Smearing good people like Lauchlin Currie [former administrative assistant to President Roosevelt], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable... Anyone knowing Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it.

I wonder if Communists occupied in producing plays are not safer than Communists starving to death. I have always felt that whatever your beliefs might be, if you could earn enough to keep body and soul together and had to be pretty busy doing that, you would not be very apt to have time to plot the overthrow of any existing government.

There are no have-to's, just choices

I wonder if one of the penalties of growing older is that you become more and more conscious that nothing is very permanent.

I shall either find a way, or make one (attributed)

To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.

About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.