“I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.”

The act of creation, as you very well know, is a lonely and private matter and has nothing to do with the public area… the performance of the work one creates.

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.

In a democracy you cannot stop public access to that art that will most misinform the people. You cannot stop people from being misinformed. But what you can do is to educate the people to the point that they will throw the rascals out.

I have been both overpraised and under praised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I’m 90 or gaga it will all equal itself out.

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that’s what I like about you most. Your anger.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don’t know, but every character is an extension of the author’s own personality.

It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy – the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.

I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.

Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.

Progress is a set of assumptions.

A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.

I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.

People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life.’

I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I’m tired.I’m tired of the truth and I’m tired of lying about the truth.

A lot of people are confused by “hello.” A lot of people are confused by a lot of things they shouldn’t be confused by.

Illusions must be out to death. That is the cruelty of growing up.

Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.

Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.

Unnecessary noise is the most cruel abuse of care which can be inflicted on either the sick or the well.

And when we hurt someone whose hurt us, do we call it coping or cruelty?

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible — such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them.