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Theodor Adorno

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer.

 * See also:
 * Dialectic of Enlightenment

Quotes

 * Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.
 * On high culture and popular culture, in a letter to Walter Benjamin (18 March 1936)

 * Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.
 * The Authoritarian Personality (1950), p. 976, co-written with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford

 * Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch
 * Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.
 * Full quote: Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frißt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben.
 * Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft [Cultural Criticism and Society] (1951); this quote is more famously known in the forms "No poetry after Auschwitz" or "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz." Sometimes a more specific proscription is made, such as "No lyric poetry after Auschwitz." The influence of the underlying idea can be seen in such derivative statements as "No history after Auschwitz."

 * When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.
 * As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.

 * In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content. As girls, they have trained themselves to faint upon hearing the voice of a 'crooner'. Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized.
 * Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith, ISBN 0094602204

 * Jazz is the false liquidation of art — instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.
 * Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith

 * The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.
 * "Perennial Fashion — Jazz" (1978), Prisms, p. 129, as translated by Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (1981)

 * If one is to take Lulu's twelve-tone chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony, then Berg's allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of fulfillment — twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance. Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time according to Expressionistic extremes.
 * Philosophy of Modern Music (1973) as translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster

 * Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.
 * “Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (1959)

 * Immer von Beckett ist eine technische Reduktion bis zum äußersten. ... Aber diese Reduktion ist ja wirklich das was die Welt aus uns macht ... das heißt die Welt aus uns gemacht diese Stümpfe von Menschen also diese Menschen die eigentlich ihr ich ihr verloren haben die sind wirklich die Produkte der Welt in der wir leben.
 * Always with Beckett there is a technical reduction to the extreme. ... But this reduction is really what the world makes out of us ...that is the world has made out of us these stumps of men ... these men who have actually lost their I, who are really the products of the world in which we live.
 * "Beckett and the Deformed Subject" (Lecture)

 * In organized groups such as the army or the Church there is either no mention of love whatsoever between the members, or it is expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way, through the mediation of some religious imagine in the love of whom the members unite and whose all-embracing love they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other. ... It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends.
 * “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 123

 * In America I was liberated from a certain naïve belief in culture and attained the capacity to see culture from the outside. To clarify the point: in spite of all social criticism and all consciousness of the primacy of economic factors, the fundamental importance of the mind—“Geist”—was quasi a dogma self-evident to me from the very beginning. The fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed.
 * as quoted in The Origin of Negative Dialectics (Free Press: 1977), p. 187

On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening (1938)

 * originally published in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, vol. 7 (1938), as translated in The Frankfurt School Reader (1982)

 * Music for entertainment ... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility.
 * p. 271

 * Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. ... The representatives of the opposition to the authoritarian schema become witnesses to the authority of commercial success. ... In the service of success they renounce that insubordinate character which was theirs.
 * p. 273

 * To be sure, exchange-value exerts its power in a special way in the realm of cultural goods. For in the world of commodities this realm appears to be exempted from the power of exchange, to be in an immediate relationship with the goods, and it is this appearance in turn which alone gives cultural goods their exchange-value. But they nevertheless simultaneously fall completely into the world of commodities, are produced for the market, and are aimed at the market.
 * p. 279

 * The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.
 * p. 283

 * It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.
 * p. 286

 * Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store.
 * p. 290

 * Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have once been served.
 * p. 290

 * Bourgeois sport [wants] to differentiate itself strictly from play. Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself.
 * p. 296

Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment] (1944)

 * Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.
 * John Cumming trans., p. 7

 * The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.
 * E. Jephcott, trans., p. 9

 * The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.'''
 * E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17

 * Furchtbares hat die Menschheit sich antun müssen, bis das Selbst, der identische, zweckgerichtete, männliche Charakter des Menschen geschaffen war, und etwas davon wird noch in jeder Kindheit wiederholt.
 * Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self, the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood.
 * E. Jephcott, trans., p. 26

Minima Moralia (1951)

 * Die traurige Wissenschaft, aus der ich meinem Freunde einiges darbiete, bezieht sich auf einen Bereich, der für undenkliche Zeiten als der eigentliche der Philosophie galt, seit deren Verwandlung in Methode aber der intellektuellen Nichtachtung, der sententiösen Willkür und am Ende der Vergessenheit verfiel: die Lehre vom richtigen Leben. Was einmal den Philosophen Leben hieß, ist zur Sphäre des Privaten und dann bloß noch des Konsums geworden, die als Anhang des materiellen Produktionsprozesses, ohne Autonomie und ohne eigene Substanz, mit geschleift wird.
 * The melancholy science from which I make this offering to my friend relates to a region that from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy, but which, since the latter's conversion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life. What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), Dedication

 * Für Marcel Proust.—Der Sohn wohlhabender Eltern, der, gleichgültig ob aus Talent oder Schwäche, einen sogenannten intellektuellen Beruf, als Künstler oder Gelehrter, ergreift, hat es unter denen, die den degoutanten Namen des Kollegen tragen, besonders schwer. Nicht bloß, daß ihm die Unabhängigkeit geneidet wird, daß man dem Ernst seiner Absicht mißtraut und in ihm einen heimlichen Abgesandten der etablierten Mächte vermutet. Solches Mißtrauen zeugt zwar von Ressentiment, würde aber meist seine Bestätigung finden. Jedoch die eigentlichen Widerstände liegen anderswo. Die Beschäftigung mit geistigen Dingen ist mittlerweile selber »praktisch«, zu einem Geschäft mit strenger Arbeitsteilung, mit Branchen und numerus clausus geworden. Der materiell Unabhängige, der sie aus Widerwillen gegen die Schmach des Geldverdienens wählt, wird nicht geneigt sein, das anzuerkennen. Dafür wird er bestraft. Er ist kein »professional«, rangiert in der Hierarchie der Konkurrenten als Dilettant, gleichgültig wieviel er sachlich versteht, und muß, wenn er Karriere machen will, den stursten Fachmann an entschlossener Borniertheit womöglich noch übertrumpfen. Die Suspension der Arbeitsteilung, zu der es ihn treibt, und die in einigen Grenzen seine ökonomische Lage zu verwirklichen ihn befähigt, gilt als besonders anrüchig: sie verrät die Abneigung, den von der Gesellschaft anbefohlenen Betrieb zu sanktionieren, und die auftrumpfende Kompetenz läßt solche Idiosynkrasien nicht zu. Die Departementalisierung des Geistes ist ein Mittel, diesen dort abzuschaffen, wo er nicht ex officio, im Auftrag betrieben wird. Es tut seine Dienste um so zuverlässiger, als stets derjenige, der die Arbeitsteilung kündigt—wäre es auch nur, indem seine Arbeit ihm Lust bereitet —, nach deren eigenem Maß Blößen sich gibt, die von den Momenten seiner Überlegenheit untrennbar sind. So ist für die Ordnung gesorgt: die einen müssen mitmachen, weil sie sonst nicht leben können, und die sonst leben könnten, werden draußen gehalten, weil sie nicht mitmachen wollen. Es ist, als rächte sich die Klasse, von der die unabhängigen Intellektuellen desertiert sind, indem zwangshaft ihre Forderungen dort sich durchsetzen, wo der Deserteur Zuflucht sucht.
 * The son of well-to-do parents who ... engages in a so-called intellectual profession, as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the distasteful title of colleagues. It is not merely that his independence is envied, the seriousness of his intentions mistrusted, that he is suspected of being a secret envoy of the established powers. ... The real resistance lies elsewhere. The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become “practical,” a business with strict division of labor, departments and restricted entry. The man of independent means who chooses it out of repugnance for the ignominy of earning money will not be disposed to acknowledge the fact. For this he is punished. He ... is ranked in the competitive hierarchy as a dilettante no matter how well he knows his subject, and must, if he wants to make a career, show himself even more resolutely blinkered than the most inveterate specialist. The urge to suspend the division of labor which, within certain limits, his economic situation enables him to satisfy, is thought particularly disreputable: it betrays a disinclination to sanction the operations imposed by society, and domineering competence permits no such idiosyncrasies. The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the more reliably since anyone who repudiates this division of labor—if only by taking pleasure in his work—makes himself vulnerable by its standards, in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 1

 * Der Bürger aber ist tolerant. Seine Liebe zu den Leuten, wie sie sind, entspringt dem Haß gegen den richtigen Menschen.
 * The bourgeois ... is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 4

 * Die Glorifizierung der prächtigen underdogs läuft auf die des prächtigen Systems heraus, das sie dazu macht.
 * In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 7

 * Das Zentrum der geistigen Selbstdisziplin als solcher ist in Zersetzung begriffen. Die Tabus, die den geistigen Rang eines Menschen ausmachen, oftmals sedimentierte Erfahrungen und unartikulierte Erkenntnisse, richten sich stets gegen eigene Regungen, die er verdammen lernte, die aber so stark sind, daß nur eine fraglose und unbefragte Instanz ihnen Einhalt gebieten kann. Was fürs Triebleben gilt, gilt fürs geistige nicht minder: der Maler und Komponist, der diese und jene Farbenzusammenstellung oder Akkordverbindung als kitschig sich untersagt, der Schriftsteller, dem sprachliche Konfigurationen als banal oder pedantisch auf die Nerven gehen, reagiert so heftig gegen sie, weil in ihm selber Schichten sind, die es dorthin lockt. Die Absage ans herrschende Unwesen der Kultur setzt voraus, daß man an diesem selber genug teilhat, um es gleichsam in den eigenen Fingern zucken zu fühlen, daß man aber zugleich aus dieser Teilhabe Kräfte zog, sie zu kündigen. Diese Kräfte, die als solche des individuellen Widerstands in Erscheinung treten, sind darum doch keineswegs selber bloß individueller Art. Das intellektuelle Gewissen, in dem sie sich zusammenfassen, hat ein gesellschaftliches Moment so gut wie das moralische Überich. Es bildet sich an einer Vorstellung von der richtigen Gesellschaft und deren Bürgern. Läßt einmal diese Vorstellung nach—und wer könnte noch blind vertrauend ihr sich überlassen—, so verliert der intellektuelle Drang nach unten seine Hemmung, und aller Unrat, den die barbarische Kultur im Individuum zurückgelassen hat, Halbbildung, sich Gehenlassen, plumpe Vertraulichkeit, Ungeschliffenheit, kommt zum Vorschein. Meist rationalisiert es sich auch noch als Humanität, als den Willen, anderen Menschen sich verständlich zu machen, als welterfahrene Verantwortlichkeit. Aber das Opfer der intellektuellen Selbstdisziplin fällt dem, der es auf sich nimmt, viel zu leicht, als daß man ihm glauben dürfte, daß es eines ist.
 * The center of intellectual self-discipline as such is in the process of decomposition. The taboos that constitute a man's intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check. What is true of the instinctual life is no less of the intellectual: the painter or composer forbidding himself as trite this or that combination of colors or chords, the writer wincing at banal or pedantic verbal configurations, reacts so violently because layers of himself are drawn to them. Repudiation of the present cultural morass presupposes sufficient involvement in it to feel it itching in one's finger-tips, so to speak, but at the same time the strength, drawn from this involvement, to dismiss it. This strength, though manifesting itself as individual resistance, is by no means of a merely individual nature. In the intellectual conscience possessed of it, the social movement is no less present than the moral super-ego. Such conscience grows out of a conception of the good society and its citizens. If this conception dims—and who could still trust blindly in it—the downward urge of the intellect loses its inhibitions and all the detritus dumped in the individual by barbarous culture—half-learning, slackness, heavy familiarity, coarseness—comes to light. Usually it is rationalized as humanity, desire to be understood by others, worldly-wise responsibility. But the sacrifice of intellectual self-discipline comes much too easily to him who makes it for us to believe his assurance that it is one.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 8

 * Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature—they would not otherwise uphold privilege.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 10

 * Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.
 * Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 18

 * Zartheit zwischen Menschen ist nichts anderes als das Bewußtsein von der Möglichkeit zweckfreier Beziehungen.
 * Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20

 * Nun gilt für die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Personen die Gerade, so als ob sie Punkte wären.
 * The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20

 * Die fast unlösbare Aufgabe besteht darin, weder von der Macht der anderen, noch von der eigenen Ohnmacht sich dumm machen zu lassen.
 * The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 34

 * Der vage Ausdruck erlaubt dem, der ihn vernimmt, das ungefähr sich vorzustellen, was ihm genehm ist und was er ohnehin meint. Der strenge erzwingt Eindeutigkeit der Auffassung, die Anstrengung des Begriffs, deren die Menschen bewußt entwöhnt werden, und mutet ihnen vor allem Inhalt Suspension der gängigen Urteile, damit ein sich Absondern zu, dem sie heftig widerstreben. Nur, was sie nicht erst zu verstehen brauchen, gilt ihnen für verständlich; nur das in Wahrheit Entfremdete, das vom Kommerz geprägte Wort berührt sie als vertraut.
 * Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case. Rigorous formulation demands unequivocal comprehension, conceptual effort, to which people are deliberately disencouraged, and imposes on them in advance of any content a suspension of all received opinions, and thus an isolation, that they violently resist. Only what they do not need first to understand, they consider understandable; only the word coined by commerce, and really alienated, touches them as familiar.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 64

 * All the world's not a stage.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 94

 * Wer will es schließlich selbst den allerfreiesten Geistern verübeln, wenn sie nicht mehr für eine imaginäre Nachwelt schreiben, deren Zutraulichkeit die der Zeitgenossen womöglich noch überbietet, sondern einzig für den toten Gott?
 * Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of the free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, ... but only for the dead God?
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 133

 * Kunst ist Magie, befreit von der Lüge, Wahrheit zu sein.
 * Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
 * E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 143

Culture Industry Reconsidered (1963)

 * "Résumé über Kulturindustrie" - "Culture Industry Reconsidered" as translated by Anson G. Rabinbach in New German Critique 6, (Fall 1975), p. 12-19

 * The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic.

