“It's like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there's peace.”

“And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that's stronger than this-kitchen-candle...”

“They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!”

“He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery - love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded.”

“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.”

“Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light....”

“--- What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? --- I wish I knew ...Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can ...[More croquet sounds]Later tonight I'm going to tell you I love you an' maybe by that time you'll be drunk enough to believe me. Yes, they're playing croquet ...Big Daddy is dying of cancer ...What were you thinking of when I caught you looking at me like that? Were you thinking of Skipper?[Brick crosses to the bar, takes a quick drink, and rubs his head with a towel]Laws of silence don't work ...When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant ....Get dressed, Brick.”