black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

I think it’s a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one’s self.
ARTHUR MILLER

Hope Mistake Oneself Thinking
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
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

Justice Live Simplicity Value
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
What is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all.
ARTHUR MILLER

Country Innocent Place See
Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.
ARTHUR MILLER

Author Diversity Life Time
Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way.
ARTHUR MILLER

Fight Jungle Stranger Way Yourself
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’m the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.
ARTHUR MILLER

Death End Life Serious Theatre Time Weird
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
ARTHUR MILLER

Home Play Story Structure
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
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
ARTHUR MILLER

Goodness Myself Nation Talk
If I see an ending, I can work backward.
ARTHUR MILLER

End Myself See Work
I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you coming through some door.
ARTHUR MILLER

Door Dream Sleep Wake Up Walk Yourself
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.
ARTHUR MILLER

Love Perfume Remember Rose Smell Yourself
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
You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.
ARTHUR MILLER

Finding Passion Specialization Work Yourself
I love her too, but our neuroses just don’t match.
ARTHUR MILLER

Herself Love Match Myself
All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen.
ARTHUR MILLER

Existence Science Talk
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
Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.
ARTHUR MILLER

Betrayal One Liner Stick Truth
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
Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.
ARTHUR MILLER

Goodness Judgement Yourself
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
ARTHUR MILLER

Camera Home Recognition Theatre Work
Without alienation, there can be no politics.
ARTHUR MILLER

Alien Politics
A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can’t live that way you don’t stay.
ARTHUR MILLER

Country Live Stay Yourself
A suicide kills two people, Maggie, that’s what it’s for!
ARTHUR MILLER

Kill People Suicide

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Arthur Miller Quotes