Time is the longest distance between two places.

How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician.
He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of
illusion.

I didn't go to the moon, I went much furtherfor time is the longest distance between two places

All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am
not discouraged.

For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura -- and so goodbye. . . .

Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!

People go to the movies instead of moving.

People are not so dreadful when you know them. That's what you have to remember! And everybody
has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as
having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and
you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.

The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the
branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares,
taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of
transparent glass.

She lives in a world of her own a world of little glass ornaments

Yes, movies! Look at them All of those glamorous people having adventures hogging it all,
gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving!
Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while
everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's
when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people
in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves Goody, goody!
It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island to make a safari to be exotic, far-off! But I'm not
patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.

Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people!
All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine!
Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!

But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung
in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.

Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the
emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The
interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.

Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else.

Possess your soul in patience - you will see!

The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of.
Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're
one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here.
I'll be all right in a minute, I'm just bewildered - by life...

The future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into ever lasting regret if you
don't plan for it!

I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give
you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle
class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had
failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille
alphabet of a dissolving economy.

I know all about the tyranny of women.

Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and
charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.

Important Quotations Explained

1.
But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the
coffin without removing one nail. . . . There is a trick that would come in handy for meget me out of
this two-by-four situation! . . . You know it dont take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up
coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?
At the beginning of Scene Four, Tom, returning home from the movies, tells Laura about a magic
show in which the magician performs the coffin trick. Tom, who dreams of adventure and literary
greatness but is tied down to a mindless job and a demanding family, sees the coffin as a symbol of
his own life situation. He has been contemplating an escape from his private coffin since the
beginning of the play, and at the end, he finally goes through with it, walking out on his family after he
is fired from his job. But Toms escape is not nearly as impressive as the magicians. Indeed, it
consists of no fancier a trick than walking down the stairs of the fire escape. Nor is Toms escape as
seamless as the magicians. The magician gets out of the coffin without disturbing one nail, but Toms
departure is certain to have a major impact on the lives of Amanda and Laura. At the beginning of
Scene One, Tom admits that he is the opposite of a stage magician. The illusion of escape that the
magician promotes is, in the end, out of Toms reach.

2.
Well, in the South we had so many servants. Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone
completely! I wasnt prepared for what the future brought me. All of my gentlemen callers were sons of
planters and so of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large
piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposesand woman accepts the proposal! To vary
that old, old saying a bitI married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone
company! . . . A telephone man whofell in love with long-distance!
This quote is drawn from Scene Six, as Amanda subjects Jim, who has just arrived at the Wingfield
apartment for dinner, to the full force of her high-volume, girlish Southern charm. Within minutes of
meeting him, Amanda introduces Jim to the broad arc of her life history: her much-lamented transition
from pampered belle to deserted wife. As she does throughout the play, Amanda here equates her
own downfall with that of a system of gracious living associated with the Old South, which contrasts
starkly with the vulgarity and squalor of 1930s St. Louis. Naturally, Amandas intense nostalgia for a
bygone world may have something to do with the fact that neither she nor her children have managed
to succeed in the more modern world in which they now live.

Amandas memories of her multitudinous gentlemen callers are responsible for the visit of Jim,
whom Amanda sees as a comparable gentleman caller for Laura. Amandas decision to tell Jim
immediately about her gentlemen callers demonstrates the high hopes she has for his visit. Indeed,
the speech quoted might be taken as rather tactless movea sign that Amandas social graces have
a touch of hysterical thoughtlessness to them and that putting herself and her story at the center of
attention is more important to her than creating a favorable atmosphere for Laura and Jims meeting.

3.
LAURA: Little articles of [glass], theyre ornaments mostly! Most of them are little animals made out of
glass, the tiniest little animals in the world. Mother calls them a glass menagerie! Heres an example
of one, if youd like to see it! . . . Oh, be carefulif you breathe, it breaks! . . . You see how the light
shines through him?
JIM: It sure does shine!
LAURA: I shouldnt be partial, but he is my favorite one.
JIM: What kind of a thing is this one supposed to be?
LAURA: Havent you noticed the single horn on his forehead?
JIM: A unicorn, huh? arent they extinct in the modern world?
LAURA: I know!
JIM: Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome.
This exchange occurs in Scene Seven, after Jims warmth has enabled Laura to overcome her
shyness in his presence and introduce him to the collection of glass animals that is her most prized
possession. By this point in the play, we are well aware that the glass menagerie is a symbol for
Laura herself. Here, she warns him about the ease with which the glass figurines might be broken and
shows him the wonderful visions produced when they are held up to the right sort of light. In doing so,
she is essentially describing herself: exquisitely delicate but glowing under the right circumstances.

