Our Town Quotes
Speaker: Stage manager,Theme
" When people first die, they still feel attached to the earth, after awhile they get weened away and aren't interested anymore"
Speaker: Stage ManagerRealism, sadness for Joe Crowell when he dies in WW1
"All that education for nothing"
Stage Manager
"Almost everybody in the world gets married - you know what I mean?...Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married."
stage manager
"And as you watch it, you see the thing that they-down there- never know. You see the future. You know whats going to happen afterwards.
Emily Webb
"Don't you remember that you used to say all the time that I was your little girl?"
Rebecca Gibbs
"Every day I go to school dressed like a sick turkey."
Professor Willard
"Grover's Corners lies on the old Pleistocene granite of the Appalachain range"
Speaker: Emily. She is sad and wishes she wasn't attached to the earth like she is now
"I don't like being new here"
George Gibbs
"I think that once you've found a person that you're fond of...a person who's fond of you, too, and likes you enough to be interested in your character..., that's just as important as college is, and even more so."
Emily
"It's not easy for a girl to be perfect as a man, because...girls are more nervous"
Mrs. Webb
"Just open your eyes, dear, that's all...If it were a snake it would bite you."
Stage Manager
"Naturally, out in the country- all around - there've been lights on for some time, what with milkin's and so on. But town people sleep late."
George Gibbs
"Now, Ma, you save Thursday nights, Emily and I are coming over to dinner every Thursday night."
Mrs. Gibbs
"People are meant to live two by two in the world."
Mr. Webb
"Since the caveman, no bridegroom should see his father-in-law on the day of the wedding, or near it."
Speaker: Stage manager, Theme
"The people ware waiting for the eternal part of them to come out and it is eternal and important: better than what they experienced when they were alive"
Stage Manager
"The real hero of this scene isn't on the stage at all, and you know who that is."
Sam Craig
"There aren't many of those Hersey sisters left now."
Frank Gibbs
"They'll have a lot of troubles, I suppose, but that's none of our business. Everybody has a right to their own troubles."
Mrs. Soames
"To have the organist of a church drink and drunk year after year. You know he was drunk tonight"
Stage Manager - Mr. Morgan
"Why, I can remember when a dog could go to sleep all day in the middle of Main Street and nothing come along to disturb him."
Stage Manager
"You know as well as I do that the dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long."
Stage Manager
"You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life."
Professor Willard
A faculty member of State University who recites facts about Grover's Corners.
Mrs. Louella Soames
A local busybody who clucks over Simon's alcoholism and idealizes George and Emily's marriage. She is a spirit in the last act.
Mr. Webb
A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George (59)
Mrs. Gibbs
And how do you think I felt! - Frank, weddings are perfectly awful things. Farces, that's what they are!
Mr. Webb
And let that be a lesson to you, George, never to ask advice on personal matters
Mr. Webb
And let that be a lesson to you, George, never to ask advice on personal matters (60)
George
And, like you say, being gone all that time... in other places and meeting other people... Gosh, if anything like that can happen I don't want to go away. I guess new people aren't any better than old ones. I'll bet they almost never are. Emily... I feel that you're as good a friend as I've got. I don't need to go and meet the people in other towns.
Mr. Webb
Are you going to raise chickens on your farm? (61)
Mrs. Webb
As for me, I'd rather have my children healthy than bright. 15
Emily Webb
But, Mother Gibbs, how can I ever forget that life? It's all I know. It's all I had.
Emily
But, Papa- I don't want to get married (79)
Mrs. Myrtle Webb
Charles Webb's wife, who reveals her character through her conversation with Mrs. Gibbs; she represents the typical mother and housewife.
Emily Webb
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?
Mr. Webb
Don't you misunderstand me, my boy. Marriage is a wonderful thing,—wonderful thing. And don't you forget that, George.
Mrs. Julia Hersey Gibbs
Dr. Gibbs' wife, who represents a typical housewife in the first two acts; in the final act, she is seen as a spirit.
Rebecca Gibbs
Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs' daughter, who is four years younger than George. She realizes that Grover's Corners is part of New Hampshire, part of America, part of the world, the universe. This expanding image is central to Wilder's theme.
George Gibbs
Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs' sixteen-year-old son, who discovers his love for Emily, marries her in the second act, and grieves for her loss in the third act.
Wallace "Wally" Webb
Emily's younger brother and one of the spirits in the last act. In Act III, we discover that he died suddenly from a ruptured appendix while on a Boy Scout trip.
Stage Manager
Every child born into the world is nature's attempt to make a perfect human being
Emily Webb
From morning till night, that's all they are - troubled
Mr. Webb
George, I was thinking the other night of some advice my father gave me when I got married. Charles, he said, Charles, start out early showing who's boss, he said. Best thing to do is give an order, even if it don't make sense; just so she'll learn to obey. [...] So I took the opposite of my father's advice and I've been happy ever since.
George
Good morning, everybody. Only five more hours to live.
Emily Webb
I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all, everything.—I can't look at everything hard enough.
Emily Gibbs
I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another
Mr. Gibbs
I guess I know more about Simon Stimson's affairs than anybody in this town. Some people ain't made for small-town life.
Emily
I never felt so alone in my whole life
Emily Webb
I never felt so alone in my whole life. And George over there, looking so...! I hate him. I wish I were dead. Papa! Papa!
