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
suicide marketing different
In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.
secret acting agents
If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.
race layers our-town
[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.
adventure home wish
The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself "Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
years needs impatient
That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.
new-york growing-up book
People a thousand years from now - this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our living and in our dying.
ephemeral adultery dentist
I am not interested in the ephemeral - such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.
purpose providence conditions
A purpose is the eternal condition of success.
love islands poetic
I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.
cloud existence feelings ignorance mercy million move passion spend time waste
Yes. Now you know. Now you know. That's what it was 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 if 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.
american-novelist human
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?
american-novelist excellent fought good stands
I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.
american-novelist among beings decide fools human life moment whether
But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone.
american-novelist
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.