Arthur Miller Quotes

Willy Loman I'm vital in New England

I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. This is the proud reply of a self deceiving Willy, when Linda suggests that he should transfer job to New York to save him the pressure of traveling. He mistakingly believes that his sales presence is vital in New England. Willy is in denial and cannot face the reality that his sales have decreased so he is no longer needed by his employer. He feels the need to buoy up his feeling of self-worth by insisting that he is a critical part of the company that employs him.

There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. The competition is maddening! Smell the stink from that apartment house! And another one on the other side.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy is commenting on how out of control post-war American capitalism is with rampant urbanization is destroying the country. He feels trapped in his city home with tall apartment blocks built all around him, leading to the denudation of nature in urban centers like Brooklyn.

He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In this flashback scene between Willy and his two sons, Biff is talking about Charley’s son Bernard. Bernard has just left after Willy tells him not to be a pest and calls him "anemic." When Willy asks if Bernard is liked, Biff says that he is "not well liked." Here he is repreating the same words his father used moments before about Charley. For Willy the recipe for success is having a good personality and being "well liked." We see how Willy transfers his beliefs and values to his young sons and doesn’t prove to be a good role model to them. The irony is that Bernard will go on to become a successful lawyer, while Biff flunks math, loses his scholarships and ends up as a low paid farm workers who struggles to find himself.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy’s dead brother Ben, appearing in Willy’s daydream, offers this advice to Biff during a fight with his nephew. Ben trips Biff up and speaks these words as he stands over him with the point of an umbrella near Biff’s eye. He means that success does not come to those who play fair. Ben is metaphorically comparing life to a jungle where you make your own rules if you wish to succeed.

I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. 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. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In one of the play’s most famous speeches, Linda makes this impassioned appeal for the ordinary human being to be respected and afforded their dignity. Accepting her husband’s weaknesses, she strongly defends him to her two sons after Biff calls him crazy and says he has no character. Her soliloquy admonishes and pleads with them not to abandon him. It is her cry of insistance on the dignity of the weak, those cast aside by the system, and not just the strong. The life and death of the little man is of as much importance as that of the great man, she believes. The message of her speech is that every human being matters and no one is disposable. This includes an insignificant person like Willy, betrayed and abandoned by a capitalist system that has no further use for him. Miller uses pathos throughout the play but here it is heightened as Linda, who is devoted to Willy, asks for respect to be shown to her flawed husband. During this key moment we hear in Linda’s voice the rage of Miller as he questions the morality of a society that uses people as tools for profit and then discards them. Employing a graphic simile, Linda pleads with Biff to reconcile with his father and not abandon him so that he dies "like an old dog." Linda appears to accept the inevitability of Willy’s imminent death, which is foreshadowed here. The passage shows her deep devotion to Willy.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda demands from her sons that they pay attention and respect to Willy after he is fired from his job. Devoted to her husband, she explains how an ordinary man like Willy can be as exhausted by life as a great man. She is angry that having devoted a great part of his life to the company he worked for, he has been discarded by his employer. She is making the point that any individual, regardless of status, can be ground down by the burdens of life.

And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy is speaking to Howard about his idol Dave Singleman, a successful salesman across New England who was Willy’s inspiration. But Willy’s uncritical admiration for Singleman blinds him to reality and shows the depth of his self-deception. For at over 80 years of age, Singleman was still working, very likely because he was under financial pressure to do so. Willy, who lives in his own world of illusion, also sees his hero as happy and loved by people in the business. But it is also likely that he was a lonely man without family, which is suggested by his name "Singleman." Willy’s version of the American dream, as represented by Singleman, is a corrupt one.

You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy is talking to his boss Howard about getting a non-traveling postion with the company, after spending 34 years working for it. When Howard refuses, Willy uses a fruit metaphor to describe how Howard has treated him like an orange. His boss has consumed the best years of his life and when he is of no further use he throws him away like a peel. This is symbolic of an unsentimental capitalist system that treats employees as expendable, discarding them when they are no longer needed. Themes of betrayal and abandonment, found throughout the play, are present here.

