[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

true influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes...the secret smile in the eyes of a friend

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.

A living is made, Mr Kemper, by selling something that everybody needs at least once a year.Yes, sir! And a million ismade by producing something that everybody needs every day.You artists produce something that nobody needs at any time.

But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.