Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

WALTER (Gathering him up in his arms) You know what, Travis? In seven years you going to be seventeen years old. And things is going to be very different with us in seven years, Travis. … One day when you are seventeen I’ll come home — home from my office downtown somewhere — TRAVIS You don’t work in no office, Daddy. WALTER No — but after tonight. After what your daddy gonna do tonight, there’s going to be offices — a whole lot of offices.… TRAVIS What you gonna do tonight, Daddy? WALTER You wouldn’t understand yet, son, but your daddy’s gonna make a transaction … a business transaction that’s going to change our lives. … That’s how come one day when you ’bout seventeen years old I’ll come home and I’ll be pretty tired, you know what I mean, after a day of conferences and secretaries getting things wrong the way they do … ’cause an executive’s life is hell, man — (The more he talks the farther away he gets) And I’ll pull the car up on the driveway … just a plain black Chrysler, I think, with white walls — no — black tires. More elegant. Rich people don’t have to be flashy … though I’ll have to get something a little sportier for Ruth — maybe a Cadillac convertible to do her shopping in. … And I’ll come up the steps to the house and the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he’ll say, “Good evening, Mr. Younger.” And I’ll say, “Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?” And I’ll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we’ll kiss each other and she’ll take my arm and we’ll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you. … All the great schools in the world! And — and I’ll say, all right son — it’s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you’ve decided? … Just tell me where you want to go to school and you’ll go. Just tell me, what it is you want to be — and you’ll be it. … Whatever you want to be — Yessir! (He holds his arms open for TRAVIS) YOU just name it,

[Beneatha Younger:]... He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Chrisitan fellowship.

[excerpt from Act II, Scene 3]

TSHEMBE (Whirling on him, words flying) And just why should we be able to “talk” so easily? What is this marvelous nonsense with you Americans? For a handshake, a grin, a cigarette and half a glass of whiskey you want three hundred years to disappear — and in five minutes!

There is always something left to love.

CHARLIE Have you ever wondered — I am being devil’s advocate now — if just possibly he hadn’t “capitalized,” so to speak, on the backwardness he found here? MARTA (Tightly) Mr. Morris, I am not a very complicated person. I believe that people are what they do. You may think it simple-minded of me if you like — but if you don’t understand the depth of his sacrifice merely by being here —

I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know — and make them whole again. This was truly being God...

TSHEMBE Maybe that’s what’s botched up all the revolutions so far! (Erupting in spite of himself) Mr. Morris, your concern for nonviolence is a little late, don’t you think? Where were you when we protested without violence and against violence? We did not hear from you then! Where were you when they were chopping off the right hands of our young men by the hundreds — by the tribe?

Don't get up. Just sit a while and think. Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams -but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.

There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.

Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom.

TSHEMBE I do not recall that the Europeans have ever been exactly overwhelmed by morality — black or white! Or do you think they have suddenly become impressed because Kumalo is saying the black man wishes freedom? We have been saying that for generations. They only listen now because they are forced to. Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace? (He sits on the box, an island in a sea of cloth) It is the way of the world, hadn’t you noticed?

GEORGE : Oh, don’t be so proud of yourself, Bennie — just
because you look eccentric.
BENEATHA: How can something that’s natural be eccentric?
GEORGE: That’s what being eccentric means — being
natural. Get dressed.

Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

How we gets to the place where we scared to talk softness to each other.