Death A Salesman Quotes

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.

You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away. But if you can't walk away? I guess that's when it's tough.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Be loving to him. Because he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor.

Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?

The only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell.

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

A man is not a bird, to come and go with the springtime.

I don't say he's a great man. Willie 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.

Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I'm constantly lowering my ideals...

Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

Willy Loman: I don't want change, I want Swiss cheese!

I will live this day as if it is my last. …I will waste not a moment mourning yesterday’s misfortunes, Yesterday’s defeats, yesterday’s aches of the heart, for why should I throw good after bad?” I will live this day as if it is my last. This day is all I have and these hours are now my eternity. I greet this sunrise with cries of joy as a prisoner who is reprieved from death. I lift mine arms with thanks for this priceless gift of a new day. So too, I will beat upon my heart with gratitude as I consider all who greeted yesterday’s sunrise who are no longer with the living today. I am indeed a fortunate man and today’s hours are but a bonus, undeserved. Why have I been allowed to live this extra day when others, far better than I, have departed? Is it that they have accomplished their purpose while mine is yet to be achieved? Is this another opportunity for me to become the man I know I can be?

I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!

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

To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.

I get here, and I don't know what to do with myself. I've always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life

It's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And still-that's how you build a future.

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell.

When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.

If personal meaning, in this cheer leader society, lies in success, then failure must threaten identity itself.

I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know-what I’m supposed to want.

Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that's how you build a future.

On the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you

Charley: He won't starve. None a them starve. Forget about him. Willy: Then what have I got to remember?

What a woman! They broke the mould when they made her.

But then, it’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.

He's just a big stupid man to you, but I tell you there's more good in him than in may other people.

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

Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?

HAPPY: All right, boy. 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.

Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths, divorces, rehab, and vacations, the solidarity you have shown one another. Every so often you realize that without all of them, your life would be barren and pathetic. It would be Death of a Salesman, though with e-mail and texting.

Because he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor.

See, Biff, everybody around me is so false that I’m constantly lowering my ideals . . .

He's a 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 a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.

I don't know what the hell I'm workin' for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment–all alone. And I think of the rent I'm paying. And it's crazy. But then, it's what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I'm lonely.

As a character in another Miller play (After the Fall) remarks, the past is holy. Why? Not merely because the present contains the past, but because a moral world depends on an acceptance of the notion of causality, on an acknowledgment that we are responsible for, and a product of, our actions.

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 anymore and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!

to go, Pop. Every muscle is ready. WILLY [at the edge of the apron]: You realize what

I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop?

How can they whip cheese?

Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.

Willy: Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swings between them? Linda: Yeah, like being a million miles from the city.

Let's suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." IN the 18th century, you would have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individually to each one of them. However, here in the third millennium, with our advances in telephone communication, it is possible to say "I am a jerk" to a thousand people at a time by forgetting to turn off your cell phone and having it ring during a performance of Death of a Salesman.

In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety year old neighbors, like a hellish lottery.

Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead.

You make mountains out of molehills.

I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is waste my life.

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas.

Oh, certainly, 'The Wings of Death' is not amusing," ventured Mrs. Leveret, whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an obliging salesman with a variety of other styles to submit if his first selection does not suit.

No man only needs a little salary.

Be liked and you will never want.

Ah, it’s a dog’s life. I only wish during the war they’d a took me in the army. I coulda been dead by now.

The past, and its relationship to the present, has always been vital to Miller. As a character in another Miller play (After the Fall) remarks, the past is holy. Why? Not merely because the present contains the past, but because a moral world depends on an acceptance of the notion of causality, on an acknowledgment that we are responsible for, and a product of, our actions.

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 a 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.

