Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilderwas an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth17 April 1897
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
doe saint realize-life
EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.
time moving passion
That’s what it was like to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know- that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness. -Simon Stimson, OUR TOWN
crazy trying want
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?
love heartbreak dog
Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
marriage children growing-up
I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them--it was that promise.
night remember equal
There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.
gratitude grief reality
All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
excellence difficult
All excellence is equally difficult.
time moving eye
It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.
travel adventure home
When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
friendship
An incinerator is a writer's best friend.
earth wonderful our-town
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
earth masterpiece
The public for which masterpieces are intended is not of this earth.
play pure
A play visibly represents pure existing.