It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

The conscious mind is going to suggest the obvious, the cliché, because these things have offered the security of having succeeded in the past.

As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.

I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing.

The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.

The correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene.