1) “A man needs for a woman to back him up” (10). WALTER
2) “You tired, ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we live – this
beat-up hole – everything. Ain’t you? So tired – moaning and groaning all the
time, but you wouldn’t do nothing to help, would you? You couldn’t be on my
side that long for nothing, could you?” (10) WALTER
3) “Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs”
(11). WALTER
4) “I’ve been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room
– and all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live…” (11).
WALTER
5) “Baby, don’t nothing happen for you in this world ‘less you pay somebody
off” (11). WALTER
6) “We one group of men tied to a race of woman with small minds!” (12).
WALTER
7) “So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffer. So-I would rather be
living in Buckingham Palace” (12). RUTH
8) “That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world…Don’t
understand about building their men up and making ‘em feel like they
somebody” (12). WALTER
9) “That money belongs to MAMA, Walter, and it’s for her to decide how she
wants to use it. I don’t care if she wants to buy a house or a rocketship or just
nail it up somewhere and look at it. It’s hers not ours – hers” (14) BENEATHA
10)“Lord, if this little old plant don’t get more sun than its been getting it ain’t
never going to see spring again” (16). MAMA
11)“No, Mama, something is happening between Walter and me. I don’t know
what it is – but he needs something – something I can’t give him any more. He
needs this chance” (17). RUTH
12)“Ain’t nobody business people till they go into business. Walter Lee say
colored people ain’t never going to start getting ahead till they start gambling
on some different kinds of things in the world – investments and things” (17).
RUTH
13)“We ain’t no business people, Ruth. We just plain working folks” (17). MAMA
14) “Somebody would of thought my children done all but starved to death the
way they talk about money” (18). MAMA
15)“Something always told me I wasn’t no rich white woman” (19). MAMA
16)“Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams – but
He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while” (20). MAMA
17) “Shallow – what do you mean he’s shallow? He’s rich!” (22). RUTH
18)“Well—what other qualities a man got to have to satisfy you, little girl?” (23).
RUTH
19)“…the only people in the world who are more snobbish than rich white
people are rich colored people” (23). BENEATHA
20)“There simply is no God—there is only man and it is he who makes miracles!”
(24). BENEATHA
21)“I’m going to be a doctored and everybody around here better understand
that!” (24). BENEATHA
22) “There are some ideas we ain’t going to have in this house. Not long as I am
at the head of this family” (25). MAMA
23)“Well, I always wanted me a garden like I used to see sometimes at the back
of the houses down home. This plant is close as I ever got to having one” (26).
MAMA
24)“You wear it well…very well…mutilated hair and all” (32). ASAGAI
25)“You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my identity!” (32). ASAGAI quoting
BENEATHA
26) “But what does it matter? Assimilationism is so popular in your country”
(33). ASAGAI
27)“I am not an assimilationist!” (33). BENEATHA
28)“Sometimes it’s like I can see the future stretched out in front of me…hanging
over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me – a big, looming blank
space – full of nothing” (41). WALTER
29) “Once upon a time freedom used to be life – now it’s money. I guess the
world really do change…” (41). MAMA
30)“In my time, we was worried about not being lynched and getting to the
North if we could and how to stay alive and still have a pinch of dignity too…”
(42). MAMA
31)“Well – son, I’m waiting to hear you say something…I’m waiting to hear how
you be your father’s son. Be the man he was…Your wife say she going to
destroy your child. And I’m waiting to hear you talk like him and say we a
people who give children life, not who destroys them. I’m waiting to see you
stand up and look like your daddy and say we done give up one baby to
poverty and that we ain’t going to give up another one…I’m waiting” (42).
MAMA
32) “What have you done to your head—I mean your hair!” (48). GEORGE
33) “Because I hate assimilationist Negroes” (48). BENEATHA
34)“Look, honey, we’re going to the theater, we’re not going to be in it” (48).
GEORGE
35)“Filling up your heads with the sociology and psychology – but they teaching
you how to be a man?” (51). WALTER
36) “I know ain’t nothing in this world as busy as you colored boys with your
fraternity pins and white shoes…” (51). WALTER
37) “Good night, Prometheus!” (52). GEORGE
38)“It makes a difference in a man when he can walk on floors that belong to
him” (57). MAMA
39)“Clybourne Park? Mama, there ain’t no colored people living in Clybourne
Park” (57). RUTH
40)“Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out all seem to cost
twice as much as other houses” (58). MAMA
41) “So you butchered up a dream of mine—you—who always talking ‘bout your
children’s dreams…” (59). WALTER
42)“You read books—to learn facts—to get grades—to pass the course—to get a
degree” (60). GEORGE
43)“You’re a nice-looking girl…all over. That’s all you need, honey, forget the
atmosphere” (60). GEORGE
44) “Well—I always thinks like Booker T. Washington said that time—
‘Education has spoiled many a good plow hand’” (65). MRS. JOHNSON
45) “He always said a man’s hands was made to make things, or to turn the earth
with—not to drive nobody’s car for ‘em…” (65).
46) “You sure one proud-acting bunch of colored folks” (65). MRS. JOHNSON
47)“…sometimes she act like ain’t got time to pass the time of day with nobody
ain’t been to college” (65). MRS. JOHNSON
48)“Mama, if there are two things we, as a people, have got to overcome, one is
the Ku Klux Klan – and the other is Mrs. Johnson” (66). BENEATHA
49)“I’m telling you to be head of this family from now on like you supposed to
be” (68). MAMA
50)“Son – son, what do you want to be when you grow up?” (69). WALTER
51) “Whatever you want to be – Yessir! You just name it, son…and I hand you the
world!” (70). WALTER
52)“I am sure you people must be aware of some of the incidents which may
have happened in various parts of the city when colored people have moved
into certain areas” (75). LINDNER
53)“We feel that most of the trouble in this world, when you come right down to
it – most of the trouble exists because people just don’t sit down and talk to
each other” (76). LINDNER
54) “It is a matter of the people of Clybourne Park believing, rightly or wrongly,
as I say, that for the happiness of all concerned that our Negro families are
happier when they live in their own communities” (77). LINDNER
55)“But you’ve got to admit that a man, right or wrong, has the right to want to
have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of way” (77). LINDNER
56) “Oh – Mama – they don’t do it like that any more. He talked Brotherhood. He
said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hare each other with good
Christian fellowship” (79). BENEATHA
57)“I waited six hours…I called his house…and I waited…six hours…I waited in
that train station six hours…” (84). BOBO
58)“I seen him…night after night…come in… and look at that rug…and then look
at me…the red showing in his eyes…the veins moving in his head…I seen him
grow thin and old before he was forty…working and working and working
like somebody’s old horse…killing himself…and you – you give it away in a
day” (86). MAMA
59)“While I was sleeping in that bed in there people went out and took the
future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me –
they just want out and changed my life! “ (89). BENEATHA
60)“But did you earn it? Would you have had it at all if your father had not died?”
(90). ASAGAI
61)“Tell her we can still move…the notes ain’t but a hundred and twenty-five a
month. We got four grown people in this house – we can work…” (93). RUTH
62)“You always telling me to see life like it is. Well – I laid in there on my back
today…and I figured it out. Life is just like it is. Who gets and who don’t get”
(95). WALTER
63) “What’s the matter with you all! I didn’t make this world! It was give to me
this way!” (96). WALTER
64) “Son, I come from five generations of people who was slaves and
sharecroppers - but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay ‘em no
money that was a way of telling us we wasn’t fit to walk the earth. We ain’t
never been that poor. We ain’t never been that – dead inside” (96). MAMA
65) “You what supposed to be my beginning again. You—what supposed to be
my harvest” (97).
66)“And we have decided to move into our house because my father – my father
– he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for
nobody, or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s
all we got to say about that” (100). WALTER
67)“He finally come into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow
after the rain…” (102). MAMA