Willie was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life?. 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.

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard.

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.