Marlon Brando's Dopp Kit
"I would load my Dopp kit with patience. If I had patience—and I do not—I would be able to forgive, to wait, to breathe, to consider."
Tennessee Williams wanted a witness—just one witness—who would state that he and his work had mattered. He asked me to find this witness. I found quite a few.
Tennessee provided me with a list of questions for these people, and each of them answered, even if they were often bewildered.
What would you most like to place in your Dopp kit, and what would you like to remove?
Marlon Brando heard that question, and then asked “A Dopp kit?” (Yes, a toiletry bag, or, as Tennessee believed, a bag of essentials that soldiers took into battle.)
Oh, Marlon Brando said.
This was his reply:
“I would load my Dopp kit with patience. If I had patience—and I do not—I would be able to forgive, to wait, to breathe, to consider. Patience would be the soft carpet on which I could walk to do the right things.
“I would remove from my Dopp kit every vestige of anger. For too long I thought anger was potent, virile, energizing. I was wrong. Anger destroys. It is true that it is the poison we gulp happily, under the illusion that we are doing something, accomplishing something. Ah, to get even! To hurt! Progress! Idiocy.
“Bring me my Dopp kit. In with the patience and out with the anger.”
From a telephone conversation in 1990