Arthur Miller Quotes

Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.

See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I'm constantly lowering my ideals...

it's the proper morning to fly into Hell.

Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked.

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there’s no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple spots on your hat and your finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream boy, it comes with the territory.

...he'll come back. We all come back, Kate. These private little revolutions always die. The compromise is always made. In a peculiar way. Frank is right — every man does have a star. The star of one's honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it's out it never lights again. I don't think he went very far. He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out.

Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone...

It's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And still-that's how you build a future.

"Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. "More weight," he says. And died."

You don't realize how people can hate, they can hate so much they'll tear the world to pieces.

A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud – God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!

Willy Loman: I don't want change, I want Swiss cheese!