Arthur Miller Quotes

“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!”
― Arthur Miller , Death of a Salesman

“What victory would the Devil have to win a soul already bad? It is the best the Devil wants, and who is better than the minister." - Rev. John Hale”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“But then, it’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver; Faust sold his for some extra years of youth; Marilyn Monroe deserted Jesus Christ for Arthur Miller.”
― Nicholas Samstag, The Uses of Ineptitude or How Not To Want To Do Better

“Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears.”
― Arthur Miller

“cleave not to faith when faith brings blood." - Rev. John Hale”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I made a gift for you, Good Proctor. I had to sit long hours in a chair, and passed the time with sewing." - Mary Warren”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him. Always. Its inevitable. The way he puts himself on the line. Sometimes quite secretly. Sometimes symbolically.”
― Arthur Miller

“My dreams of many years had simply become too damned real, and the reality was less than the dream and lacked all dedication.”
― Arthur Miller

“Was there any love here? When he needed her, she vomited. And when you needed him, he laughed. What was unbearable is not that it fell apart, it was that there was never anything here.”
― Arthur Miller, The Price

“It seemed forever before someone remembered to applaud, and then there was no end to it.”
― Arthur Miller

“I had striven all my life to win this night, and it was here, and I was this celebrated man who had amazingly little to do with me, or I with him.”
― Arthur Miller

“It's a fantasy, Victor. Your father was penniless and your brother a son of a bitch, and you play no part at all. I said to ask him because you could see in front of your face that he had some money. You knew it then and you certainly know it now.”
― Arthur Miller

“The Misfits
Marilyn întârzia zilnic cu orele la filmare, pentru că lua atâtea tranchilizante, că era cu neputinţă să fie trezită. Pare-se că se simţea trădată de cei trei amanţi, J.F. Kennedy, Yves Montand şi Miller însuşi, care o folosise pentru a-şi repune cariera pe linia de plutire. Iar când ajungea pe platoul de filmare, mare lucru nu reuşea să facă: ori uitase textul, ori avea o privire atât de pierdută, încât regizorul John Huston renunţa să filmeze.
Clark Gable avea cincizeci şi nouă de ani şi nu stătea prea bine cu sănătatea, ceea ce nu-l împiedica să bea doi litri de whisky pe zi şi să fumeze trei pachete de ţigări. Cavaler din şcoala cea veche, nu se enerva niciodată când Marilyn întârzia: se mulţumea s-o ciupească de fund şi s-o îndemne: „La treabă, frumoaso“.
La rândul lui, Montgomery Clift o luase şi el pe băutură şi pe droguri după accidentul care îl desfigurase şi, în plus, nici nu-şi asuma homosexualitatea.
În atare situaţie, John Huston şi-a pierdut şi el interesul pentru lucru şi-şi petrecea toate nopţile la cazino. Intra la unsprezece şi pleca la cinci dimineaţa. Ajunsese să datoreze atâţia bani, că – se zice – a oprit filmările şi a trimis-o pe Marilyn la spital, ca să câştige timp şi să iasă din încurcătură.
A fost o adevărată minune că pe 5 noiembrie 1960 au reuşit să termine filmul. Pesemne că a fost o experienţă dură, căci a doua zi Clark Gable a murit în urma unei crize cardiace. A fost şi ultimul film al lui Marilyn, care nu după multă vreme a sucombat după o supradoză. Bomboana de pe colivă a fost că Vieţi rebele a fost un eşec financiar.”
― Francesc Miralles, Love in Lowercase