Eugene O Neill Quotes

LAVINIA: I love everything that grows simply
up toward the sun
everything that's straight and strong! I hate what's warped and twists and eats into itself and dies for a lifetime in shadow ... ~ Eugene O'Neill

If I had my choice in life I would have had the gifts of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill. Unfortunately my gifts lie in comedy and so comedy comes fairly easy to me and I occasionally have an idea for a very serious piece and I do it, but the ideas don't come that readily to me. ~ Woody Allen

LAVINIA: He made me feel for the first time in my life that everything about love could be sweet and natural ... I have a right to love! ~ Eugene O'Neill

Abysmal vermin that I am, I couldn't of course tell her that it was her incredible mother that I wanted to see again ... I knew only as I drove through the cold, night autumn air that somewhere Freud, Sophocles and Eugene O'Neill were laughing. ~ Woody Allen

He's cutting the heart out of the American dream to own a home and have a good job ... and still he's popular

Tip O'Neill on Ronald Reagan ~ Chris Matthews

Donna fight the darkness, nobody. Embrace it. ~ Heather R. Blair

On Translating Eugene Onegin


1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.


2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You're cute when you babble," he says to my total horror and disgust, because unlike the popular noughties rock band, cute is never what I aim for. ~ Laura Steven

Theta rolled over, facing Evie, their noses nearly touching. "Evil?" "Yes?" "I love you. Now, shut up and go to sleep. ~ Libba Bray

She would live every day fully. She was not the same girl she'd been nearly a year ago. She would never see things so blithely again. Even now, as Evie watched the parade and the people alight with pride and joy, she knew how easily that same crowd could become angry. The things that divided them. The things that brought them together, too. They couldn't afford to become complacent. ~ Libba Bray

But Quinn held the fuzzy handcuffs in his hands, looking them over closely, and he smiled. Oh, hey, did you want to keep these for when your invisible boyfriend returns from his fake vacation? ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Jesus breaks what we bring to Him. All too often we come to the table with our best manners and a pose of impenetrable self-sufficiency. We're all surface, all role - polished and poised performers in the game of life. But Jesus is after what is within, and He exposes the insides - our inadequacies. At the table we're not permitted to be self-enclosed. We're not permitted to remain self-sufficient. We are taken into the crucifixion. We dramatize it as we eat the common food. The breaking of our pride and self-approval opens us up to new life, to new action. Everything on the table represents some kind of exchange of life, some sacrifice to our Host. If we come crusted over, hardened within ourselves in lies and poses, He breaks through and brings new life. 'A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise' (Psalm 51:17). We discover this breaking first in Jesus. Jesus was broken, His blood poured out. And now we discover it in ourselves. Then Jesus gives back what we brought to Him, who we are. But it is no longer what we brought. Who we are, this self that we offer to Him at the table, is changed into what God gives, what we sing of as Amazing Grace. [Living the Resurrection] ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, t ~ Ron Suskind

Where am I? What the hell difference is it? There's plenty o' fresh air and the moon fur a glim. Don't be so damn pertic'lar! ~ Eugene O'Neill

Tip, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I would give mine away and go to hell with you.

Ronald Reagan ~ Chris Matthews

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. ~ Heather R. Blair

There was, apparently, a nuclear reactor at a place called Indian Point, just thirty miles away in Westchester County. If something bad happened there, we were constantly being informed, the 'radioactive debris', whatever this might be, was liable to rain down on us. (Indian Point: the earliest, most incurable apprehensions stirred in its very name.) Then there was the question of dirty bombs. Apparently any fool could build a dirty bomb and explode it in Manhattan. How likely was this? Nobody knew. Very little about anything seemed intelligible or certain, and New York itself - that ideal source of the metropolitan diversion that serves as a response to the largest futilities - took on a fearsome, monstrous nature whose reality might have befuddled Plato himself. We were trying, as I irreverently analysed it, to avoid what might be termed a historic mistake. We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a pre-apocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the thirties or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the Cold War inhabitants of New York, London, Washington and, for that matter, Moscow. In my anxiety I phoned Rachel's father, Charles Bolton, and asked him how he'd dealt with the threat of nuclear annihilation. I wanted to believe that this episode of history, like those old cataclysms that deposit a geologically telling layer of dust on the floors of seas, had sooted its survivors with special in ~ Joseph O'Neill