LINDA (To Willy, while Ben laughs): Why must everybody conquer the world? You’re well liked, and the boys love you and someday – (to Ben) – why, old man Wagner told him just the other day that if he keeps it up he’ll be a member of the firm, didn’t he, Willy?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In offering these words of encouragement to Willy, Linda shows that she shares the same world of make-believe as her husband. She doesn’t want Willy to take up his brother Ben’s invitation to leave his family and go to work for him in Alaska. Instead she deceives herself into believing that Willy is well liked in the job, his sons love him and he has a promising future with the company he works for.

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy is speaking to his friend Charley after losing his job and having had to borrow money from Charley to pay his bills. After a lifetime of working Willy is hit with the realization that he is a failure, being unable to earn enough money to sustain himself and his wife Linda. Seeing no way out of his financial difficulties, he vocalizes the idea of killing himself so that his family can collect the life insurance money. Willy’s suicide is foreshadowed here.

I’ve got to get some seeds. I’ve got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. After his sons leave him in Frank’s Chop House, Willy becomes fixated on buying seeds to plant in his tiny dark city backyard. Seeds are an important symbol in the play. In this dialogue between Willy and waiter Stanley, the seeds stand for a frustrated Willy’s desire to leave behind some legacy after he is gone. His sons have abandoned him in the restaurant, his sales career has failed, and the great hope of Biff achieving Willy’s American Dream of material prosperity hasn’t come to pass. The seeds symbolize Willy’s failed American Dream and his preference for country life over city life, which he also never realized.

BIFF: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!
WILLY (turning on him now in an uncontrolled outburst): I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy’s sudden outburst of rage when son Biff says they are "a dime a dozen" may stem from his narcissistic personality. Willy with his foolish pride has a need to feel that he and his sons are special. He refuses to believe Biff’s characterization of the Lomans as being no better than the next guy. It is yet another example of Willy deceiving himself.

I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Biff gets involved in a final confrontation with Willy near the end of the play. According to stage directions he appears to be on the verge of attacking his father. Biff tries to put an end to the cycle of self-deception and take Willy down to earth and reality. He wants his father to stop deluding himself and trying to fulfill his own failed dreams through Biff. Neither of them are leaders of men as Willy believes, but just ordinary workers, he declares.

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is 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 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 of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. In this graveside eulogy to Willy, neighbor Charley empathizes with his friend’s dreams and elevates them to a heroic level. Summing up Willy’s life, he speaks poetically about the spirit that drives a salesman, giving him almost a mythic quality. He uses metaphorical language "out there in the blue" to compare Willy to the heroic sailor riding the waves with only a smile and a shoeshine to carry him towards a successful sale. Charley’s funeral monologue is a fitting tribute from a sympathetic friend. He defends Willy and understands the enormity of the challenge faced by the salesman. Charley recognizes that the American Dream can be difficult, when people stop smiling back in support of that dream it’s as devastating as an earthquake, he says in a metaphor.

I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Happy is determined to follow in his late father’s footsteps of self-deception and make-believe. He declares himself to be the inheritor of Willy’s flawed American Dream, and is fully invested in it. He vows to achieve what their father set out to do but failed: make his fortune by being the number-one salesman. Happy is reacting angrily to brother Biff’s claim that Willy never knew who he was and had the wrong dreams. He strongly defends his father’s dream and his struggle for it to succeed. Speaking at Willy’s graveside, Happy sees Willy as a kind of hero.

I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Abigail expresses her deep and obsessive love for Proctor and her hatred of Salem and the "lying lessons" she was taught by the Puritans. The metaphor "took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart" refers to Abigail’s sexual awakening with the married Proctor and her discovery of the hypocricy of Salem culture. Desperate to rekindle their affair, she pleads with her reluctant ex-lover to not "tear the light out of my eyes." That "light" is a metaphor for the love and lust they shared.

I think she’ll wake in time. Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she’ll wake when she tires of it. A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Rebecca Nurse reassures Thomas Putnam about his daughter Ruth, when he asks Rebecca to go and see if she can wake the child. The sensible, saintly and experienced mother and grandmother is the voice of calm amid the growing hysteria in Salem. The respected 72-year-old is not buying the talk of witches and the Devil’s work. She believes that Ruth and Betty Parris are just acting silly and faking illness, and will snap out of it when they tire of their mischief.

Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits – your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now – we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 1. Reverend John Hale, newly arrived to Salem and armed with his stack of books, vows to win the battle of good and evil with the Devil. He excudes great confidence in his knowledge of Satan and witchcraft and is convinced that he will be able to find any witches hiding among the Salem population. His assurances are all a bit intellectual and based on book knowledge rather than real life experience. As time goes by and he observes the bias and unfairness of a justice system that doesn’t follow due process, that early confidence in finding the truth fades.

But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time – we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it. I hope you be one of those.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Danforth, in this courtroom speech to Francis Nurse, comes across as rigid, authoritarian, intolerant and a symbol of the absolute nature of Salem’s justice. He uses the metaphor of "no road between" to emphasize that you are either for the court or counted against it. Driven by an extreme ideology, he views the court and himself as being on the right side of the war between good and evil. They are essentially doing God’s work. In an extended metaphor he compares himself to the shining sun come to light up the dusky afternoon when evil was indistinguishable from good and confused the world. Danforth is self-deluded into believing that he is doing God’s will condemning and hanging innocent people. The irony is that the court is not being guided by God’s grace in a fight against evil. It is the corrupt court judges in collaboration with the lying Abigail and her troop of girls that are the true evil in Salem. Intoxicated by his own power, Danforth fails to see any of this.

DANFORTH: Will you confess yourself befouled with Hell, or do you keep that black allegiance yet? What say you?
PROCTOR: I say – I say – God is dead!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Danforth attempts to coerce John Proctor into confessing that he is working with the Devil, and John makes the shocking reply that God is dead. This is a reference to the statement of controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. But Proctor is not speaking in the literal sense. He is being sarcastic and ironic. He means that God isn’t in charge in Salem anymore and evil has taken over and the Devil reigns. John has lost faith in the Putitans’ God and their version of justice and morality. He is expressing his disgust at the corruption of the court and the so-called men of God who practice injustice, dishonesty and unfairness.

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!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Proctor’s rageful final speech to Danforth as he is being arrested at the end of Act 3 uses powerful fire and Devil metaphors for the injustices happening in Salem. Wickedness, ignorance and the inaction of people who stand idly are burning down truth and justice in Salem, leaving a community in ruins. In speaking about Salem’s "filthy face," he is referring to those people who value pride and reputation above integrity and fail to do the right thing. The imagery symbolizes also the hellfire reserved for those who have sinned, including Danforth and Proctor himself. Proctor is telling Danforth that Lucifer is indeed at work in Salem. However, it is not the people accused of witchcraft who are carrying out the Devil’s work, but the corrupt court itself. Using a metaphor, Proctor damns Danforth and the judges for their "black hearts" in killing innocent people while knowing the accusations against them are lies. Proctor admits that he also is bound for hell for his wrongdoing, including failure to expose sooner the manipulations of his former mistress Abby. This passage is one of Miller’s most ferocious denunciations of the Salem authorities who jailed and executed innocent people, and the townspeople who stood by and did nothing to stop this.

You are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 3. Proctor roars this at Danforth, accusing the court of going against the will of God and handing control of the trials to a whore like Abigail. He is saying that the discredited court has no moral legitimacy. One of the most powerful quotes in the play, it speaks to Abby’s power. But it also shows John’s honesty and courage in standing up to a corrupt legal and religious establishment, even at the cost of his life.

HERRICK: It’s the proper morning to fly into Hell.
TITUBA: Oh, it be no Hell in Barbados. Devil, him be pleasure-man in Barbados, him be singin’ and dancin’ in Barbados. It’s you folks – you riles him up ’round here; it be too cold ’round here for that Old Boy. He freeze his soul in Massachusetts, but in Barbados he just and sweet and – (A bellowing cow is heard, and Tituba leaps up and calls to the window): Aye, sir! That’s him, Sarah!

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. The "nearly drunk" Marshal Herrick is speaking to Tituba and Sarah Good, who are in prison waiting to be hanged. The women are losing their sanity, thinking that the Devil is coming to take them to Barbados.
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