Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Millerwas a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theatre. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucibleand A View from the Bridge. He also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits. The drama Death of a Salesman is often numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century alongside Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 October 1915
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
... so many tremendous decisions in life are made because it is five o'clock.
The famous are balloons far up in the sky, to be envied for their quiet freedom or shot down as enemies.
Poor brain! How helplessly it dissolves when willing eyes meet and the nose warms to those old jungle scents.
The brain heals the past like an injury ...
The camera has its own kind of consciousness; in the lens the Garden of Eden itself would become ever so slightly too perfect.
But we are mostly what we are, and the turtle stretching toward delicious buds on high does not lighten his carapace by his resolve.
I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theatre, or the play - but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.
You specialize in something until one day it is specializing in you.
Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.
They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."
The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.
Like every writer, I am asked where my work originates, and if I knew I would go there more often to find more.