Our Town Act One Quotes & Sayings

Adam delayed only a second longer before traversing into the uncertain future, crossing the hidden divide; the fabric separating worlds. He moved from the shadows that paralleled the town, where unseen lives existed alongside of unsuspecting, oblivious people. With his seemingly mundane act of taking one step forward, he effectively walked from myth to reality. — J.M. Northup

I'm so glad you're okay."
"So, how do we celebrate my okayness? It's my day off. Let's go crazy. Glow-in-the-dark bowling?"
"No"
"I'll let you use the kiddie ball."
"Shut up. I do NOT need the kiddie ball."
"The way you bowl, I think you might."
He grabbed her in an exaggerated formal dance pose and whirled her around, backpack and all, which didn't make her any more graceful.
"Ballroom dancing?"
"Are you INSANE?"
"Hey, girls who tango are hot."
"You think I'm not hot because I don't tango?"
He dropped the act. Shane was a smart boy.
"I think you are too hot for ballroom or bowling. So you tell me. What do you want to do? And don't say study. — Rachel Caine

Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval. — James Lee Burke

We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can't be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that - then surely we have an obligation to try. He — Matthew Lysiak

I think what's beautiful when you're looking at artists like Macklemore and you're looking at artists like Ayron Jones, they're proud of Seattle and they're bringing it back. Seattle's a real music town. When you act ashamed of that, you should be pushed outta the game as far as I'm concerned. — Sir Mix-a-Lot

Our ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first of many short cuts. To crack a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which fathered the tool, and between the cracking of a marrow-bone and the riding down town in an automobile lies only a difference of degree. — Jack London

But if you sit around thinking what to do and end up not doing anything, why bother even thinking about it? You're better off going out on the town and having a good time. No, we have to think and act. That's what we're doing here, and that's what you have to do. — Elvia Alvarado

I got up to get us a drink of water and as I stood in the kitchen in the early morning light, running the water out of the tap, I looked out at the hills at the back of the town, at the trees on the hills, at the bushes in the garden, at the birds, at the brand new leaves on a branch, at a cat on a fence, at the bits of wood that made the fence, and I wondered if everything I saw, if maybe every landscape we casually glanced at, was the outcome of an ecstasy we didn't even know was happening, a love-act moving at a speed slow and steady enough for us to be deceived into thinking it was just everyday reality. — Ali Smith

Mainline American Protestantism, as is often the case, plodded wearily along as if nothing had changed. Like an aging dowager, living in a decaying mansion on the edge of town, bankrupt and penniless, house decaying around her but acting as if her family still controlled the city, our theologians and church leaders continued to think and act as if we were in charge, as if the old arrangements were still valid. — Stanley Hauerwas

At the decisive Boston town meeting of Nov. 29, 1773, while ships loaded with cargo from the East India Company idled in the harbor, Thomas Young was the first and only speaker to propose that the best way to protest the new Tea Act was to dump the tea into the water. — Matthew Stewart

She's your partner in all things. Remember how Ma and Pa used to act?'

Simon nodded as he sat beside him. 'Every decision, every action taken together.'

James raised his brows as he leaned against the wall. 'That's a tall order. Based on some of the married folks I've seen in town, not every marriage is such a joyful union. — Regina Scott

In cases of invasion or insurrection, if the town-officers neglect to furnish the necessary stores and ammunition for the militia, the township may be condemned to a fine of from $200 to $500. It may readily be imagined that in such a case it might happen that no one cared to prosecute; hence the law adds that all the citizens may indict offences of this kind, and that half of the fine shall belong to the plaintiff. See Act of March 6, 1810, vol. ii. p. 236. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I have friends who have no choice; they came from whatever town, they didn't have anybody in entertainment and they just knew they wanted to act and they did it. — Rashida Jones

Their religion is of the strictest sort, Stephen. Almost everything is forbidden to them except carpets." Stephen watched them as they went mournfully about the market, these men whose mouths were perpetually closed lest they spoke some forbidden word, whose eyes were perpetually averted from forbidden sights, whose hands refrained at every moment from some forbidden act. It seemed to him that they did little more than half-exist. They might as well have been dreams or ghosts. In the silent town and the silent countryside only the hot wind seemed to have any real substance. Stephen felt he would not be surprized if one day the wind blew the town and its inhabitants entirely away. — Susanna Clarke

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring. — Oscar Wilde

There was an act of defiance which goes on where these humans and aliens save these children, and hence the name/term of 'Defiance.' Formerly, it was St. Louis. This frontier town springs up from it. And everybody tries to integrate, they try to re-invent themselves as well. — Tony Curran

Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood's Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it's getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo. — Billy Wilder

Nietzsche [10w]
Zarathustra's high-wire act is over;
the circus has left town. — Beryl Dov

