Difficult Enemy Friendship State

If I have any justification for having lived it’s simply, I’m nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There’s some value in that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If I have any justification for having lived it’s simply, I’m nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There’s some value in that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Arthur Miller Quotes