Eugene O'Neill

Dramatist

1888-10-16

Quotes by Eugene O'Neill

• The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted— to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

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• Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for time.

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• Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love?.. Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?

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• Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

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• There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

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• It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

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• Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you nowhere fast. That's where I've got— nowhere. Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it.

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• Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for time.

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• It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

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• Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love?.. Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?

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• Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you nowhere fast. That's where I've got— nowhere. Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it.

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• The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted— to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

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• There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

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• Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

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• Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

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• Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

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• When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity - but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

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• Contentment is a warm sty for the eaters and sleepers.

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• None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever.

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• The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

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