Yesterday I felt like shit, so I rode my bike around town and repeatedly grafittied "The revolution is not being televised" in paint pen. It was a "pointless" action, but it nonetheless healed me to do this. It was an act of love for that "hooligan" Arundhati Roy. It was an act of self-love. I don't expect it to change the world, but on the other hand, I know it will. — Inga Muscio

The food surpluses produced by peasants, coupled with new transportation technology, eventually enabled more and more people to cram together first into large villages, then into towns, and finally into cities, all of them joined together by new kingdoms and commercial networks. Yet in order to take advantage of these new opportunities, food surpluses and improved transportation were not enough. The mere fact that one can feed a thousand people in the same town or a million people in the same kingdom does not guarantee that they can agree how to divide the land and water, how to settle disputes and conflicts, and how to act in times of drought or war. And if no agreement can be reached, strife spreads, even if the storehouses are bulging. It was not food shortages that caused most of history's wars and revolutions. The — Yuval Noah Harari

Hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought - it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy - as even the ban's reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. "God only knows," he reflected, what the point of it was. — Anonymous

May 20, '95 - Mississippi calls. She says, "All my working life I have done things to help black people. I can drive into the black part of town where no white person would dare to go. I have nothing to fear. They say, 'Hi there, Mizz Mississippi.' I still call them niggers, but only because of the way they act. I'd have an affair with Johnnie Cochran in a minute." Once she said to me, "I don't see why I should have to feel guilty about the Holocaust. It's not my fault." I hadn't been talking or thinking about the Holocaust, and hadn't told anyone to feel guilty. Her remark came out of nowhere. We were in a diner, about to have a sandwich and suddenly the moment was explosive. Simply being a Jew arouses a peculiar expectation mixed with resentment, even in a highly intelligent woman. Amazing to me is that she doesn't do much but watch television, drink beer, and smoke Marlboros, and yet seethes with dark thoughts and tumultuous feeling. — Leonard Michaels

To the newcomer to the south, hearing that a coworker plans a weekend visit to 'mama and them's' (the correct plural possessive, don'tchaknow), might make him think that mama has been left alone either throught an act of scoundreldom involving the town's resident hoochie-mama (an altogether different kind of mama) or Daddy's untimely demise. — Celia Rivenbark

I love London - its where I'm born and bred - but New York just has such an energy when you're walking around, and if you act or you write and you act like I do, its just such a good town for you because people here like people who can do more than one thing. — Cush Jumbo

He told her that he had got into acting by way of his religion. His family belonged to some Christian sect Greta had never heard of. This sect was not numerous but very rich, or at least some of them were. They had built a church with a theater in it in a town on the prairie. That was where he started to act before he was ten years old. They did parables from the Bible but also present day, about the awful things that happened to people who didn't believe what they did. His family was very proud of him and of course so he was of himself. He wouldn't dream of telling them all that went on when the rich converts came to renew their vows and get revitalized in their holiness. Anyway he really liked getting all the approval and he liked the acting. Till one day he just got the idea that he could do the acting and not go through all that church stuff. — Alice Munro

I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it. — Victoria Beckham

The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away. — Elie Wiesel

When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it in heavy. Don't waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Go
straight for the jugular. Get right into felonies. — Hunter S. Thompson

Day surfing is the act of filling a day with no money, and no plans, seeing where you wash up: head into town, start at the library, then onto the pet shop, watch the road construction team working, a run in the park, listen to a busker. Day surfing is a much larger challenge at home, where it can often be white knuckle survival. — Lucy H. Pearce

Oh I know what they say about us in town, and I say, the hell with them! I tell you, I don't give a damn. I have got to be an old woman in the twinkling of an eye, and it is sort of a relief, I can tell you. I do what I want to now. Last week I traded all our eggs for ice cream at Holden's Grocery. Now that I have shrunk down little as a child, I figure I might as well act like one. I don't care. I like ice cream. Juney does too. We like to put bourbon in it, and make ourselves a milkshake. — Lee Smith

Town designers are responsible for the total life of the town far more surely than doctors are responsible for the individual lives of their patients--for much medical history is act of God, whereas almost all town planning history is, alas, act of man. And compared with this all the professional squabbles, all the statistics, all the traffic flow, all the architectural fads, do not matter a damn. — Ian Nairn

The important point of this report [Montague, Massachusetts; July 7, 1774] may be summed up in six resolutions: 1. We approve of the plan for a Continental Congress September 1, at Philadelphia. 2. We urge the disuse of India teas and British goods. 3. We will act for the suppression of pedlers and petty chapmen (supposably vendors of dutiable wares). 4. And work to promote American manufacturing. 5. We ought to relieve Boston. 6. We appoint the 14th day of July, a day of humiliation and prayer. — Edward Pearson Pressey

A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone else's business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don't know what is going on instead of its being their job to try to find out. — Jeanine Basinger

In the town of Ravella, where I have a house, when the Supreme Court said that an act of sodomy, as they describe it, could not be committed between a man and his wife, the entire square burst into laughter. — Gore Vidal