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Thornton Wilder Quotes


A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.

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.

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger.

For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

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.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

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.

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day.

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

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.