“Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,every minute?Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.Emily: I'm ready to go back.”
Thornton Wilder“Everybody has a right to their own troubles.”
Thornton Wilder, Our Town“The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.”
Thornton Wilder“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.”
Thornton Wilder“Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.”
Thornton Wilder“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”
Thornton Wilder“I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.”
Thornton Wilder“The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much.”
Thornton Wilder“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.”
Thornton Wilder“Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value.”
Thornton Wilder“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”
Thornton Wilder