Young Tchitcherine was the one who brought up political narcotics. Opiates of the people. Wimpe smiled back. An old, old smile to chill even the living fire in Earth’s core. "Marxist dialectics? That’s not an opiate, eh?" "It’s the antidote." "No." It can go either way. The dope salesman may know everything that’s ever going to happen to Tchitcherine, and decide it’s no use—or, out of the moment’s velleity, lay it right out for the young fool. "The basic problem," he proposes, "has always been getting other people to die for you. What’s worth enough for a man to give up his life? That’s where religion had the edge, for centuries. Religion was always about death. It was used not as an opiate so much as a technique—it got people to die for one particular set of beliefs about death. Perverse, natürlich, but who are you to judge? It was a good pitch while it worked. But ever since it became impossible to die for death, we have had a secular version—yours. Die to help History grow to its predestined shape. Die knowing your act will bring will bring a good end a bit closer. Revolutionary suicide, fine. But look: if History’s changes are inevitable, why not not die? Vaslav? If it’s going to happen anyway, what does it matter?" "But you haven’t ever had the choice to make, have you." "If I ever did, you can be sure—" "You don’t know. Not till you’re there, Wimpe. You can’t say." "That doesn’t sound very dialectical." "I don’t know what it is." "Then, right up to the point of decision," Wimpe curious but careful, "a man could still be perfectly pure . . ." "He could be anything. I don’t care. But he’s only real at the points of decision. The time between doesn’t matter." "Real to a Marxist." "No. Real to himself." Wimpe looks doubtful. "I've been there. You haven't.

If you woke before dawn one morning with the formula for a vaccine, which would cure the most ghastly disease currently known to man, releasing millions from an agonising death, would you roll over and resume sleeping until daylight?

Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar.

He did not like illness, he distrusted it, as he distrusted the road without signposts. ("Death Of A Traveling Salesman")

If I strike oil I'll send you a check. Meantime forget I'm alive

Why must everybody like you? Who liked J. P. Morgan? Was he impressive? In a Turkish bath he’d look like a butcher. But with his pockets on he was very well liked.

Gotta break your neck to see a star in this yard.

BIFF: 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!

The past is holy. Why? Not merely because the present contains the past, but because a moral world depends on an acceptance of the notion of causality, on an acknowledgment that we are responsible for, and a product of, our actions.

why did you do it? i search and search and i search, and i can't understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there'll be nobody home. we're free and clear. we're free. we're free... We're free...

I stopped middle of that I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?

I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.

The world is an oyster, but you don't crack it open on a mattress!

WILLY: I was thinking of the Chevvy. Slight pause. Nineteen twenty-eight . . . when I had that red Chevvy— Breaks off. That funny? I coulda sworn I was driving that Chevvy today.

He wants, beyond anything, to be "well liked", for, without that, he fears he will be nothing at all.

(...) and if a man is building something he must be on the right track, mustn't he?

The jails are full of fearless characters.

LINDA: I know, dear, I know. But he likes to have a letter. Just to know that there’s still a possibility for better things.

Willy: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there's nobody to live in it.

Don’t you understand what I’m talking about? He’s going to kill himself, don’t you know that?

LINDA: To me you are. Slight pause. The handsomest. From the darkness is heard the laughter of a woman. Willy doesn’t turn to it, but it continues through Linda’s lines.

Pop! I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!

It was late afternoon. This time tomorrow he would be somewhere on a good graveled road, driving his car past things that happened to people, quicker than their happening. ("Death of a Traveling Salesman")

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.

LINDA, resigned: Well, you’ll just have to take a rest, Willy, you can’t continue this way. WILLY: I just got back from Florida. LINDA: But you didn’t rest your mind. Your mind is overactive, and the mind is what counts, dear.

And it was so still. The silence of the fields seemed to enter and move familiarly through the house. The wind used the open hall. He felt that he was in a mysterious, quiet, cool danger. It was necessary to do what?...to talk. ("Death Of A Traveling Salesman")

This is the man who left the message,” said Campbell. “He sells questions.” “Actually, I’ve moved on from questions,” said the salesman. “People simply aren’t inquisitive enough these days.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m now in the business of selling after-life insurance.

