American Quotes

Courage is just fear, plus prayers, plus understanding.

The simple act of caring is heroic.

Some days it is a heroic act just to refuse the paralysis of fear and straighten up and step into another day.

In times of life crisis, whether wild fires or smoldering stress, the first thing I do is go back to basics... am I eating right, am I getting enough sleep, am I getting some physical and mental exercise everyday.

Fear is the only true enemy, born of ignorance and the parent of anger and hate.

On a level of simple personal survival, understanding and forgiveness are crucial... whether in an intimate personal relationship or on a global level.

Sometimes you have to be selfish to be selfless.

From early on, everything I did was calculated to being elected to Congress.

Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.

The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.

The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.

I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

When I do comedy, I lose all inhibition and introspection. I no longer care.

There's no such thing as a perfect guy. I think it would be strange if somebody was absolutely everything you always wanted, because then there'd be no challenge. Also, you'd feel inferior.

The time I'm not spending with my kid has to be worth it, so when I sat down with my agents after I was ready to go back to work, I told them: It's all about the directors.

My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you're doing.

My parents were young and liberal and knew I was going to drink anyway, so they let me do it at home.

Movies are the shadiest business in the world.