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.… - Thornton Wilder

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

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

Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.