The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.

Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.

The success of a play, especially one's first success, is somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened that was always securely shut until then. For myself, the experience was invigorating. It suddenly seemed that the audience was a mass of blood relations, and I sensed a warmth in the world that had not been there before. It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more.

I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.

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

A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime.