Our Town Quotes - Page 2

• Our family life, before figure skating turned it upside down, seemed normal. Our town of Riverside, Connecticut, was part of Greenwich, and we had the advantage of their wonderful community, with great beaches and beautiful parks.

  Dorothy Hamill

  Beautiful, Beach, Community

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• My prophecy is but half his journey yet,
  For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,
  Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
  Must kiss their own feet.

  William Shakespeare

  Wall, Kissing, Journey

  William Shakespeare (1790). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: Timon of Athens. Troilus and Cressida. Cymbeline. King Lear. Vol. 8”, p.267

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• Borrowing money on what's called 'easy terms,' is a one-way ticket to the Poor House. If you think it ain't a Sucker Game, why is your Banker the richest man in your Town? Why is your Bank the biggest and finest building in your Town? Instead of passing Bills to make borrowing easy, if Congress had passed a Bill that no Person could borrow a cent of Money from any other person, they would have gone down in History as committing the greatest bit of Legislation in the World.

  Will Rogers

  Business, Men, Thinking

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• Here's a new 'Blessing' for our time -- 'May Anderson Cooper never be sent to report on your town!

  Vera Nazarian

  Blessing, May, Towns

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• In Middle America men are awakening. Like awkward and untrained boys we begin to turn toward maturity and with our awakening we hunger for song. But in our towns and fields there are few memory haunted places. Here we stand in roaring city streets, on steaming coal heaps, in the shadow of factories from which come only the grinding roar of machines. We do not sing but mutter in the darkness. Our lips are cracked with dust and with the heat of furnaces. We but mutter and feel our way toward the promise of song.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Song, Memories, Maturity

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• Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.

  Thomas Malthus

  People, House, Crowds

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1989). “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, p.115, Cambridge University Press

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• People a thousand years from now - this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our living and in our dying.

  Thornton Wilder

  New York, Growing Up, Book

  Thornton Wilder (1968). “Our town: a play in three acts”

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• Smart writers never understand why their satires on our town are never successful. What they refuse to accept is that you can't satirize a satire.

  Hedda Hopper

  Smart, Successful, Hollywood

  Hedda Hopper (1952). “From under my hat”

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• Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.

  Albert Camus

  Attitude, Fighting, Giving

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire.

  Ben Brantley

  Team, Love Life, Simple

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• I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.

  Charles Lloyd

  Mother, Men, Blessing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• [Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.

  Thornton Wilder

  Race, Layers, Nonsense

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• If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something.

  Frank Deford

  Growing Up, Mean, Kids

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Is it okay to go the roof of the tallest building in your town and jerk off into the street?

  Eugene Mirman

  Towns, Jerk, Building

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• My great love is my home county of Cornwall, I love to sit and watch people enjoying themselves on the beaches and in the harbour towns of Cornwall.

  John Dyer

  Beach, Home, Love Is

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• For He hath prepared for them a City! Hallelujah? He's got a City for you & me where you're not going to have any passport nor visa problems, they're not going to have to make sure you've got enough money to stay there awhile, it's YOUR town, your Hometown in Heaven, praise God? And they're all going to be your people! We're just going to be one nationality of one nation, ...we just haven't found the place yet, we haven't gotten there yet!

  David Berg

  Cities, People, Heaven

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• When we choose a man to beautify our towns, we do not automatically call on the major artists of the world. ... We now lavishly praise Frank Lloyd Wright, but we never made any community use of him, though he longed for the chance.

  Paul Goodman

  Artist, Men, Community

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153), 1956.

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• In our town, the most popular way out was joining the service. So my three best friends joined the Navy to get out. I didn't.

  Jon Bon Jovi

  Navy, Three, Joining

  "Jersey Devil". Interview with Andrew Goldman, www.elle.com. February 9, 2006.

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• The most disgusting, appalling horror of our world that we live in, to me, is sex trafficking and the enslavement of men and women, boys and girls, in the sex industry. That is the most horrific, horrific thing that's happening and it's happening in all of our towns here in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, in Paris, all over the world, and I think that's really what has to be addressed.

  Taylor Hackford

  Girl, Sex, New York

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• My major contribution to the format was to suggest that I be able to step out of the plot and speak directly to the audience, and then be able to go right back into the action. That was an original idea of mine; I know it was because I originally stole it from Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.

  George Burns

  Play, Ideas, Plot

  George Burns (1988). “Gracie/Caeser Spec Ed”, Putnam Publishing Group

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• The beginnings of my studies also came to me from my father, as well as from the Rabbinical Judge of our town. But they were preceded by three tutors under whom I studied, one after the other, from the time I was three and a half till I turned eight and a half.

  Shmuel Yosef Agnon

  Father, Eight, Judging

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• In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night.

  Bruno Schulz

  Father, Night, Play

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• This is Halloween, everybody make a scene Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright It's our town, everybody scream In this town of Halloween.

  Danny Elfman

  Halloween, Towns, Scream

  Song: This Is Halloween, 1993

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• Occasionally I hear a band that blows me away. For instance, there's a musician in Oakland named Weasel Walter who has a band called the Flying Luttenbachers. Go see the Flying Luttenbachers when they're in your town. He's one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived, and he's struggling and living like a poverty-stricken hermit.

  Glenn Branca

  Struggle, Blow, Rocks

  Interview with Simon Dasher, pitchfork.com. April 30, 2006.

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• I didn't just start with ...local city officials because I knew that they would understand the problem. I started with them because I knew that our cities, towns and counties would be a key part of the solution to this issue. ...there is no one-size-fits all policy or program that can solve this problem. And Washington certainly does not have all the answers. Instead, many of the best, most innovative, most effective solutions start in our city halls and our towns and our county councils.

  Michelle Obama

  Children, Issues, Keys

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