Quotations Bank
Browse, filter, and save quotations from both plays. Each quote includes speaker, location, and brief analysis to help with memorization and understanding. Build your personal revision list for exam preparation.
I don't want realism. I want magic!
Blanche | Scene 9
Articulates philosophy opposing Stanley's brutal "honesty." Imagination and beauty are moral alternatives to harsh reality. "Magic" = transformation, illusion, art.
I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action
Blanche | Scene 3
Blanche's aesthetic/moral vision—soft light, refined manners, beauty. Opposes Stanley's harsh realism. Light bulb = metaphor for truth she can't face.
Diamonds are of most value / They say, that have passed through most jewellers' hands
Ferdinand | Act 1, Scene 2
Uses jewel metaphor to slut-shame the Duchess (sexually experienced widow). But ambiguous—does experience increase or decrease worth?
His nature is too honest for such business
Delio | Act 1, Scene 1
Antonio's virtue is independent of his class—honest despite being steward, not aristocrat. Webster inverts nobility = virtue equation.
Thousands and thousands of years have passed him by, and there he is—Stanley Kowalski—survivor of the Stone Age!
Blanche | Scene 4
Social Darwinist rhetoric—Stanley is evolutionary throwback, uncivilized brute. Class contempt masquerading as objective assessment. Irony: Stanley has economic power; she doesn't.
I pulled you down off them columns and how you loved it!
Stanley | Scene 8
Stanley frames Stella's class descent as liberation. "Columns" = plantation architecture. "Pulled you down" = seduction and class demotion. His ideology: working-class is more authentic.
The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation
Blanche | Scene 2
Euphemism ("four-letter word" for debt/loss) shows class's discomfort with economic talk. Belle Reve lost through accumulated deaths and expenses—inherits death, not wealth.
The poker game goes on
Stage direction | Scene 11
Life continues without Blanche. Circular structure—poker opened and closes play. She's been removed; game continues unchanged. Anti-cathartic deflation.
This game is seven-card stud
Stanley | Scene 11
Play ends with Stanley dealing cards, not elegizing Blanche. "Seven-card stud" = just next game. Life continues, she's forgotten. Anti-catharsis.
You disgust me
Blanche | Scene 6
The cruel words that led to Allan's suicide. Blanche's guilt over this drives her entire trajectory. Three words with devastating consequences.
Who would be afraid on't, / Knowing to meet such excellent company / In th'other world?
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Reframes death as liberation from earthly imprisonment. Death means joining loved ones, escaping her brothers' control.
We are only like dead walls, or vaulted graves, / That, ruined, yields no echo
Bosola | Act 5, Scene 5
After the Duchess's death, meaning collapses. "Dead walls" = no communication; "no echo" = no response. World becomes ruins.
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust
Ferdinand | Act 5, Scene 5
We destroy ourselves through our vices. "Our own dust" = destroyed by what we're made of. Moral wisdom but too late.
Of what is't fools make such vain keeping? / Sin their conception, their birth weeping
Bosola | Act 4, Scene 2
Life is brief suffering between sinful conception and death. Nihilistic view reducing human existence to meaningless cycle.
Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy
Bosola | Act 4, Scene 2
Reduces human to decomposing matter. "Worm-seed" = food for worms; "green mummy" = decaying corpse. Memento mori cruelty.
A few moments later—a shot!
Blanche | Scene 6
Death as auditory trauma—Blanche hears but doesn't see Allan's suicide. Varsouviana becomes death's soundtrack, replaying throughout play.
Flores para los muertos
Mexican Woman | Scene 9
"Flowers for the dead"—explicit death imagery entering play. Vendor appears when Blanche confronts past/guilt. Foreshadows her approaching social death.
Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers
Blanche | Scene 11
Final line—devastatingly ambiguous. "Whoever you are" = doesn't know Doctor (taking her to asylum) but trusts graciously. Dignity or delusion? Both?
I'll never marry... So fearful / Of being my husband's master
The Duchess | Act 1, Scene 1
First deception—she tells brothers she'll remain chaste while already planning to marry Antonio. Tactical lie for self-protection.
