Eve- Eve's Diary (Mark Twain)

We are getting along very well now, Adam and I, and getting better and better acquainted. He does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as to increase his regard. 
During the last day or two I have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful. He can't think of a rational name to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect. Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. 
In this way I have saved him many embarrassments. I have no defect like this. The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. I seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is. 
When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" I explained--without seeming to be explaining--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me. That was very agreeable, and I thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept. How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it!

Mrs Webb - Our Town (Thorton Wilder)

I don't know why on earth I should be crying. I suppose there's nothing to cry about. It came over me at breakfast this morning; there was Emily eating her breakfast as she's done for seventeen years and now she's going off to eat it in somebody else's house. I suppose that's it. 
And Emily! She suddenly said: I can't eat another mouthful, and she put her head down on the table and she cried.
Oh, I've got to say it: you know, there's something downright cruel about sending our girls out into marriage this way. I hope some of her girl friends have told her a thing or two. It's cruel, I know, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I went into it blind as a bat myself. The whole world's wrong, that's what's the matter. There they come.

Don John - Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in 
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be 
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to 
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied 
but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with 
a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I 
have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do 
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and 
seek not to alter me.

Hamlet - Hamlet (Shakespeare)

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I, 
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing! No, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? 
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th' nose? gives me the lie i' th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?
'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be 
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! 
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murther'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must -like a whore- unpack my heart with words 
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene 
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ, I'll have these Players
Play something like the murther of my father 
Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. 

Nurse - Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she -God rest all Christian souls!-

Were of an age: Well, Susan is with God;

She was too good for me. -But, as I said,

On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean'd -I never shall forget it-,

Of all the days of the year, upon that day;

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.

My lord and you were then at Mantua-

Nay, I do bear a brain. -But, as I said,

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Shake, quoth the dovehouse! 'Twas no need, I trow,

To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years,

For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th' rood,

She could have run and waddled all about;

For even the day before, she broke her brow;

And then my husband -God be with his soul!

'A was a merry man- took up the child.

'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;

Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidam,

The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'

To see now how a jest shall come about!

I warrant, an I should live a thousand years

I never should forget it. 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he,

And, pretty fool, it stinted and said 'Ay.'

Nina - The Seagull (Chekhov)

Why do you say you kiss the ground I walk on? I ought to be killed. I'm so tired, Kostya! If I could only rest... rest. I am the seagull... No, that's not it. I'm an actress! It doesn't matter. So he's here, too! It doesn't matter! He didn't believe in the theatre, he laughed at my dreams, and little by little, I stopped believing myself. I lost heart. And always the strains of love, jealousy, constant fear for the child...I became trivial, and commonplace, I acted without thinking or feeling... I didn't know what to do with my hands, I couldn't move properly, or control my voice. You can't imagine what it's like to know you're acting badly! I am a seagull. Do you remember the seagull you shot? You left it at my feet, he came to me and said, "I had an idea. A subject for a short story. A girl, like yourself, lives all her life on the shores of a lake. She loves the lake, like a seagull... But a man comes along, by chance, and, because he has nothing better to do, destroys her..."

What was I talking about, before? I - Yes, about acting. I'm not like that anymore. I'm a real actress now! I act with delight, with rapture. I feel drunk when I'm onstage and think that I am wonderful. Ever since I got here, I've been walking around, walking around and thinking, thinking and even believing that my soul grows stronger every day. Now I see at last, Kostya, that in our kind of work, whether we're writers or actors, the important thing is not fame, or glory, not what I used to dream about, but learning how to endure. I must bear my cross, and have faith. If I have faith, it doesn't hurt so much, and when I think of my calling I'm not afraid of life.

When you see him, don't tell him anything... I do love him, yes, I love him more than ever... "By chance. A subject for a short story."

How sweet it used to be, Kostya! Remember? How bright, and warm, how joyous and pure our lives were! And the feelings we had for each other were like fine, delicate flowers! Do you remember?

Alma - Summer and Smoke (Tennessee Williams)

You needn't try to comfort me. I haven't come here on any but equal terms.  You said, let's talk truthfully.  Well, let's do! Unsparingly truthfully, even shamelessly, then!  It's no longer a secret that i love you.  It never was.  I loved you as long ago as the time I asked you to read the stone angel's name with your fingers.  Yes, I remember the long afternoons of our childhood, when I had to stay indoors to practice my music - and heard your playmates calling you, "Johnny! Johnny!" How it went through me, just to hear your name called! And how I - rushed to the window to watch you jump the porch-railing!  Stood at a distance, half-way down the block, only to keep in sight of your torn red sweater, racing about the vacant lot you played in.  Yes, it had begun that early, this affliction of love, and has never let go of me since, but kept on growing.  I've lived next door to you all the days of my life, a weak and divided person who stood in adoring awe of your singleness, of your strength.  And that is my story!  Now I wish you would tell me ---Why didn't it happen between us?  Why did I fail?  Why did you come almost close enough--and no closer?

Catherine - Suddenly Last Summer (Tennessee Williams)

At a Mardi Gras ball some--some boy that took me to it got too drunk to stand up! I wanted to go home. My coat was in the cloakroom, they couldn't find the check for it in his pockets. I said, "Oh hell, let it go!"--I started for a taxi. Somebody took my arm and said, "I'll drive you home." He took off his coat as we left the hotel and put it over my shoulders, and then I looked at him and--I don't think I'd ever even seem him before then, really!--He took me home in his car but took me another place first. We stopped near the Duelling Oaks at the end of Esplanade Street...Stopped!--I said, "What for?"--He didn't answer, just struck a match in the car to light a cigarette in the car and I looked at him in the car and I knew "what for"!--I think I got out of the car before he got out of the car, and we walked through the wet grass to the great misty oaks as if somebody was calling us for help there! He took me home and said an awful thing to me. "We'd better forget it," he said, "my wife's expecting a child and--."--I just entered the house and sat there thinking a little and then I suddenly called a taxi and went right back to the Roosevelt Hotel ballroom. The ball was still going on. I thought I'd gone back to pick up my borrowed coat but that wasn't what I'd gone back for. I'd gone back to make a scene on the floor of the ballroom, yes, I didn't stop at the cloakroom to pick up Aunt Violet's old mink stole, no, I rushed into the ballroom and spotted him on the floor and ran up to him and beat him as hard as I could in the face and chest with my fists 'till--Cousin Sebastian took me away.

Sally - You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (Clark Gesner)

A 'C'? 
A 'C'? 
I got a 'C' on my coat hanger sculpture? 
How could anyone get a 'C' in coat hanger sculpture? 
May I ask a question? Was I judged on the piece of sculpture itself? If so, is it not true that time alone can judge a work of art? Or was I judged on my talent? If so, is it fair that I be judged on a part of my life over which I have no control? If I was judged on my effort, then I was judged unfairly, for I tried as hard as I could! 
Was I judged on what I had learned about this project? If so, then were not you, my teacher, also being judged on your ability to transmit your knowledge to me? Are you willing to share my 'C'? 
Perhaps I was being judged on the quality of coat hanger itself out of which my creation was made...now is this not also unfair? Am I to be judged by the quality of coat hangers that are used by the dry cleaning establishment that returns our garments? Is that not the responsibility of my parents? Should they not share my 'C'?

Thank you, Miss Othmar.