Our Town Visions of America Quotes

Here’s the grocery store and here’s Mr. Morgan’s drugstore. Most everybody in town manages to look into these two stores once a day. Public School’s over yonder. High School’s still farther over. Quarter of nine mornings, noontimes, and three o’clock afternoons, the hull town can hear the yelling and screaming from those schoolyards. (I.25-6)

The earliest tombstones in the cemetery up there on the mountain say 1670-1680 – they’re Grovers and Cartwrights and Gibbses and Herseys – same names as are around here now. (III.41)

In our town we like to know the facts about everybody. (I.51)

DR. GIBBS: Pair of twins over to Mrs. Goruslawski’s. HOWIE NEWSOME: Twins, eh? This town’s getting’ bigger every year. (I.84-5)

Bessie’s all mixed up about the route ever since the Lockharts stopped takin’ their quart of milk every day. She wants to leave ‘em a quart just the same – keeps scolding me the hull trip. (I.91)

I don’t see how Rebecca comes to have so much money. She has more’n a dollar. (I.143)

You know how he is. I haven’t heard a serious word out of him since I’ve known him. No, he said, it might make him discontented with Grover’s Corners to go traipsin’ about Europe; better let well enough alone, he says. Every two years he makes a trip to the battlefields of the Civil War and that’s enough treat for anybody, he says. (I.198)

Yes…anthropological data: Early Amerindian stock. Cotahatchee tribes…no evidence before the tenth century of this era…hm…now entirely disappeared…possible traces in three families. Migration toward the end of the seventeenth century of English brachiocephalic blue-eyed stock… for the most part. Since then some Slav and Mediterranean – (I.206)

Oh, yes, indeed? – The population, at the moment, is 2,642. The Postal District brings in 507 more, making a total of 3,149. – Mortality and birth rates: constant. – By MacPherson’s gauge: 6.032. (I.222)

Very ordinary town, if you ask me. Little better behaved than most. Probably a lot duller. But our young people here seem to like it well enough. Ninety per cent of ‘em graduating from high school settle down right here to live – even when they’ve been away to college (I.227-8)

We’ve got one or two town drunks, but they’re always having remorses every time an evangelist comes to town. No, ma’am, I’d say likker ain’t a regular thing in the home here, except in the medicine chest. Right good for snake bite, y’know – always was. (I.231)

BELLIGERENT MAN: Is there no one in town aware of social injustice and industrial inequality?
MR. WEBB: Oh, yes, everybody is – somethin’ terrible. Seems like they spend most of their time talking about who’s rich and who’s poor. (I.235)

MR WEBB: Meanwhile, we do all we can to help those that can’t help themselves and those that can we leave alone. – Are there any other questions? (I.238)

No, ma’am, there isn’t much culture; but maybe this is the place to tell you that we’ve got a lot of pleasures of a kind here: we like the sun comin’ up over the mountain in the morning and we all notice a good deal about the birds. (I.240)

But, Julia! To have the organist of a church drink and drunk year after year. You know he was drunk tonight. (I.371)

I guess I know more about Simon Stimson’s affairs than anybody in this town. Some people ain’t made for small-town life. I don’t know how that’ll end; but there’s nothing we can do but just leave it alone. (I.390)

Blowing out the lamp.
They’re all getting citified, that’s the trouble with them. They haven’t got nothing fit to burgle and everybody knows it. (I.399-400)

I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: It said: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America…Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the mind of God – that’s what it said on the envelope. (I.441-3)

There are a hundred and twenty-five horses in Grover’s Corners this minute I’m talking to you. State Inspector was in here yesterday. And now they’re bringing in these auto-mo-biles, the best thing to do is to just stay home. Why, I can remember when a dog could go to sleep all day in the middle of Main Street and nothing come along to disturb him (II.225)

It certainly seems like being away three years you’d get out of touch with things. Maybe letters from Grover’s Corners wouldn’t be so interesting after a while. Grover’s Corners isn’t a very important place when you think of all New Hampshire; but I think it’s a very nice town.(II.241)