The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.

I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. -stage manager, in the play OUR TOWN

On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor-edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being.

I rose by sheer military ability to the rank of corporal.

Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.

[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.