Quotes

We all want to play romantic figures. But because I lost my hair I was stuck playing butchers and crooks.

[interview with Victor Navasky for the book "Naming Names", about the McCarthy "Red Scare" witch-hunts of the 1950s] When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on an individual it can be terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit - being deprived of work. Your passport is confiscated. That's minor. But not being able to move without being tailed is something else. After a certain point it grows to implied as well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was institutionalized. In 1953 the HUCA did a deal with me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I couldn't borrow. I had the expenses of taking care of the children. Why am I subjecting my loved ones to this? If it's worth dying for, and I am just as idealistic as the next fellow. But I decided it wasn't worth dying for, and if this gesture was the way of getting out of the penitentiary I'd do it. I had to be employable again.

[testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, June 23, 1953] I would like to thank you for the privilege of setting the record straight, not only for whatever subjective relief it affords me, but if belatedly this information can be of any value in the further strengthening of our Government and its efforts at home as well as abroad, it will serve in some way to mitigate whatever feeling of guilt I might have for having waited this long.

The theater is the actor's medium. Movies are the director's medium. Television is nobody's medium.

If you must compare, Loman is a half-beaker as against Lear's full, overflowing beaker of poetry and emotion. The great difference is that in a production of Lear there is challenge to continual growth. There is no such thing as perfection.

Willy Loman is nobody's hero, but we are all his bereaved.

There was no living until I played Willy Loman. Willy Loman is part of my existence. He isn't anyone I can have any objective opinions about.