 * The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.
 * Section 10

 * Anpassung tritt kraft der Ideologie der Kulturindustrie anstelle von Bewußtsein: nie wird die Ordnung, die aus ihr herausspringt, dem konfrontiert, was sie zu sein beansprucht, oder den realen Interessen der Menschen. Ordnung aber ist nicht an sich ein Gutes. Sie wäre es einzig als richtige. Daß die Kulturindustrie darum nicht sich kümmert; daß sie Ordnung in abstracto anpreist, bezeugt nur die Ohnmacht und Unwahrheit der Botschaften, die sie übermittelt. Während sie beansprucht, Führer der Ratlosen zu sein, und ihnen Konflikte vorgaukelt, die sie mit ihren eigenen verwechseln sollen, löst sie die Konflikte nur zum Schein, so wie sie in ihrem eigenen Leben kaum gelöst werden könnten.
 * The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness. The order that springs from it is never confronted with what it claims to be or with the real interests of human beings. Order, however, is not good in itself. It would be so only as a good order. The fact that the culture industry is oblivious to this and extols order in abstracto, bears witness to the impotence and untruth of the messages it conveys. While it claims to lead the perplexed, it deludes them with false conflicts which they are to exchange for their own. It solves conflicts for them only in appearance, in a way that they can hardly be solved in their real lives.
 * Section 14

 * In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then, in illusory harmony, they are reconciled with the general interest whose demands they had initially experienced as irreconcilable with their own.
 * Section 14

Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963)

 * Published in Critical Models (1998)

 * In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.
 * p. 6

 * By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.
 * p. 6

 * Philosophy ... should not imagine that specialized work in epistemological theory, or whatever else prides itself on being research, is actually philosophy. Yet a philosophy forswearing all of that must in the end be irreconcilably at odds with the dominant consciousness. Nothing else raises it above the suspicion of apologetics. Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.
 * p. 6

 * Traditional philosophy's claim to totality, culminating in the thesis that the real is rational, is indistinguishable from apologetics.
 * p. 7

 * Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.
 * p. 7

 * The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.
 * p. 7

 * In both positivism and Heidegger—at least in his later work—speculation is the target of attack. In both cases the thought that autonomously raises itself above the facts through interpreting them and that cannot be reclaimed by them without leaving a surplus is condemned for being empty and vain concept-mongering.
 * p. 9

 * Being, in whose name Heidegger’s philosophy increasingly concentrates itself, is for him—as a pure self-presentation to passive consciousness—just as immediate, just as independent of the mediations of the subject as the facts and the sensory data are for the positivists. In both philosophical movements thinking becomes a necessary evil and is broadly discredited. Thinking loses its element of independence. The autonomy of reason vanishes: the part of reason that exceeds the subordinate reflection upon and adjustment to pre-given data. With it, however, goes the conception of freedom and, potentially, the self-determination of human society.
 * p. 9

 * If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. ... It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.
 * p. 10

 * Falsch am Positivismus ist, daß er die nun einmal gegebene Arbeitsteilung, die der Wissenschaften von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis und die innerhalb der Wissenschaft, als Maß des Wahren supponiert und keine Theorie erlaubt, welche die Arbeitsteilung selbst als abgeleitet, vermittelt durchsichtig machen, ihrer falschen Autorität entkleiden könnte.
 * The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority.
 * p. 10

 * In a world that has been thoroughly permeated by the structures of the social order, a world that so overpowers every individual that scarcely any option remains but to accept it on its own terms, such naiveté reproduces itself incessantly and disastrously. What people have forced upon them by a boundless apparatus, which they themselves constitute and which they are locked into, virtually eliminates all natural elements and becomes “nature” to them.
 * p. 12

 * Die Berufung auf Wissenschaft, auf ihre Spielregeln, auf die Alleingültigkeit der Methoden, zu denen sie sich entwickelte, ist zur Kontrollinstanz geworden, die den freien, ungegängelten, nicht schon dressierten Gedanken ahndet und vom Geist nichts duldet als das methodologisch Approbierte. Wissenscahaft,das Medium von Autonomie, ist in einen Apparat der Heteronomie ausgeartet.
 * The invocation of science, of its ground rules, of the exclusive validity of the methods that science has now completely become, now constitutes a surveillance authority punishing free, uncoddled, undisciplined thought and tolerating nothing of mental activity other than what has been methodologically sanctioned. Science and scholarship, the medium of autonomy, has degenerated into an instrument of heteronomy.
 * p. 12

 * Sie möchte formal und material ebenjener Gestalt geistiger Freiheit helfen, die in den herrschenden philosophischen Richtungen keine Stel1e hat.
 * ... to promote precisely that manner of intellectual freedom that has no place in the regnant philosophical movements
 * p. 13

 * Denken, das offen, konsequent und auf dem Stand vorwärtsgetriebener Erkenntnis den Objekten sich zuwendet, ist diesen gegenüber frei auch derart, daß es sich nicht vom organisierten Wissen Regeln vorschreiben läßt. Es kehrt den Inbegriff der in ihm akkumulierten Erfahrung den Gegenständen zu, zerreißt das gesel1schaftliche Gespinst, das sie verbirgt, und gewahrt sie neu.
 * A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It ... rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.
 * p. 13

Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964)

 * The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.
 * pp. 5-6

 * The important thing is not the planning of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but rather the examination of their linguistic function.
 * p. 6

 * Elements of empirical language are manipulated in their rigidity, as if they were elements of a true and revealed language. The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.
 * p. 7

