WILLIAMS, Tennessee

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

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Time goes by so fast. Nothin' can outrun it. Death commences too early--almost before you're half-acquainted with life--you meet the other.”

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Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you--gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--and I can! I'm determined to do it--and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof--is there?

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You can be young without money but you can't be old without it. You've got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you've got to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can't be old and without it. - That's the truth, Brick...

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A Streetcar Named Desire

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Stella:

He’s like an animal. He has animal habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by and there he is, Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home after the killing, the jungle and you. You! You're waiting for him. Maybe he’ll strike you or maybe he’ll grunt and kiss you.

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Stanley:

Don‘t you ever talk that way to me! ‘Pig.’ ‘disgusting,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘greasy,’—those kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister‘s tongue too much around here. What do you think you are? A pair of queens? Now, just remember what Huey Long said—that everyman is a king—and I’m king around here, and don’t you forget” and “Listen, baby when we first met—you and me—you thought I was common. Well, how right you was! I was common as dirt. You showed me a snapshot of the place with the columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it! We were having them colored lights going! And wasn’t we happy together? Wasn’t it okay till she showed up?

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Suddenly, Last Summer

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(Catherine talking to Dr Cukrowicz): ‘It was all white outside. White hot, a blazing white hot, hot blazing white, at five o’clock in the afternoon in the city of – Cabeza de Lobo. It looked as if -… a huge white bone caught up on fire in the sky and blazed so bright it was white and turned the sky and everything under the sky white with it’…

Dr: ‘You followed your cousin Sebastian out of the restaurant on to the hot white street?’

‘up the blazing white street. The band of naked children pursued us up the steep white street in the sun that was like a great white bone of a giant beast that had caught on fire in the sky!… Sebastian… screamed just once before this flock of black plucked little birds that pursued him and overtook him halfway up the white hill.’

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The Glass Menagerie

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Scene V

AMANDA: You mean you have asked some nice young man to come over?
TOM: Yep. I’ve asked him to dinner.
AMANDA: You really did?
TOM: I did!
AMANDA: You did, and did he—accept?
TOM: He did!
AMANDA: Well, well—well, well! That’s—lovely!
TOM: I thought that you would be pleased.
AMANDA: It’s definite, then?
TOM: Very definite.
AMANDA: Soon?
TOM: Very soon.
AMANDA: For heaven’s sake, stop putting on and tell me some things, will you?
TOM: What things do you want me to tell you?
AMANDA: Naturally I would like to know when he’s coming!
TOM: He’s coming tomorrow.
AMANDA: Tomorrow?
TOM: Yep. Tomorrow.
AMANDA: But, Tom!
TOM: Yes, Mother?
AMANDA: Tomorrow gives me no time!
TOM: Time for what?
AMANDA: Preparations! Why didn’t you phone me at once, as soon as you asked him, the minute that he accepted? Then, don’t you see, I could have been getting ready!
TOM: You don’t have to make any fuss.
AMANDA: Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom, of course I have to make a fuss! I want things nice, not sloppy! Not thrown together. I’ll certainly have to do some fast thinking, won’t I?
TOM: I don’t see why you have to think at all.
AMANDA: You just don’t know. We can’t have a gentleman caller in a pig-sty! All my wedding silver has to be polished, the monogrammed table linen ought to be laundered! The windows have to be washed and fresh curtains put up. And how about clothes? We have to wear something, don’t we?
TOM: Mother, this boy is no one to make a fuss over!
AMANDA: Do you realize he’s the first young man we’ve introduced to your sister?
It’s terrible, dreadful, disgraceful that poor little sister has never received a single gentleman caller! Tom, come inside! ( She opens the screen door .)
TOM: What for?
AMANDA: I want to ask you some things.
TOM: If you’re going to make such a fuss, I’ll call it off, I’ll tell him not to come!
AMANDA: You certainly won’t do anything of the kind. Nothing offends people worse than broken engagements. It simply means I’ll have to work like a Turk! We won’t be brilliant, but we will pass inspection. Come on inside. ( Tom follows, groaning. ) Sit down.
TOM: Any particular place you’d like me to sit?
AMANDA: Thank heavens I’ve got that new sofa! I’m also making payments on a floor lamp I’ll have sent out! And put the chintz covers on, they’ll brighten things up! Of course I’d hoped to have these walls re-papered. . . . What is the young man’s name?
TOM: His name is O’Connor.
AMANDA: That, of course, means fish—tomorrow is Friday! I’ll have that salmon loaf—with Durkee’s dressing! What does he do? He works at the warehouse?
TOM: Of course! How else would I—
AMANDA: Tom, he—doesn’t drink?
TOM: Why do you ask me that?
AMANDA: Your father did!
TOM: Don’t get started on that!
AMANDA: He does drink, then?
TOM: Not that I know of!
AMANDA: Make sure, be certain! The last thing I want for my daughter’s a boy who drinks!
TOM: Aren’t you being a little bit premature? Mr. O’Connor has not yet appeared on the scene!
AMANDA: But will tomorrow. To meet your sister, and what do I know about his character? Nothing! Old maids are better off than wives of drunkards!
TOM: Oh, my God!
AMANDA: Be still!
TOM: ( Leaning forward to whisper ) Lots of fellows meet girls whom they don’t marry!
AMANDA: Oh, talk sensibly, Tom—and don’t be sarcastic! ( She has gotten a hairbrush .)
TOM: What are you doing?
AMANDA: I’m brushing that cow-lick down!
What is this young man’s position at the warehouse?
TOM: ( Submitting grimly to the brush and the interrogation ) This young man’s position is that of a shipping clerk, Mother.
AMANDA: Sounds to me like a fairly responsible job, the sort of a job you would be in if you just had more get-up.
What is his salary? Have you any idea?
TOM: I would judge it to be approximately eighty-five dollars a month.
AMANDA: Well—not princely, but—
TOM: Twenty more that I make.
AMANDA: Yes, how well I know! But for a family man, eighty-five dollars a month is not much more than you can just get by on. . . .
TOM: Yes, but Mr. O’Connor is not a family man.
AMANDA: He might be, mightn’t he? Sometime in the future?
TOM: I see. Plans and provisions.
AMANDA: You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!
TOM: I will think that over and see what I can make of it.
AMANDA: Don’t be supercilious with your mother! Tell me some more about this—what do you call him?
TOM: James D. O’Connor. The D. is for Delaney.
AMANDA: Irish on both sides! Gracious! And doesn’t drink?
TOM: Shall I call him up and ask him right this minute?
AMANDA: The only way to find out about those things is to make discreet inquiries at the proper moment. When I was a girl in Blue Mountain and it was suspected that a young man drank, the girl whose attentions he had been receiving, if any girl was, would sometimes speak to the minister of his church, or rather her father would if her father was living, and sort of feel him out on the young man’s character. That is the way such things are discreetly handled to keep a young woman from making a tragic mistake!


Sweet Bird of Youth

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CHANCE WAYNE : "I started to have bad dreams. Nightmares, and cold sweats at night, and I had palpitations, and on my leaves I got drunk and woke up in strange places with faces on the next pillow I'd never seen before. My eyes had a wild look in them in the mirror. I got the idea I wouldn't live through the war, that I wouldn't come home, that all the excitement and glory of being Chance Wayne would go up in smoke at the moment of contact between my brain and a bit of hot steel that happened to be in the air at the same time and place my head was....”

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