Arthur Miller: Carried in the Heart

Interview

1998

Perhaps it is something that comes with age and experience--and I hasten to add that the two do not come at the same time, and experience is never retained by some--but what you eventually find at the center of your consciousness is the line of one's love and the line of one's thoughts, and Tennessee was as obsessed with this as I am now. Do we matter? To whom do or did we matter? Did we make our point? Did we express our motives and our emotions and our affections correctly or honestly or at all? It is not enough to plant one's thoughts or emotions on a page or two or on some stages throughout the world: One has to be planted in the hearts of those you love, and you pray to God that you are carried in the hearts of those special people whose safety you would like to hold even when you have left the earth. I absolutely share this obsession with Tennessee, but I know it now. I didn't know it then.