Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Millerwas a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theatre. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucibleand A View from the Bridge. He also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits. The drama Death of a Salesman is often numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century alongside Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 October 1915
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.
If you analyse anything, you destroy it.
I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. 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. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.
I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.
One can’t stand forever on the shore. At some point, filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere
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.
Those who formally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body, but from a small group of men. This group will be called the Establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order... A second secret is the fact that the existence of the Establishment - the ruling class - is not supposed to be discussed.
I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self.
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
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.
No one wants the truth if it is inconvenient.
One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.