All My SonsArthur Miller

George:

My life turned upside down since then. I couldn’t go back to work when you left. I wanted to go to Dad and tell him you were going to be married. It seemed impossible not to tell him. He loved you so much. (pause) Annie—we did a terrible thing. We can never be forgiven. Not even to send him a card at Christmas. I didn’t see him once since I got home from the war! Annie, you don’t know what was done to that man. You don’t know what happened.You can’t know, you wouldn’t be here. Dad came to work that day. The night foreman came to him and showed him the cylinder heads…they were coming out of the process with defects. There was something wrong with the process. So Dad went directly to the phone and called here and told Joe to come down right away. But the morning passed. No sign of Joe. So Dad called again. By this time he has over a hundred defectives. The Army was screaming for stuff and Dad didn’t have anything to ship. So Joe told him…on the phone he told him to weld, cover up the cracks in any way he could, and ship them out.I’m not through now! Dad was afraid. He wanted Joe there if he was going to do it. But Joe can’t come down…He’s sick. Sick! He suddenly gets the flu! Suddenly! But he promised to take responsibility. Do you understand what I’m saying? On the telephone you can’t have responsibility! In a court you can always deny a phone call and that’s exactly what he did. They knew he was a liar the first time, but in the appeal they believed that rotten lie and now Joe is a big shot and your father is the patsy. Now what’re you going to do? Eat his food, sleep in his bed? Answer me; what’re you going to do?

Death of a SalesmanArthur Miller

Willy:

Howard, all I need to set my table is fifty dollars a week. Look, it isn’t a question of whether I can sell the merchandise, is it? Just let me tell you a story, Howard—(angrily) Business is definitely business, but just listen for a minute. You don’t understand this. When I was a boy—eighteen, nineteen—I was already on the road. And there was a question in my mind as to whether selling has a future for me. Because in those days I had a yearning to go to Alaska. See, there were three gold strikes in one month in Alaska, and I felt like going out. Just for the ride, you might say.Yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man. We’ve got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family. I thought I’d go out with my older brother and try to locate him, and maybe settle in the North with the old man. And I was almost decided to go, when I met a salesman in the Parker House. His name was Dave Singleman. And he was eighty-four years old, and he’d drummed up merchandise in thirty-one states. And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers—I’ll never forget—and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ‘Cause what could be more satifying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? Do you know? When he died—and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, going to Boston—when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that. (He stands up. Howard has not looked at him) In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear—or personality. You see what I mean? They don’t know me anymore.

Equusby Peter Shaffer

Dora Strang confronts Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist in charge of her son Alan, who has blinded six horses with a metal spike.

Dora: Look doctor, you don’t have to live with this.  Alan is one patient to you: one out of many.  He’s my son.  I lie awake every night thinking about it.  Frank lies there beside me.  I can hear him.  None of us sleep all night.

You come to us and say who forbids television?  Who does what behind whose back? – as if we’re criminals.  Let me tell you something.  We’re not criminals.  We’ve done nothing wrong.  We loved Alan.  We gave him the best love we could.  All right, we quarreled sometimes – all parents quarrel – we always make up.  My husband is a good man.  He’s an upright man, religion or no religion.  He cares for his home, for the world, and for his boy. 

Alan had love and care and treats, and as much fun as any boy in the world.  I know about loveless homes:  I was a teacher.  Our home was not loveless.  I know about privacy too – not invading a child’s privacy.  All right, Frank may be at fault there – he digs into him too much – but nothing in excess.  He’s not a bully…no, doctor.  Whatever’s happened has happened because of Alan. 

Alan is himself.  Every soul is itself.  If you added everything we ever did to him, from his first day on earth to this, you wouldn’t find out why he did this terrible thing – because that’s him: not just all of our things added up. 

 Do you understand what I’m saying?  I want you to understand, because I lie awake and awake thinking it out, and I want you to know that I deny it absolutely what he’s doing now, staring at me, attacking me for what he’s done, for what he is! 

