And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.

Charley: He won't starve. None a them starve. Forget about him. Willy: Then what have I got to remember?

The two greatest plays ever written were Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, and they're both about father-son relationships.

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.

It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.