Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

I discover what I mean as I write. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, 'Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?'

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

I made, over the years in Cambridge, several very good American friends, and America appeared to me, a land of promise in every sense of that word, a land of freedom from the inhibitions and restrictions that I felt in England.

The man who radiates good cheer, who makes life happier wherever he meets it, is always a man of vision and faith.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

Everything in my life I owe to God, my family, the Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps.

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.