The glass unicorn, Lauras favorite figurine, symbolizes her even more specifically. The unicorn is
different from ordinary horses, just as Laura is different from other people. In fact, the unicorn is so
unusual a creature that Jim at first has trouble recognizing it. Unicorns are extinct in the modern
world, and similarly, Laura is ill-adapted for survival in the world in which she lives. The loneliness
that Jim identifies in the lone unicorn is the same loneliness to which Laura has resigned herself and
from which Jim has the potential to save her.

4.
JIM: Aw, aw, aw. Is it broken?
LAURA: Now it is just like all the other horses.
JIM: Its lost its
LAURA: Horn! It doesnt matter. . . . [smiling] Ill just imagine he had an operation. The horn was
removed to make him feel lessfreakish!
This exchange, also from Scene Seven, occurs not long after the previous one. After persuading
Laura to dance with him, Jim accidentally bumps the table on which the glass unicorn rests, breaking
the horn off of the figurine. Apparently, Lauras warning to him about the delicacy of the glass objects
reflects a very reasonable caution, but Jim fails to take the warning seriously enough. The accident
with the unicorn foreshadows his mishandling of Laura, as he soon breaks her heart by announcing
that he is engaged.

Just as Jims clumsy advances make Laura seem and feel like an ordinary girl, his clumsy dancing
turns her beloved unicorn into an ordinary horse. For the time being, Laura is optimistic about the
change, claiming that the unicorn should be happy to feel like less of a misfit, just as she herself is
temporarily happy because Jims interest in her makes her feel like less of an outcast. Laura and the
glass unicorn have similar fragility, however, and Laura, perhaps knowingly, predicts her own fate
when she implies that no matter how careful Jim might be, her hopes will end up shattered.

5.
I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my fathers
footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. . . . I would have stopped, but I was
pursued by something. . . . I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is
filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered
rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh,
Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!
The play closes with this speech by Tom, at the end of Scene Seven. Here, Tom speaks as the
narrator, from some point in time years after the action of the play. He describes how he leaves
Amanda and Laura after being fired from his job and embarks on the life of the wanderer, just as his
father did years ago. This escape is what Tom dreams of aloud in Scene Four, and it is Toms chosen
means of pursuing the adventure that he discusses with Amanda in Scene Four and Jim in Scene
Six. From Toms vague description of his fate after leaving home, it is unclear whether he has found
adventure or not. What is clear is that his escape is an imperfect, incomplete one. Memories of Laura
chase him wherever he goes, and those memories prove as confining as the Wingfield apartment.
Toms statement that I am more faithful than I intended to be! indicates that Tom is fully aware that
deserting his family was a faithless and morally reprehensible act, and the guilt associated with it may
have something to do with his inability to leave Laura fully behind. But the word faithful also has
strong associations with the language of lovers. A number of critics have suggested that Toms
character is influenced by an incestuous desire for Laura. The language used in this sentence and the
hold that Laura maintains over Toms memory help to support this theory.

The Glass Menagerie is often called a memory play. We learn about a small American family, that
would probably be considered rather normal or everyman family. The play is also popular because
there are autobiographical elements to the play. What can we learn about the author by closely
studying this famous American play?

QUOTES

"In memory everything seems to happen to music."

- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 1
Note: Tom Wingfield is speaking as narrator. There's an interesting quality that seems to associate
itself with out memories. It sometimes feels as though we are watching the events unfold before us (on
a stage) or watching a replayed movie--of someone else's life--that's been set to music. It doesn't
always seem real. And, even if we KNOW that it happened, there's that feeling that we're all pawns in
some huge, but very artificial menagerie.

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician.
He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of
illusion."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 1
Note: Here, in Scene 1, Tom Wingfield is speaking as narrator. He's one of the characters in the action
of this play, but he's also a twist on the concept of a magician.

"Mother, when you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of
Jesus' mother in the museum."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 2
Note: Laura Wingfield is talking to her mother (Amanda). The interplay could be described as a
rather-typical mother-daughter interchange.

"I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've
seen such pitiful cases in the South - barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of
sister's husband or brother's wife! - stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room - encouraged by
one in-law to visit another - little birdlike women without any nest - eating the crust of humility all
their life! Is that the future that we've mapped out for ourselves?"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 2
Note: Amanda Wingfield has tied herself into the fortunes (and futures--good and bad) of her
children, which explains some of her manipulative mentality toward them.