Evie yanked him to safety by the edge of his shirt, ripping it. "Thanks. You owe me a shirt," Sam said. "You owe me twenty dollars. ~ Libba Bray

Love is giving the people ye love what is best for them, Bav, no' what is best for ye. It doesna matter if it rips yer heart out by the roots first. Ye've never learned tha', no' in yer thousand thousands of years, and ye never will. ~ Heather R. Blair

Tell me you aren't crying. My whole image of you as a bad-ass warrior is crumbling. ~ Heather R. Blair

You're kidding, right? The whole town will know where we are just by the idle on that thing."
He feigned a look of shock. "That thing is a 1966 GTO. It has a name, okay? It's Mack - as in 'to mack on women.' I rebuilt it last year, and I was told the engine makes girls hot."
"Someone actually used those words? Is it true?"
"TBD," he said.
"You're goofy. Let's ride in my Jeep. Its name is Jeep."
Quinn chuckled. "Kavanagh has a smart mouth. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

One day, Evie O'Neill, you're gonna fall head over heels for me! ~ Libba Bray

O God, when my faith gets overladen with dust, blow it clean with the wind of your Spirit. When my habits of obedience get stiff and rusty, anoint them with the oil of your Spirit. Restore the enthusiasm of my first love for you. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The man read Eugene O'Neill on the beach. He had a stash of emergency pickle juice and a pet rat. He was hardly a model of stability. ~ J.A. Rock

Is childhood ever long enough, or a happy time, or even a beautiful summer day? All of these carry the seeds of the same fierce mystery that we call death. ~ Eugene Kennedy

Every day I review the ways he works, I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I'm watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The room fell heavily silent. After a minute of continuing to flay Morgan
with that narrowed gaze - and Morgan staring back defiantly - Ethan slowly lifted
green eyes to me, and I saw something different there.
Respect. ~ Chloe Neill

GOD proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from GOD. It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times. 28-30 When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Drinking from the beautiful chalice of knowledge is better than adorning oneself with gold and rare gems. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Whether we can "save" the planet is one question – whether the planet needs saving is another. ~ Eugene Thacker

A friend once told me the hurt that came with the end of a relationship was painful because it was the death of a dream - the future you'd imagined with a lover, a loved one, a child, or a friend. That loss was its own painful, nearly tangible thing. You had to reimagine your future, perhaps in a different place, with different people, doing different things than you might have first imagined. ~ Chloe Neill

But you never got thirsty for me. You ignored me. GOD'S Decree. 9 ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I know it's useless to talk. But sometimes I feel so lonely. ~ Eugene O'Neill

This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is ... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men ... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other. ~ Stephen Neill

At the end of the day, the numbers that we're hearing are not going to be totally correct or not correct at all. ~ Eugene Levy

The bird of truth would not be able to fly if it weren't for the air of lies we breathe. ~ Eugene J. Martin

Take some wood and canvas and nails and things. Build yourself a theater, a stage, light it, learn about it. When you've done that you will probably know how to write a play. ~ Eugene O'Neill

Priest and wise man and prophet alike felt that their professional well-being was threatened by Jeremiah's singularity. Panicked, they plotted his disgrace. Their "law" and "counsel" and "words" were in danger of being exposed as pious frauds by Jeremiah's honest and passionate life. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

That's the way it was every time I studied it. ~ Eugene Ormandy

First get the facts. Then you can distort them all you want. - Mark Twain ~ Chloe Neill