“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.”

“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?”

“MAGGIE, in pain: That’s what I mean; I’m a joke to most people.QUENTIN: No, it’s that you say what you mean, Maggie. You don’t seem to be upholding anything, you’re not—ashamed of what you are.MAGGIE: W-what do you mean, of what I am?… But you didn’t, did you?He turns to her in agony.Laugh at me?QUENTIN: No. He suddenly stands and cries out to Listener. Fraud! From the first five minutes! …Because! I should have agreed she was a joke, a beautiful piece, trying to take herself seriously! Why did I lie to her, play this cheap benefactor, this— Listens, and now unwillingly he turns back to her.MAGGIE: Like when you told me to fix where my dress was torn? You wanted me to be— proud of myself. Didn’t you?”

“Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.”

“I am amazed all over again by how magnified this project's importance has become, far beyond its being a play or an artwork. It is now a test of some kind; but of what, precisely? The incommunicability of the Chinese? If I can't claim to know my actors, I know them as well or as little as I would an American cast. I can no longer call up the notion of Chinese mysteriousness.”

“Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.”

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