You shall not see me. I am dark
Ferdinand | Act 4, Scene 1
Ferdinand uses literal darkness to create false appearance (waxwork figures). "I am dark" = moral darkness and literal invisibility.
I have been your secretary, / And that's the cause I'll not tell the truth
Bosola | Act 3, Scene 2
Bosola's entire role has been performance—appearing to serve the Duchess while spying. His life is layers of deception.
Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way that you would like to hurt me, but you can't!
Blanche | Scene 2
Weaponizes partial truth—admits hurting Allan without explaining homosexuality context. Strategic confession to hide other truths. "But you can't!" = dramatically ironic—he will (rape).
Don't ever believe it. Life has got to go on
Eunice | Scene 11
Eunice counsels pragmatic denial over truth. Stella must disbelieve Blanche's rape accusation to maintain life with Stanley. Women's complicity in patriarchy.
I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley
Stella | Scene 11
Stella consciously chooses convenient lie over inconvenient truth. "Couldn't believe" = epistemological impossibility created by economic/emotional dependence.
I am Duchess of Malfi still
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Maintains identity even facing execution. "Still" emphasizes continuity—her selfhood persists despite torture and impending death.
Why should only I, / Of all the other princes of the world, / Be cased up like a holy relic?
The Duchess | Act 3, Scene 2
Questions double standard—male rulers have sexual freedom while she's expected to be sealed away. "Holy relic" = worshipped but lifeless.
This is flesh and blood, sir, / 'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster / Kneels at my husband's tomb
The Duchess | Act 1, Scene 1
Rejects chaste widow ideal (cold alabaster statue), asserts her living, desiring body. "Flesh and blood" emphasizes vitality vs. dead stone monument.
I do here put off all vain ceremony / And only do appear to you a young widow / That claims you for her husband
The Duchess | Act 1, Scene 1
Strips class markers to assert shared humanity with Antonio. "Claims" is active verb—she pursues him, taking traditionally male romantic role.
After the death of Allan—intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with
Blanche | Scene 9
Links sexuality to trauma and loss. "Strangers" emphasizes disconnection—sex without intimacy. Compulsive behavior as response to grief.
You make my mouth water
Blanche | Scene 5
Direct sensual expression of desire. "Mouth water" = appetite, physical response. Shows Blanche's active sexuality but also desperation (he's teenager).
I never was a very good liar
Stanley | Scene 2
Stanley constructs identity around truth-telling, justifying cruelty as honesty. But he lies when convenient. "Honesty" is selective ideology serving his interests.
I am come to make thy tomb
Bosola | Act 4, Scene 2
The chamber becomes death row. Bosola announces her living burial—she's already entombed before death.
Western Union? I want to—Take down this message—'In desperate, desperate circumstances! Help me! Caught in a trap.'
Blanche | Scene 10
Explicitly names situation—"caught in a trap." Phone call may be imaginary. "Desperate, desperate" = repetition shows escalating panic. Apartment has become cage.
I'm not ready to go. I'm not going to go through with it
Blanche | Scene 11
Resists transfer from one confinement (apartment) to another (institution). "Not ready" suggests time would help, but it won't. Passive voice emerging—things done to her.
He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery—love
Blanche | Scene 6
Backstory—Blanche's marriage to Allan was formative love. "Just a boy" emphasizes his youth and vulnerability before suicide.
I'll go hunt the badger by owl-light. 'Tis a deed of darkness
Ferdinand | Act 5, Scene 2
Ferdinand's lycanthropy—believes he's wolf hunting at night. "Deed of darkness" applies to both badger-hunting and his murder of the Duchess.
My sister! O, my sister! There's the cause on't
Ferdinand | Act 5, Scene 2
Lucid moment within madness—Ferdinand recognizes his guilt. "There's the cause" = he knows destroying her caused his own destruction.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Blanche | Scene 9
Dissociative break—reality rupturing. Repetition shows language fragmenting. "Fire" may symbolize guilt (Allan), desire, or hell. Moment passes—in/out of reality.
The 'Varsouviana' is filtered into weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle
Stage direction | Scene 10
Expressionistic externalization of Blanche's psychological state. Polka (trauma trigger) distorts; jungle cries represent mental chaos. We hear her subjective reality.
I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard
Blanche | Scene 11
Romanticized death fantasy rather than face institutionalization. "Clean white sack" = purified burial. Complete delusion but also metaphor—she is being "buried" socially.
We are engaged to mischief and must on
The Cardinal | Act 5, Scene 2
Cardinal consciously chooses evil ("mischief" understates murder). "Must on" = chosen compulsion, excuse not explanation.
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out
Bosola | Act 4, Scene 2
Hierarchizes sins—murder is loudest, most demanding of justice. Yet Bosola commits murder anyway despite moral awareness.
Integrity of life is fame's best friend, / Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end
Delio | Act 5, Scene 5
Conventional moral—virtue ensures good reputation after death. But feels inadequate after what we've witnessed (virtuous tortured; wicked unpunished for years).
You're not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother
Mitch | Scene 9
Moralizes Blanche's sexuality using contamination metaphor—she's "unclean," polluted. Sexual double standard—he seeks sex from her but demands virgin for marriage.
Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable. It is the one unforgivable thing
Blanche | Scene 10
Blanche's moral philosophy condemning intentional cruelty. Applies to her treatment of Allan and Stanley's treatment of her. "One unforgivable thing" = absolute moral claim.
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright / But looked to near, have neither heat nor light
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Worldly achievements (glories) are illusions—impressive from distance but hollow up close. Memento mori wisdom before death.
Pleasure of life, what is't? Only the good hours of an ague
Bosola | Act 5, Scene 4
Life's pleasures are brief relief between suffering (like fever's "good hours"). Pessimistic view of existence as mostly misery.
The wolf shall find her grave, and scrape it up
Ferdinand | Act 4, Scene 2
Even death won't end Ferdinand's persecution—wolf (himself) will desecrate her grave. Obsession continues beyond death.
I account this world a tedious theatre, / For I do play a part in't 'gainst my will
Bosola | Act 4, Scene 2
Life as forced performance. Bosola acts against his conscience, performing evil role unwillingly. Metatheatrical awareness.
I am full of daggers
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Psychological pain externalized as physical sensation. Yet she doesn't go mad—she experiences rational suffering, preserving dignity.
I am acquainted with sad misery / As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Compares her suffering to galley slave's repetitive labor. Acknowledges deep familiarity with sorrow but maintains composure.
I don't tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth
Blanche | Scene 9
Philosophy—imagination/beauty over harsh reality. "Ought to be truth" = moral truth vs. factual truth. Constructs narratives that should be true rather than accept what is.
I've been on to you from the start!
Stanley | Scene 7
Claims investigative vigilance—recognized Blanche was deceiving from first meeting. Positions himself as truth-seeker. But exposure motivated by hostility, not justice.
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young
Ferdinand | Act 4, Scene 2
Ferdinand's moment of recognition after execution. "Dazzle" suggests her brightness blinds him—recognition of worth and waste. Brief compassion before renewed cruelty.
Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength / Must pull down heaven upon me
The Duchess | Act 4, Scene 2
Transforms execution into ascension. "Pull down heaven" = paradox where being strangled becomes rising to God. Maintains agency by choreographing death.
I could kill her now, / In you, or in myself
Ferdinand | Act 3, Scene 2
Violence is self-directed as well as outward. Unstable pronouns show psychological fragmentation—he wants to destroy everyone including himself.
And let her have lights enough
Ferdinand | Act 3, Scene 2
Ironic command—Ferdinand keeps the Duchess in darkness as torture. Light = knowledge/agency; darkness = ignorance/powerlessness.
We've had this date with each other from the beginning!
Stanley | Scene 10
Frames rape as destiny, not crime. "Date" euphemizes sexual violence. "From the beginning" removes his agency/responsibility—rape culture logic.
STELLA!
Stanley | Scene 3
Primal cry after hitting Stella. Stage directions: "ape-like" bellowing. Single word conveys possession, need, and dominance. Stella returns—abuse cycle.
These fingernails have to be trimmed
Matron | Scene 11
Institutional violence masked as care. Flat bureaucratic language ("have to be") presents imprisonment as neutral necessity. Blanche's resistance will be cut away.