 * Was Jargon sei und was nicht, darüber entscheidet, ob das Wort in dem Tonfall geschrieben ist, in dem es sich als transzendent gegenüber der eigenen Bedeutung setzt; ob die einzelnen Worte aufgeladen werden auf Kosten von Satz, Urteil, Gedachtem. Demnach wäre der Charakter des Jargons überaus formal: er sorgt dafür, daß, was er möchte, in weitem Maß ohne Rücksicht auf den Inhalt der Worte gespürt und akzeptiert wird durch ihren Vortrag.
 * What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content. In that sense the character of the jargon would be quite formal: it sees to it that what it wants is on the whole felt and accepted through its mere delivery, without regard to the content of the words used.
 * p. 8

 * The jargon makes it seem that ... the pure attention of the expression to the subject matter would be a fall into sin.
 * p. 9

 * Der des Jargons Kundige braucht nicht zu sagen, was er denkt, nicht einmal recht es zu denken: das nimmt der Jargon ihm ab und entwertet den Gedanken.
 * Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.
 * p. 9

 * Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.
 * p. 9

Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66)

 * Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, as translated by Rodney Livingstone (Polity Press: 2008)

 * Negative Dialektik ... handelt sich um den Entwurf einer Philosophie, die nicht den Begriff der Identität von Sein und Denken voraussetzt und auch nicht in ihm terminiert, sondern die gerade das Gegenteil, also das Auseinanderweisen von Begriff und Sache, von Subjekt und Objekt, und ihre Unversöhntheit, artikulieren will.
 * Negative dialectics ... does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity. Instead it will attempt to articulate the very opposite, namely the divergence of concept and thing, subject and object.
 * p. 6

 * Hegel ... destroyed the illusion of the subject's being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity. ... However, ... we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with the greatest efforts, with infinite pains?
 * p. 16

 * Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. ... It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there—as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case.
 * p. 18

 * When I speak of 'negative dialectics' not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishization of the positive.
 * p. 18

 * What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.
 * p. 18

 * I remember well a junior seminar I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third Reich. A participant spoke out against the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very meaningful to her and she didn't know whether it had a meaning. The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular, but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world.
 * pp. 19-20

 * The thesis of the identity of concept and thing is in general the vital nerve of idealist thought, and indeed traditional thought in general. ... Negative dialectics as critique means above all criticism of precisely this claim to identity.
 * p. 20

 * The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.
 * p. 23

 * We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.
 * p. 45

 * The conflicts that tear society apart resemble the distinction between the concept and the particular facts subordinated to it. ... Whatever refuses to abide by the unity imposed by the principle of dominion manifests itself not as something indifferent to that principle, but as an infringement of logic: as a contradiction.
 * p. 169

Quotes about Adorno

 * Anyone surprised by the characterization of Adorno as a Marxist has not read much of his admittedly difficult writing. ... Most available secondary discussions tend to leave the Marxism out, as though it were some curious set of period mannerisms which a postcontemporary discussion no longer needs to take into consideration.
 * Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (1990), p. 6

 * Adorno, Marcuse, and other members of the Frankfurt School were explicit about the link between “antifascism,” which was the banner they sported, and sympathy for Communist governments. Like Sartre and his collaborators at Les Temps Modernes, the Critical Theorists considered anti-Communist attitudes proof positive of fascist residues in those who expressed them. After the publication of The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, Adorno was shocked by a suggestion from one of his coworkers, Seymour Martin Lipset, that the psychic grid they had applied to right-wingers might work for left-wing extremists equally well.
 * Paul Gottfried (2018), The strange death of Marxism: the European Left in the new Millennium, University of Missouri Press, p.71

title: Theodor Adorno


text:
Suppression

Suppression refers to putting an end to, especially with force, or doing away with; prohibiting, subduing. It may also refer to restraining or repressing, such as laughter or an expression.

Quotes

 * When intellectual formulations are treated simply by relegating them to the past and permitting the simple passage of time to substitute for development, the suspicion is justified that such formulations have not really been mastered, but rather they are being suppressed.
 * Theodor Adorno, quoted in: Michael Bull (2000) Sounding Out the City, p. 1

 * I saw in the Soviet Union many opponents of the regime. I visited a dozen prisons — the political sections among them. I saw considerable of the work of the OGPU. I heard a good many stories of severity, even of brutality, and many of them from the victims. While I sympathized with personal distress I just could not bring myself to get excited over the suppression of opposition when I stacked it up against what I saw of fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion.
 * Roger Nash Baldwin. "Freedom In the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R." Soviet Russia Today, September 1934.

 * Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity.
 * Charles A. Beard Presidential address to the American Political Science Association at St. Louis, Mo., December 29, 1926: "Time, Technology, and the Creative Spirit in Political Science", The American Political Science Review 21 (1), (February 1927) p. 11.

 * This is what makes people in this country wary of Islam in many of its forms, in one place or another: the centrality and inescapability of religion, the loss of freedom of thought and expression, the harshness of sharia (Islamic law), the patriarchal suppression of women, including their inequality under sharia, the medieval punishments for apostasy, adultery and even theft, the insistence on a cruel form of animal slaughter, the violence and anti-Semitism of many sacred texts, the disinclination to integrate with the host culture and finally one can argue the incompatibility of theocratic Islam with democracy. To find all those things alarming as possibilities is not to be Islamophobic or racist. It is to be reasonable from a western point of view.
 * Minette Marrin "It's not a phobia – it's rational to fear Islam" at richarddawkins.net, 23 January 2011

 * If we designate as intelligence, quantitatively, the total of mental functioning, it is evident that the suppression of verbal thought involves a defect, relatively very important among cultivated individuals leading a complex social life: the uneducated person from this point of view is a defective.
 * Henri Piéron Le cerveau et la pensée [Thought and the Brain] (1923)

 * The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars.
 * Wilhelm Reich The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) Ch. 1 : Ideology As Material Power, Section 4 : The Social Function of Sexual Suppression

 * God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.
 * William Wilberforce in: C. MacFarlane & T. Thomson. (1792), The comprehensive history of England, from the earliest period to the suppression of the Sepoy revolt, page 752.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Suppression


text:
Juan Gris

José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez (March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927)), better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter who lived and worked in France almost all of his life. His works are closely connected to the emergence of Cubism.

