Our town quotes

He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: It
said: ‘Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New
Hampshire; United States of America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar
System; the Universe; the Mind of God …’

Good-by,
good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa. Good-by 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’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you. Do any human beings ever
realize life while they live it?----every, every minute?

When you’ve
been here longer you’ll see that our life here is to forget all that, and think
only of what’s ahead, and be ready for what’s ahead. When you’ve been here
longer, you’ll understand. (326)

Oh, Mama,
just 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. I married George Gibbs,
Mama. Wally’s dead, too. Mama, 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 look at one another.
(329)

This is
Mrs. Gibbs’ garden. Corn… peas… beans… hollyhocks… heliotrope… and a lot of
burdock.

(Crosses
the stage.)

And this is
Mrs. Webb’s garden. Just like Mrs. Gibbs’, only it’s got a lot of sunflowers,
too. (284)

It’s early
afternoon. All 2,642 have had their dinners and all the dishes have been
washed. (294)

The
earliest tombstones in the cemetery up there on the mountain say
1670-1680—they’re Grovers and Cartrights and Gibbses and Herseys—the same names
as around here now. (284)

[O]ur young
people seem to like it well enough. Ninety per cent of ‘em graduating from high
school settle down right here to live—even if they’ve been away to college.
(292)

Grover’s
Corners lies on the old Pleistone granite of the Appalachian range. I may say
it’s some of the oldest land in the world. We’re very proud of that….

Some highly
interesting fossils have been found…I may say: unique fossils…two miles out of
town, in Silas Peckham’s cow pasture. (291)

Want to
tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell. 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. (286)

We might
have a few words on the history of man here.

Yes…anthropological
data: Early Amerindian stock. Cotahatchee tribes…no evidence before the tenth
century of this era…hm…now entirely disappeared…possible traces in three
families. (291)

[I]t 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 they don’t even want to. (290)