A playwright... is... the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.

I came out of a culture in which my uncle, my father - they were all salesmen of one kind or another. My father was a manufacturer. He also, in effect, had to sell that stuff. And if he didn't literally do it, his men did. So, selling was in the air through my boyhood. The whole idea of successfully selling was very important.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

You cant get very far in this world without your dossier being there first.

When a deposit bottle is broken, you don't get your nickel back.