Thornton Wilder Quotes

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.