Quotes of Juan Gris

 * sorted chronologically, by date of the quote of Juan Gris

 * Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle — a particular bottle — out of a cylinder.
 * Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of L'Esprit Nouveau # 5 (February 1921), pp. 533-534; trans. Douglas Cooper in Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work (1947)

 * I try to make concrete that which is abstract.
 * Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of L'Esprit Nouveau # 5 (February 1921)

 * No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene.
 * Quote from 'On the Possibilities of Painting,' lecture, Sociétés des études philosophiques et scientifiques pour l'examen des idées nouvelles, Sorbonne, Paris (1924-05-15), printed in the Transatlantic Review, # 16 (June 1924), pp. 482-488; trans. Douglas Cooper in Horizon, # 80 (August 1946), pp. 113-122

 * Painting for me is like a fabric, all of a piece and uniform, with one set of threads as the representational, esthetic element, and the cross-threads as the technical, architectural, or abstract element. These threads are interdependent and complementary, and if one set is lacking the fabric does not exist. A picture with no representational purpose is to my mind always an incomplete technical exercise, for the only purpose of any picture is to achieve representation.
 * Quote from 'On the Possibilities of Painting,' lecture, Sorbonne (1924-05-15)

 * Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind.
 * Response to a questionnaire, from "Chez les cubistes," Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, ed. Félix Fénéon, Guillaume Janneau et al (1925-01-01); trans. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work (1947)

 * I always pet a dog with my left hand, because if he bit me, I'd still have my right hand to paint with.
 * Attributed by (1876–1944) to Juan Gris, quoted in: Jeanine Warnod (1972). Washboat days. p. 204

Quotes about Juan Gris

 * sorted chronologically, by date of the quotes about Juan Gris

 * Gris confounds expectations of the nature of materials. He usually depicts the glass objects as transparent and the others as opaque but does not hesitate to betray this faithfulness to the properties of objects when formal demands intercede.
 * Quote of Lucy Flint-Gohlke. Handbook, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. 1986, p. 26

title: Juan Gris


text:
List of theatrical plays and musicals

0-9

 * The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
 * 42nd Street (musical)
 * 1776
 * 21 Chump Street

A

 * A Chorus Line
 * A Christmas Carol
 * A Class Act
 * A Thurber Carnival
 * Addams Family
 * Aida
 * Ain't Misbehavin'
 * Ain't Too Proud
 * Aladdin
 * All Shook Up
 * Altar Boys
 * Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
 * Amelie
 * American Idiot
 * An American in Paris
 * Anastasia
 * Anatomy of Gray
 * Angels in America
 * Annie
 * Annie Get Your Gun
 * Antigone
 * Anyone Can Whistle
 * Anything Goes
 * Applause
 * Aspects of Love
 * Assassins
 * Avenue

B

 * Babes in Arms
 * Babes in Toyland
 * Baby
 * Ballroom
 * The Band
 * Bandstand
 * Bare
 * Barnum
 * Bat Boy the Musical
 * Be More Chill
 * Beautiful
 * Beauty and the Beast
 * Beetlejuice
 * Beggar's Opera
 * Beyond the Fringe
 * Big
 * Big River
 * Billy Elliott
 * Blood Brothers
 * Boeing-Boeing
 * Bonnie and Clyde
 * The Book of Mormon
 * The Boyfriend
 * Boys From Syracuse
 * Breakfast at Tiffany's
 * Brigadoon
 * Bright Lights, Big City
 * Brighton Beach Memoirs
 * Bring It On
 * Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story
 * Bugsy Malone
 * Bye Bye Birdie
 * By Jeeves

D

 * Damn Yankees
 * Dangerous Game
 * Darling
 * Dear Evan Hansen
 * Death and the Maiden
 * Death of a Salesman
 * Desert Song
 * Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
 * Don Giovanni
 * Dracula
 * Dreamgirls
 * Drowsy Chaperone
 * Duchess of Malfi
 * Dear Evan Hansen

E

 * Elf: The Musical
 * Escape To Margaritaville
 * Evita
 * Everybody's Talking About Jamie

F

 * Falsettos
 * Fame
 * The Fantasticks
 * Fiddler on the Roof
 * Finding Neverland
 * Finian's Rainbow
 * Flower Drum Song
 * Follies
 * Footloose
 * Forbidden Broadway
 * Forty-Second Street
 * Free As Air
 * Full Monty
 * Funny Girl

G

 * Garfield
 * Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
 * Gigi
 * Girl Crazy
 * Glass Menagerie, The
 * Godspell
 * Goodbye Girl, The
 * Grand Night For Singing
 * Grease
 * Groundhog Day
 * Guys and Dolls
 * Gypsy
 * Gutenberg!

H

 * Hadestown
 * Hair
 * Hairspray
 * Half a Sixpence
 * Hamilton
 * Hands on a Hard Body
 * Happy Days
 * Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
 * Heathers
 * Hedwig and the Angry Inch
 * Hello Dolly!
 * High School Musical 1-3
 * High Society
 * Hired Man
 * Holiday Inn
 * Honk!
 * How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
 * The Hunchback of Notre Dame

I

 * If/Then
 * I Love You Because
 * I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
 * Importance of Being Earnest, The
 * Indiscretions
 * Inherit the Wind
 * In the Heights
 * Into the Woods
 * It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman
 * It's A Wonderful Life

Irene

J

 * Jagged Little Pill
 * James and the Giant Peach
 * Jekyll and Hyde
 * Jersey Boys
 * Jesus Christ Superstar
 * Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
 * Junior Miss

K

 * The King and I
 * Kinky Boots
 * Kiss Me Kate
 * Kismet
 * Kiss of a Spider Woman
 * Knickerbocker Holiday

L

 * La Cage Aux Folles
 * Last Five Years
 * The Last Ship
 * Legally Blonde
 * Les Misérables
 * Light in the Piazza
 * Lion King
 * Little Shop of Horrors
 * Little Women
 * Lost in Yonkers
 * Love Story
 * Lucky Stiff

M

 * Mack and Mabel
 * Mame
 * Mamma Mia
 * Man of La Mancha
 * Marry Me a Little
 * Mary Poppins
 * Matilda
 * Me and My Girl
 * Mean Girls
 * Meet Me in St. Louis
 * Merrily We Roll Along
 * Million Dollar Quartet
 * Miss Saigon
 * Most Happy Fella
 * Murder Ballad
 * The Music Man
 * My Fair Lady

N

 * Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812
 * New Girl in Town
 * Newsies
 * Next to Normal
 * Nice Work If You Can Get It
 * Nine
 * No, No, Nanette
 * No Strings
 * Nunsense

O

 * Oh, Coward!
 * Oh, Kay!
 * Oklahoma!
 * Oliver!
 * On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
 * Once
 * Once Upon a Mattress
 * On the Town
 * On the Verge
 * Once on this Island

P

 * Paint Your Wagon
 * Passion
 * The Pajama Game
 * Pal Joey
 * Parade
 * Patience
 * Perestroika (2nd part of Angels in America)
 * Peter Pan
 * The Phantom of the Opera
 * Pipe Dream
 * Pippin
 * The Play That Went Wrong
 * Porgy and Bess
 * Pretty Woman (musical)
 * Priscilla Queen of the Desert
 * The Producers
 * Promises, Promises

