Plays by Eugene O'Neill Quotes

“Her aunt is a pompous and proud and fat old lady. She is a type even to the point of a double chin and lorgnettes. She is dressed pretentiously, as if afraid her face alone would never indicate her position in life. MILDRED is dressed all in white.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill

“MURRAY (decidedly). No. Never anything new and I knew everyone and every thing in town by heart years ago. (With sudden bitterness.) Oh, it was my own fault. Why didn't I get out of it? Well, I didn't. I was always going to to-morrow and to-morrow never came. I got in a rut and stayed put. People seem to get that way, somehow in that town. It's in the air. All the boys I grew up with nearly all, at least took root in the same way. It took pleurisy, followed by T.B., to blast me loose. EILEEN (wonderingly). But your family didn't they live there?”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill

“KEENEY. Woman, what foolish mockin' is this? (She laughs wildly, and he starts back from her in alarm.) Annie! What is it? (She doesn't answer him. KEENEY'S voice trembles.) Don't you know me, Annie? (He puts both hands on her shoulders and turns her around so that he can look into her eyes. She stares up at him with a stupid expression, a vague smile on her lips. He stumbles away from her, and she commences softly to play the organ again.)”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill

“ANNA [After a pause dreamily.] Funny! I do feel sort of nutty, to-night. I feel old. CHRIS [Mystified. ] Old? ANNA Sure like I'd been living a long, long time out here in the fog. [Frowning perplexedly.] I don't know how to tell you yust what I mean.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill

“MURRAY (with a cynical laugh). Interesting? On a small town rag? A month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony. (He laughs again.) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, unable to sleep through a meeting of the Common Council on account of the noisy oratory caused by John Smith's application for a permit to build a house; making a note that a tugboat towed two barges loaded with coal up the river, that Mrs. Perkins spent a week-end with relatives in Hickville, that John Jones Oh help! Why go on? Ten years of it! I'm a broken man. God, how I used to pray that our Congressman would commit suicide, or the Mayor murder his wife just to be able to write a real story!”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill

“Do you know what it means to work from seven at night till three in the morning as a reporter on a morning newspaper in a town of twenty thousand people for ten years? No. You don't. You can't. No one could who hadn't been through the mill. But what it did to me it made me happy yes, happy! to get out here T.B. and all, notwithstanding.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Plays by Eugene O'Neill