Thornton Wilder

But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
― Thornton Wilder

There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
― Thornton Wilder

The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, 'Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.' And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
― Thornton Wilder

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
― Thornton Wilder

Being employed is like being loved: you know that somebody's thinking about you the whole time.
― Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good.
― Thornton Wilder