Q

 * Queen o' Hearts

R

 * Ragtime
 * Rent
 * Ride the Cyclone
 * Rock of Ages
 * Rocky the Musical
 * Rocky Horror Show
 * Room 46 - The Musical

S

 * Saint Joan
 * Salad Days
 * Saturday Night Fever
 * Scarlet Pimpernel
 * School of Rock
 * Scrooge
 * Secret Garden
 * Seussical
 * Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
 * Seventeen
 * She Loves Me
 * Shout!
 * Show Boat
 * Shrek the Musical
 * Singin' in the Rain
 * Sister Act
 * Six
 * Sleep No More
 * Smokey Joe's Café
 * Some Like It Hot
 * Something Rotten
 * Song and Dance
 * Songs for a New World
 * Sound of Music
 * South Pacific
 * Spamalot
 * Spelling Bee
 * Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark
 * Spongebob Squarepants the musical
 * Spring Awakening
 * Starlight Express
 * Starmites
 * State Fair
 * Steel Magnolias
 * Steel Pier
 * Stop The World - I Want to Get Off!
 * Streetcar Named Desire, A
 * Strike Up the Band
 * Sunday in the Park with George
 * Sunset Boulevard
 * Sweeney Todd
 * Sweet Charity
 * Swing
 * Swingtime

T

 * Take Me Out
 * The Book of Mormon
 * The Color Purple
 * The Crucible
 * The Greatest Showman
 * The Lehman Trilogy
 * The Nance
 * The Prom
 * The Threepenny Opera
 * Thirteen
 * Thoroughly Modern Millie
 * Tick Tick Boom
 * Timeless
 * Titanic
 * To Kill A Mockingbird
 * Tommy
 * Tootsie
 * Twelve Angry Jurors

U

 * Urinetown: The Musical

V

 * Victor/Victoria
 * Violet

W

 * Waiting for Godot
 * Waitress (musical)
 * The Wedding Singer
 * Wesele
 * West Side Story
 * We Will Rock You
 * Whistle Down the Wind
 * White Christmas
 * The Who's Tommy
 * Wicked (musical)
 * Wild Party
 * Wind in the Willows
 * The Wiz
 * The Wizard of Oz
 * Wonderful Town
 * Wonderland

X
Xanadu

Y

 * Young Frankenstein
 * You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
 * You Can’t Take it with You!

Z

 * Ziegfeld Follies
 * Zorba

Requested: &
& Juliet

Requested: A
A Thurber Carnival

Requested B
Boys in the Photograph

Beetlejuice

BKLYN

Bat Out of Hell

Back to the Future

Requested C
Court Jester, The

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Requested D
Dixie Swim Club

Dogfight

Requested F
Fun Home

Freaky Friday

Requested H
Hadestown

Requested L
Life With Father

Lizard boy

Lightning Thief, The

Requested M
The Miracle Worker

Matilda the Musical

Requested N
Noises On The Nightmare Before Christmas

New York, New York

Requested O
Once

Or

Our Town

Requested P
Peter and The Star-Catcher

Pirate Queen

Proof

Priscilla queen of the desert

Pirates of Penzance

Pippin

Peter Pan

The Prom

Requested S
SIX the musical

stinky poopy the musical

Requested R
A Raisin In the Sun

Rock of ages

Ride the cyclone

Requested T
Twisted

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Devil's Carnival

The Great Comet

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Story Of A Gay Dinosaur

The Life Of A Tiktoker

The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

Tuck Everlasting

Requested W
War Paint

Wicked

Requested Y
You Can't Take It With You

Requested Z
Zorr Zombie Prom

title: List of theatrical plays and musicals


text:
Into the Woods

Into the Woods (1986) is a fairy tale-themed musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine about the experiences of various familiar fairy-tale and fable characters in the woods, as they strive to get their wishes and deal with the consequences of those wishes. Audio recordings and a televised broadcast of the Broadway play helped to popularize it, and it was adapted into a filmed version in 2014.

Jack's Mother

 * Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.

 * The slotted spoon can catch the potato!

 * [to Baker's wife] Have you seen a boy with carrot-topped hair and a sunny, though occasionally vague, disposition, answering to the name of Jack?

 * There's a dead giant in my back yard!

 * [to female giant] We’ve suffered too! Do you think it was a picnic disposing of your husband's remains?

 * [to baker] No one cared when there was a dead giant in my backyard! I don't remember you volunteering to come to my aid.

Jack

 * Milky-White! Now I have two friends: a cow and a harp!

 * I buried her in a footprint.

 * The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure!

 * I don't want another mother, I want a friend... And a pet.

 * [After his mother says someday he will have a real pet] A piggy?

 * I miss my kingdom up in the sky.

 * I wish my cow would give us some milk.

 * Play harp.

 * Please pal, squeeze pal.

 * But where am I to go? I have no one to take care of me.

 * Then he must DIE.

 * I'm going to KILL him.

 * There are big tall terrible giants in the sky

 * Maybe I shouldn't have stolen from the Giant.

Little Red Riding Hood

 * (incredulously, to Cinderella) You can talk to birds?

 * The prettier the flower, the farther from the path.

 * [Referring to her sick grandmother] For all that I know, she's already dead.

 * Nice is different than good.

 * Stay away from my cape or I'll slice you into a thousand bits!

 * Maybe I shouldn't have strayed from the path.

Witch

 * The SPECIAL beans!

 * Go to the wood!

 * (appearing during an argument between the Baker and his wife) WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cares?!?!?! The cow is gone! Get it back! Get it back!

 * (hearing Rapunzel sing) Oh, my precious calls to me.

 * (sweetly) Rapunzel, Rapunzel... (Rapunzel continues singing) RAPUNZEL! (strikes Rapunzel's tower with her staff) Let down your hair to me.

 * (to Rapunzel) I was just trying to be a good mother!

 * The giant's a woman!

 * Sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched.

 * Ask a wolf's mother.

 * So big that we are just an expendable bug beneath its foot! BOOM! (stomps shoe on ground) Crunch...

 * (to narrator, after he says that he has to tell the story) Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.

 * When you're dead, you're dead.

 * Don't you know what's out there in the world? Someone has to shield you from the world

 * Princes wait there in the world, it's true. Princes, yes, but wolves and humans too

 * It's your father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.

 * (to main characters, during Last Midnight) You're so nice. You're not good; you're not bad; you're just nice.

 * Careful the things you say—children will listen.