You’ve got your words, and I‘ve got mine.  You call it a complex, I suppose.  But if you knew God, doctor, you would know about the Devil.  You’d know the Devil isn’t made by what mummy says and daddy says.  The Devil’s there.  It’s an old fashioned word, but a true thing…

I’ll go.  What I did in there was inexcusable.

I only know he was my little Alan, and then the Devil came.

Wonder of the WorldDavid Lindsay-Abaire

Cass:

The road signs go by so fast, don’t they? Four hundred and sixty three. My old life is four hundred and sixty-three road signs behind me. (inhales) Don’t you love the smell of a bus?I know you’re pretending to be asleep, that’s called playing possum. My husband used to do that to avoid sex. (spots a sign zipping by) Four hundred and sixty-four. (back to Lois) I can spot a faker. And you’re a little faker. Hey, you wanna strike up a conversation?My name’s Cass. And I just left my husband for very mysterious reasons. I’ve never been to Niagara Falls before. I almost went once. A family trip. But then Kip proposed, so I stayed behind to plan our wedding, and my parents went without me. They hit a beaver on the drive up, lost control of the car, and drove into a ditch. My mother was killed and my father’s legs were crushed. Okay, your turn to share.You’re a challenge, aren’t ya? Well you know what? I’m you challenger. (beat) Remember when the Challenger exploded? That was sad.You might say that Kip saved my life, if he hadn’t proposed I would’ve been in that wreck; but I think if he hadn’t proposed, I would’ve gone with my parents and yelled “Dad, look out for that beaver!” And my mother would still be alive, and we would’ve gone on to see Niagara Falls, and maybe I would’ve met another man, the one I was meant to be with, instead of that two-faced deviant I married. (realizing) Oops, I lost track of the road signs. Oh well, that was getting tiresome anyway. Wanna play Punch Buggy?Is this a conversation? Because if it is, I wanna check it off. I had this list of things I wanted to do in life, but for some reason I put it away when I married Kip. PS: Big Mistake. (pulls out list) Here it is. Number forty-eight: “Strike up a conversation with a stranger” I’ve never done that before. My mother was always like “Don’t talk to strangers, Cass. Don’t talk to strangers.” So I never did. And you know what? Now I have no friends.

Rabbit HoleDavid Lindsay-Abaire

Becca:

Do you really not know my, Howie? Do you really not know how utterly impossible that would be? To erase him? No matter how many things I give to charity, or how many art projects I box up, do you really think I don’t see him every second of every day? And okay, I’m trying to make things a little easier on myself by hiding some of the photos, and giving away the clothes, but that does not mean that I’m trying to erase him. That tape was an accident. And believe me, I will beat myself up about it forever, I’m sure. Like everything else that I could’ve prevented but didn’t.It feels like I don’t feel bad enough for you. I’m not mourning enough for your taste. Or mourning the right way. But let me just say, Howie, that I am mourning just as much as you are. And my grief is just as real and awful as yours.You’re not in a better place than I am, you’re just in a different place. And that sucks that we can’t be there for each other right now, but that’s just the way it is. I understand that you don’t wanna let go of it, Howie, I understand.

MauritiusTheresa Rebeck

Jackie:

Can you, excuse me, I was wondering, I need someone to look at this. I’m not sure what it is. It’s quite old, and my understanding is that it could be, you know, someone told me that it was maybe worth a lot of money. I don’t actually, I mean, it’s mine, it is mine, but I don’t know a lot about it. So they said that you could maybe look at it, that you have some expertise in this area and that actually you’re really knowledgeable and you would be the person to ask. (beat)It’s stamps. (she opens the book to show him)I know a lot of people collect stamps, I never did, but I know that it is a popular hobby with some people. (beat)It’s mine to sell, though. I mean, I do own it. It’s been in our family for a long time, there’s some, in there, eighteen-something. Which, I have no idea if they’re real, I guess they could be fake. With my luck they probably are fake, but I’m trying not to, I’m trying, actually, to be positive, although I actually don’t judge myself for ebing negative more or less most of the time. Not that I’m defending negativity. And it’s not like I think the stamps are fake, either. I don’t think they are. They’re real. No question. At all. That’s so….Anyway.