Dr. Gibbs
I was the scaredest young fella in the State of New Hampshire. I thought I'd make a mistake for sure. And when I saw you comin' down that aisle I thought you were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen, but the only trouble was that I'd never seen you before. There I was in the Congregation Church marryin' a total stranger.
George
I wish a fellow could get married without all that marching up and down.
Mrs. Soames
I'd forgotten all about that. My, wasn't life awful - With a sigh. and wonderful
George
I'm celebrating because I've got a friend who tells me all the things that ought to be told to me (69)
Stage Manager
I've married over 200 couples in my day. Do I believe in it? IDK M..... marries N..... millions of them The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, and the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will, Once in a thousand times it's interesting
Emily
It certainly seems like being away three years you'd get out of touch with things. Maybe letters from Grover's Corners wouldn't be so interesting after a while. Grover's Corners isn't a very important place when you think of all—New Hampshire; but I think it's a very nice town.
Si Crowell
Joe's younger brother, who takes Joe's job as paper boy in Act II to indicate the passage of time.
Mrs. Gibbs
Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.
George Gibbs
Ma, I don't want to grow old. Why's everybody pushing me so?
Stage Manager
Mrs. Gibbs died first - long time ago, in fact. She went out to visit her daughter, Rebecca, who married an insurance man in Canton, Ohio, and died there - pneumonia - but her body was brought back here. She's up in the cemetery there now - in with a whole mess of Gibbses and Herseys - she was Julia Hersey 'fore she married Doc Gibbs in the Congregational Chuch over there
Mrs. Gibbs
No!—At least, choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.
Stage Manager
Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it, s'far as we know
Mrs. Webb
Oh, I've got to say it: you know, there's something downright cruel about sending our girls out into marriage this way.
Mrs. Gibbs
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to
Mrs. Gibbs
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
Stage Manager
So—people a thousand years from now—this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century.—This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.
simon stimson
That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.
Simon
That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you...Now you know - that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness
Emily Webb Gibbs
The Webbs' intelligent daughter, who grows up during the play, joins the two major families when she marries George Gibbs, and dies later during childbirth.
George
The day wouldn't come when I wouldn't want to know everything that's happening here. I know that's true, Emily.
Mr. Charles Webb
The editor and publisher of the Sentinel, the town's newspaper, and one of its most important citizens. He lives across from the Gibbs family.
Mrs. Soames
The important thing is to be happy (82)
Howie Newsome
The milkman who guides a seventeen-year-old horse named Bessie. He appears during Emily's return to the past in the last act.
Stage Master
The narrator, who also plays the roles of master of ceremonies, Mrs. Forrest, Mr. Morgan, and a minister. He guides Emily in her return to the living world.
Simon Stimson
The organist of the Congregational Church who is the subject of town gossip because of his alcoholism. As a suicide who hangs himself in the attic, Simon's memories of the past are negative.
Joe Crowell, Jr.
The paper boy in the first act and also during the flashback, when Emily returns to life. A scholar at Massachusetts Tech, he is killed in France during World War I before he can use his education.
Samuel "Sam" Craig
The son of Julia Gibbs' sister Carey, he comes back from Buffalo after twelve years' absence. He provides exposition in the last act.
Constable Bill Warren
The town law enforcement officer, whose duties require him to be sure that doors are locked and that drain pipes are adequate. On February 7, 1899, he saves a man from freezing to death.
Joe Stoddard
The town undertaker, who provides background information in the third act.
Dr. Frank Gibbs
The town's doctor, who is returning from delivering the Goruslawski twins during the first act. He is the father of George and Rebecca Gibbs.
Stage Manager
There are the stars - doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. Just chalk...or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. The strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.
Mr. Webb
There's a lot of common sense in some superstitions, George (57)
Mr. Gibbs
They're all getting citified, that's the trouble with them.
Mr. Webb
They're all getting citified, that's the trouble with them. They haven't got nothing fit to burgle and everybody knows it
Mr. Webb
Very ordinary town, if you ask me. Little better behaved than most. Probably a lot duller. But our young people here seem to like it well enough. Ninety percent of 'em graduating from high school settle down right here to live even when they've been away to college. Also says there's a few drunks and not much culture
Mr. Webb
Very ordinary town, if you ask me. Little better behaved than most. Probably a lot duller. But our young people here seem to like it well enough. Ninety per cent of 'em graduating from high school settle down right here to live—even when they've been away to college.
Stage manager
Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright - graduated from high school here, head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin' to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. - All that education for nothing.
Stage manager
We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.
Mrs. Gibbs
Well, if I could get the Doctor to take the money and go away someplace on a real trip, I'd sell it like that.—Y'know, Myrtle, it's been the dream of my life to see Paris, France.
Joe Crowell
Well, of course, it's none of my business - but I think if a person starts out to be a teacher, she ought to stay one.
The Sentinel
What is the town newspaper?
Civil War battlefields
Where does Doc Gibbs like to visit?
Stage Manager
Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense
Howie
Who delivers the milk?
Professor Willard
Who informs about the State University, Pleistocene granite in the Appalachian, and the population of 2,642? (20-23)
Banker Cartwright
Who is the richest citizen?
The Cartwrights
Who owns the factory?
Emily
Who reckons people are just born bright? 29
Mrs. Webb
You don't want to be the first to fly in the face of custom
Emily to her mom
You never tell the truth about anything