Ashamed, shrugging a little, and then shivering, he took his bags and went out. The cold of the air seemed to lift him bodily. The moon was in the sky. On the slope he began to run, he could not help it. Just as he reached the road, where his car seemed to sit in the moonlight like a boat, his heart began to give off tremendous explosions like a rifle, bang bang bang. He sank in fright onto the road, his bags falling about him. He felt as if all this had happened before. He covered his heart with both hands to keep anyone from hearing the noise it made. But nobody heard it. ("Death of a Traveling Salesman

He was surprised at the way she answered. She had taken a long time to say that. She had nodded her head in a deep way too. Had she wished to affect him with some sort of premonition? He wondered unhappily. Or was it only that she would not help him, after all, by talking with him? For he was not strong enough to receive the impact of unfamiliar things without a little talk to break their fall. He had lived a month in which nothing had happened except in his head and his body — an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and dreams that came back, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate life which had left him weak to the point of — what? Of begging. The pulse in his palm leapt like a trout in a brook. ("Death of a Traveling Salesman")

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves. I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford.... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary.

Forgive me, dear. I can’t cry. I don’t know what it is, I can’t cry. I don’t understand it. Why did you ever do that? Help me Willy, I can’t cry. It seems to me that you’re just on another trip. I keep expecting you. Willy, dear, I can’t cry. Why did you do it? I search and search and I search, and I can’t understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. We’re free and clear. We’re free. We’re free... We’re free...

Well with a success like Death of a Salesman you get feelings of omnipotence. A little touch of it, you know. You think you can do anything. You inevitably begin to feel a kind of impact of power, which is sexual, it is financial, it is everything. You begin to shift and change if you’re not careful, which I wasn’t. People now were talking to me differently. Women, men. They were looking at me like an icon of some kind. Well then, I felt with my wife then, that we were… it wasn’t enough for me, suddenly. I thought I… I had a feeling that we were not close, that we were not one.

Well with a success like Death of a Salesman you get feelings of omnipotence. A little touch of it, you know. You think you can do anything. You inevitably begin to feel a kind of impact of power, which is sexual, it is financial, it is everything. You begin to shift and change if you’re not careful, which I wasn’t. People now were talking to me differently. Women, men. They were looking at me like an icon of some kind. Well then, I felt with my wife then, that we were… it wasn’t enough for me, suddenly. I thought I… I had a feeling that we were not close, that we were not one.

In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety-year-old neighbors, like a hellish lottery. But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred, that death could be dressed in a uniform or raincoat, queue up at the cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for a walk to Ciudadela Park in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuïc Castle or in a common grave with no name or ceremony.

Beyond that, as Miller has explained, “People who are able to accept their frustrated lives do not change conditions.” Willy is not passive: “his activist nature is what leads mankind to progress . . . you must look behind his ludicrousness to what he is actually confronting, and that is as serious a business as anyone can imagine.” (Beijing, 27) This claim is a large one. Willy, to Miller, is not a pathological case, and anyone who plays him as such makes a serious mistake. He is battling for his life, fighting to sustain a sense of himself that makes it worthwhile living at all in a world which seemingly offers ever less space for the individual.

The first Western play to be performed in Beijing since the revolution was mounted while I was there. It was Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The choice seemed very strange. I regarded the play as being not merely highly Western in character but distinctly American. Its central figure is a salesman, “a man way out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine.” To my astonishment, the play was a tremendous success. But Arthur Miller, who had come to China to collaborate on production of the play, provided a satisfactory reason for its reception. “The play is about family,” he said, “and the Chinese invented family.” He might have added that the play is also about face, or the need to have the respect of the community, and the Chinese also invented face.

There is only one Long Day’s Journey into Night. There is only one Death of a Salesman

I’m tired to the death.

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 a 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 a couple of spots on your hat and you’re finished.