Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

I still feel-kind of temporary about myself.

A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence.

A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

I would be twenty before I learned how to be fifteen, thirty before I knew what it meant to be twenty, and now at seventy-two I have to stop myself from thinking like a man of fifty who has plenty of time ahead.

A doctor could make a million dollars if he could figure out a way to bring a boy into the world without a trigger finger.