Baker

 * (to Wife) Will you please go home!

 * (to Wife) Well... perhaps it will take the two of us to get this child.

 * (gesturing towards Milky-White) Look at her, she's crying!

 * (about his baby) He always cries when I hold him.

 * I will care for him... when he is older.

 * (to Jack) It's magic that... defies description.

 * (to baby) Once upon a time... in a far-off kingdom... there lived a young maiden, a sad young lad, and a childless baker... with his wife.

 * (about the witch) I don't like that woman...

 * (during the Finale) Maybe I just wasn't meant to have children...

Baker's Wife

 * I've never lied to royalty before...I've never anything to royalty before!

 * (to Cinderella's Prince) We can't do this, you have a princess! and I have a... a baker.

 * You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.

 * (to Cinderella) I need that shoe to have a child!

 * Oh, these beans are no ordinary beans, son. These beans carry magic.

 * (referring to Cinderella's Prince) What was that?...

 * This is ridiculous, what am I doing here, I'm in the wrong story!

 * I need your shoe!

 * If you know what you want, you go and you find it and you get it

Cinderella's Prince

 * I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

 * Worrying will do you no good. If he's safe, then he's safe. And if he's been crushed... well, there's nothing we can do about that, is there?

 * I can capture my own damsel, thank you.

 * Rapunzel, Rapunzel. …What kind of a name is that?

 * The harder to get, the better to have.

Rapunzel's Prince

 * Rapunzel, Rapunzel! What a strange name... Strange, but beautiful and fit for a prince.

 * (when asked if he'd learned Snow White's name) No, there's a dwarf standing guard.

 * Dwarfs are very upsetting.

 * The harder to get, the better to have.

Cinderella

 * Wanting a ball is not wanting a prince.
 * But how can you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it? What I want most of all is to know what I want.
 * I wish...
 * Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

 * (birds chirp) What about the prince? (birds chirp again) That doesn't matter right now
 * (singing, to Baker's Wife, about the ball)...they have far too much food...
 * My father's house was a nightmare. Your house was a dream. Now I want something in between.
 * He has charm for a prince I guess
 * (Singing) And you've learned something too, something you never knew on the steps of the palace.

 * Maybe I shouldn't have attended the ball.

Mysterious Man

 * (to Jack) You'd be lucky to exchange her for a sack of beans!

 * ("to Baker''") When is a white cow not a white cow?

 * ("To Baker") Would you buy yourself a child?

 * (on different occasions) "When first I appear I seem mysterious, but when explained I'm nothing serious."
 * "When first I appear I seem delirious, but when explained I'm nothing serious."
 * "When first I appear I seem deleterious, but when explained I'm nothing serious."

 * No knot unties itself.
 * Every knot was once straight rope.

Florinda and Lucinda

 * (To Cinderella) Look at your nails!
 * (Screams and slaps Cinderella) Not that tight!
 * (To Cinderella) Clod.

Songs

 * PROLOGUE: INTO THE WOODS

 * Red Riding Hood: And perhaps a sticky bun? Or four?

 * Red Riding Hood: Never can tell what lies ahead, for all that I know she's already dead. But into the woods!

 * Jack's Mother: There are bugs on her dugs! There are flies in her eyes! There's a lump on her rump big enough to be a hump! We've no time to sit and dither While her withers wither with her, and no one keeps a cow for a friend! [spoken] Sometimes I fear you're touched!

 * Red Riding Hood: I have no fear Nor no one should The woods are just trees The trees are just wood

 * Cinderella: Mother said 'be good', father said 'be nice' That was always their advice So be nice Cinderella, kind Cinderella, 'nice', 'good', 'good', 'nice'! What's the good of being good when everyone else is blind and you're always left behind? Never mind Cinderella, kind Cinderella, 'nice', 'good', 'nice', 'kind', 'good', 'nice'!

 * Witch: I let him go, I didn't know he'd stolen my beans! I was watching him crawl back over the wall when BANG! CRASH! The lightning flashed! And-- well that's another story, never mind, anyway...

 * Witch: Your father cried Your mother died When for extra measure-- I admit it was a pleasure-- I said, 'Sorry, I'm still not mollified.' And I laid a little spell on them-- You too, son-- That your family tree Would always be A barren one...

 * Witch: So there's no more fuss And there's no more scenes And my garden thrives- You should see my nectarines But I'm telling you the same I tell kings and queens: Don't never ever ever Mess around with my greens! Especially the beans!

 * Baker's Wife: The cow as white as milk The cape as red as blood The hair as yellow as corn The slipper as pure as gold.

 * HELLO LITTLE GIRL

 * Wolf: Hello, little girl, what's your rush You're missing all the flowers The sun won't set for hours Take your time...

 * Wolf: Just so little girl Any path So many for exploring Just one will be so boring And look what you're ignoring!

 * Wolf: There's no possible way To describe how you feel When you're talking to your meal!

 * MAYBE THEY'RE REALLY MAGIC

 * Baker: (to Wife) Will you please go home!

 * Baker's Wife: If the thing you do Is pure in intent, If it's meant, And it's just a little bent, Does it matter?
 * Baker: Yes.
 * Baker's Wife: No, what matters is that Everyone tells tiny lies. What's important, really, is the size.

 * I KNOW THINGS NOW

 * Red Riding Hood: And though scary is exciting Nice is different than good.

 * Red Riding Hood: Now I know Don't be scared Granny is right Just be prepared Isn't it nice to know a lot? And a little bit... not.

 * AGONY

 * Rapunzel's Prince: You know nothing of madness 'til you're climbing her hair...
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Agony! Far more painful than yours! When you know she would go with you, If there only were doors.

 * Cinderella's Prince & Rapunzel's Prince: Agony!
 * Cinderella's Prince: Misery!
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Woe!
 * Cinderella's Prince & Rapunzel's Prince: Though it's different for each.
 * Cinderella's Prince: Always ten steps behind!
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Always ten feet below!
 * Both: ...and she's just out of reach!

 * VERY NICE PRINCE

 * Baker's Wife: And-? The Prince-?
 * Cinderella: Oh, the Prince...
 * Baker's Wife: Yes, the Prince!
 * Cinderella: Well, he's tall.
 * Baker's Wife: Is that all?

 * FIRST MIDNIGHT

 * Mysterious Man: No knot unties itself.

 * Witch: Sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched.

 * Jack: The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure!

 * Jack's Mother: Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.

 * Red Riding Hood: The prettier the flower, the farther from the path.

 * Witch: One midnight gone!

 * Baker's Wife: You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.

 * Princes: The harder to get, the better to have.

