Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilderwas an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 April 1897
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
secret acting agents
If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.
summer boys sparrows
Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
country travel want
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
activity concerning critic critics-and-criticism enormous general governed iceberg principles selection sentence skeleton writer
Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.
american-novelist cent danger fools great people per rest
Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
advice cream enjoy plate
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy the ice cream while it's on your plate
blank directors
Many plays-certainly mine-are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
act faith planting purer trees
The planting of trees in the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.
cloud existence feelings ignorance mercy million move passion spend time waste
Yes. Now you know. Now you know. That's what it was to be alive, to move about in a cloud of ignorance, to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those-- of those about you, to spend and waste time as if you had a million years, to be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another. Now you know, that's the 'happy' existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.
american-novelist marriage
Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.
american-novelist animals best
The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.
american-novelist
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
american-novelist among beings decide fools human life moment whether
But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone.
human layers near race wherever
Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.