"Why you're not crippled, you just have a little defect - hardly noticeable, even! When people have
some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it - develop charm - and
vivacity - and - charm!
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 2
Note: Amanda Wingfield is manipulating her daughter, Laura.

"Girls that aren't cut out for business careers usually wind up married to some nice man."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 2Amanda Wingfield has learned that her daughter,
Laura, has dropped out of business school."

"I took that horrible novel back to the library - yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I
cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them - BUT I WON'T ALLOW
SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 3Amanda

"Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn "Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine!" I say to myself,
"How lucky dead people are!" But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I
dream of doing and being ever! And you say self - self's all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I
though of, Mother, I'd be where he is GONE!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 3Tom

"I know your ambitions do not lie in the warehouse, that like everybody in the whole wide world -
you've had to - make sacrifices, but - Tom - Tom - life's not easy, it calls for - Spartan endurance!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 4Amanda

"Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the
warehouse!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 4Tom as he argues with his mother Amanda about
his career

"This was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or adventure.
Adventure and change were imminent in this year. They were waiting around the corner for all these
kids."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 4Tom

"You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present,
the present becomes the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 5Amanda to Tom

"No girl can do worse than put herself at the mercy of a handsome appearance. The Glass Menagerie
Amanda, referring to the bad choice she made in marrying a handsome man, Scene 5. She lives in a
world of her own - a world of - little glass ornaments."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 5Tom, about Laura, Scene 5.

"He was shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to
arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 6Tom's impressions of Jim O'Connor when they
were both in high school

"All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 6
Note: This is a perfect representation of a modernist perspective on marriage and relationships.
Amanda is trying to make her daughter, Laura, as attractive as possible. It's jaded, and does not seem
to have the idea of "love" as part of the equation.

"People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the
adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches
them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 6Tom

"I know I seem dreamy, but inside - well, I'm boiling! Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little
thinking how short life is and what I am doing! Whatever that means, I know it doesn't mean shoes -
except as something to wear on a traveler's feet!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 6Tom

"All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and so of course I assumed that I would be married
to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes-and
woman accepts the proposal! To vary that old, old saying a bit-I married no planter! I married a man
who worked for the telephone company!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 6
Note: This is an example of Amanda, and her brand of Southern-belle sentimentality and charm--
high in volume and heavy on the flourish.

"People are not so dreadful when you get to know them."

- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Jim is giving his sister words-of-wisdom (to help
with shyness).

"You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just
look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Jim to Laura

"I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I'm
planning to get in on the ground floor. In fact I've already made the right connections and all that
remains is for the industry itself to get under way! Full steam - Knowledge - Zzzzzp! Money - Zzzzzp! -
Power! That's the cycle democracy is built on."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Jim

"Most of them are little animals made out of glass, the tiniest little animals in the world. Mother calls
them a glass menagerie! Here's an example of one, if you'd like to see it! ... Oh, be careful - if you
breathe, it breaks! ... Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shines through
him?"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7
Note: This is part of the interaction between Laura and Jim, who accidentally bumps the table (while
they are dancing). The glass unicorn breaks.

"Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are."

- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Laura is talking to Jim, but it's an ironic reference
to Laura (and to her whole family). They are all fragile, and will break apart.

"I wish that you were my sister. I'd teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people
are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not
such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all
over the earth. You just stay here. They're common as - weeds, but - you - well, you're - Blue Roses!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7
Note: Jim is talking to Laura

"Things have a way of turning out so badly."

- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7
Note: Amanda is being her ole pessimistic self, thinking the worst in every situation!

"You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7
Note: Amanda is criticizing Tom yet again. In reality, he has a better, more firm, grasp of reality than
she does. She exists in a glass menagerie of her own making, and wants to control every aspect of it.

"That's right, now that you've had us make such fools of ourselves. The effort, the preparations, all the
expense! The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura! all for what? To entertain some other
girl's fianc! Go to the movies, go! Don't think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who's
crippled and has no job! Don't let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure I just go, go, go--to the
movies!"
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Amanda

"I didn't go to the moon, I went much further - for time is the longest distance between two places."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7Tom
"I left Saint Louis. I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on,
in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. . . . I would have stopped,
but I was pursued by something. . . . I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The
window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a
shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her
eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I
reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the
nearest stranger - anything that can blow your candles out! - for nowadays the world is lit by
lightning! Blow out your candles Laura - and so goodbye."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, Scene 7This is the closing scene in the play. Tom is giving
an update on what has happened in his life, in the intervening years.