Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

... vulgarity has no nation.

Poor brain! How helplessly it dissolves when willing eyes meet and the nose warms to those old jungle scents.

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.

Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public. . . . The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.