“Arthur Miller’s writing studio is a global landmark. This humble space represents not just Miller’s legacy, but the power of storytelling to connect us all. By preserving the studio, we honor a writer who advocated for free speech and the power of the arts to shape society.”
Concluding passage of Miller’s autobiography Timebends (1987):
“I have lived more than half my life in the Connecticut country-side, all the time expecting to get some play or book finished so I can spend more time in the city, where everything is happening. There is something about this forty-year temporary residence that strikes me funny now. If only we could stop murdering one another we could be a wonderfully humorous species. My contentment discontents me when I know that little happens here that I don’t make happen, except the sun coming up and going down and the leaves emerging and dropping off and an occasional surprise like the recent appearance of coyotes in the woods. There is more unbroken forest from Canada down to here than there was even in Lincoln’s youth, the farms having gradually vanished, and there is even the odd bear, they say, a wanderer down from the north, and now these coyotes. I have seen them. They have a fixed smug grin, as though they just stole something. And they cannot be mistaken for dogs, whom they otherwise resemble, because of their eyes, which look at you with a blue guilt but no conscience, a mixture of calculation and defensive distrust that domestication cured in dogs thousands of years ago.
“the first truth ...
is that we are all connected.”
— Arthur Miller writing in Roxbury studio
And so the coyotes are out there earnestly trying to arrange their lives to make more coyotes possible, not knowing that it is my forest, of course. And I am in this room from which I can sometimes look out at dusk and see them warily moving through the barren winter trees, and I am, I suppose, doing what they are doing, making myself possible and those who come after me. At such moments I do not know whose land this is that I own, or whose bed I sleep in. In the darkness out there they see my light and pause, muzzles lifted, wondering who I am and what I am doing here in this cabin under my light. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth, the first truth, probably, is that we are all connected, watching one another. Even the trees.”
View the site concept plans
“We live most of the time in the country. Arthur is a hands-on man, he knows his tools and how to repair machinery which still is a source of endless astonishment to me, having been brought up in Europe where most intellectuals have a rather distant relationship to this kind of stuff. His mornings are dedicated to writing. He spends many hours in the small studio built mostly by himself on a hill near the house. Nothing disturbs him there, not even the view.
In the afternoons work on the land or in the carpentry shop takes over; in the late afternoons and evenings, reading, music, dinners with friends.”