 * Florinda: Never wear mauve at a ball.
 * Lucinda: Or pink.
 * Cinderella's Stepmother: Or open your mouth.

 * Cinderella's Father: The closer to the family, the closer to the wine.

 * Granny: The mouth of a wolf's not the end of the world.

 * Cinderella: Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

 * IT TAKES TWO

 * Baker: It takes one to begin but then once you've begun It takes two of you It's no fun But what needs to be done you can do When there's two of you
 * If I dare It's because I'm becoming aware of us As a pair of us It's accepting a share of what's there

 * Baker & Wife:
 * It takes just a bit more and we're done
 * We want four, we had none
 * We've got three, we need one
 * It takes two

 * GIANTS IN THE SKY

 * Jack: And you scramble down and you look below And the world you know begins to grow The roof, the house, and your mother at the door The roof, the house, and the world you never thought to explore. And you think of all of the things you've seen And you wish that you could live in between And you're back again, only different than before After the sky There are giants in the sky There are big tall, terrible, Awesome, scary, wonderful giants In the sky!

 * STAY WITH ME

 * Witch: Why could you not obey? Children should listen! What have I been to you? What would you have me be? Handsome like a prince? Oh, but I am old I am ugly I embarrass you!

 * Rapunzel: No!

 * Witch: You are ashamed of me!

 * Rapunzel: No.

 * Witch: You ARE ashamed! Yo don't understand...

 * Rapunzel: I'm not longer a child. I wish to see the world.

 * Witch: Don't you know whats out there in the world? Someone has to shield you from the world. Stay with me... Princes wait there in the world, it's true. Princes, yes, but wolves and humans, too. Stay at home I am home Who out there could love you more than I? What's out there, that i cannot supply? Stay with me... Stay with me, the world is dark and wild Stay a child, when you can be a child With me.

 * ON THE STEPS OF THE PALACE

 * Cinderella: Now it's he and not you Who is stuck with a shoe, In a stew... in the goo, And you've learned something, too, Something you never knew, On the steps of the palace!"

 * EVER AFTER

 * Narrator: And it came to pass all that seemed wrong was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life. Ever after.

 * Florinda: I was greedy.

 * Lucinda: I was vain.

 * Florinda: I was haughty.

 * Lucinda: I was smug.

 * Florinda and Lucinda: We were happy.

 * Lucinda: It was fun.

 * Florinda: But we were blind.

 * Florinda and Lucinda: Then we went into the woods to get our wish,and now we're really blind.

 * ACT II PROLOGUE

 * AGONY (REPRISE)

 * Cinderella's Prince: If it were not for the thicket...
 * Rapunzel's Prince: A thicket's no trick. Is it thick?
 * Cinderella's Prince: It's the thickest!
 * Rapunzel's Prince: The quickest is pick it apart with a stick.
 * Cinderella's Prince: Yes, but even one prick, it's my thing about blood!
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Well it's sick!
 * Cinderella's Prince: It's no sicker than your thing with dwarfs.
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Dwarfs?
 * Cinderella's Prince: Dwarfs!
 * Rapunzel's Prince: Dwarfs are very upsetting

 * WITCH'S LAMENT

 * Witch: This is the world I meant Couldn't you listen?

 * Witch: How could I, who loved you as you were? How could I have shielded you from her Or them...

 * Witch: No matter what you say Children won't listen. No matter what you do Children refuse to learn. Guide them along the way Still they won't listen. Children can only grow From something you love To something you lose...

 * ANY MOMENT

 * Cinderella's Prince: Anything can happen in the woods May I kiss you? Any moment we could be crushed Don't feel rushed
 * Baker's Wife: This is ridiculous, what am I doing here? I'm in the wrong story!

 * Cinderella's Prince: Best to take the moment present As a present for the moment

 * MOMENTS IN THE WOODS

 * Baker's Wife: Oh, if life were made of moments Even now and then, a bad one But if life were only moments Then you'd never know you had one

 * YOUR FAULT

 * Witch: It's his father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.

 * Jack: Wait a minute though, I chopped down the beanstalk, right? That's clear. But without any beanstalk then what's queer Is how did the second giant get down here In the first place? Second place?
 * Cinderella: Yes!
 * Little Red: How?
 * Baker: Hmm?
 * Jack: Well, who had the other bean?
 * Baker: The other bean?
 * Cinderella: The other bean?
 * Jack: [To Baker] You pocketed the other bean.
 * Baker: I didn't! [realizing] Yes I did.
 * Red Riding Hood: So it's your falut!
 * Baker: No it isn't because i gave it to my wife!
 * Red Riding Hood: So it's her...
 * Baker: No it isn't!
 * Cinderella: Then whose is it?
 * Baker: Wait a minute! She exchanged that bean reclaim your shoe. So the one who knows what happend to the bean is you!
 * Cinderella: You mean that old bean that your wife... Oh, dear! But I didn't knew it, so I dropped it right here!

 * Cinderella, Jack, Baker, Red Riding Hood: You're responsible! You're the one to blame! It's your fault!

 * THE LAST MIDNIGHT:

 * Witch: It's the last midnight, it's the last wish. It's the last midnight, soon it will be boom… squish! (to Baker) Told a little lie (to Jack) Stole a little gold (to Red Riding Hood) Broke a little vow, did you? (to Cinderella) Had to get your prince (to Jack) Had to get your cow Have to get your wish doesn't matter how, anyway it doesn't matter now. It's the last midnight. It's the boom… splat! Nothing but a vast midnight! Everybody smashed flat! Nothing we can do Not exactly true We can always give her the boy! No? No, of course what really matters is the blame. Somebody to blame. Fine, if that's the thing you enjoy Placing the blame If that's the aim, give me the blame!

 * Witch: You're so nice. You're not good; you're not bad; you're just nice. I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right. I'm the witch; you're the world!

 * Witch: It's the last midnight. It's the last verse. Now, before it's past midnight, I'm leaving you my last curse: I'm leaving you alone. You can tend the garden, it's yours.

 * NO MORE

 * Mysterious Man: We disappoint, we disappear we die, but we don't. They disappoint in turn, I fear Forgive, though they won't.

 * Baker: No more riddles. No more jests. No more curses you can't undo Left by fathers you never knew No more quests. No more feelings. Time to shut the door. Just- no more.

 * Mysterious Man: Trouble is, son The farther you run The more you feel un-defined For what you have left undone And more, what you've left behind

 * NO ONE IS ALONE
 * Cinderella: Just remember:
 * Baker: [Echo] Just remember:
 * Both: Someone is on your side
 * Jack, Red: Our side
 * Baker, Cinderella: Our side-- Someone else is not While we're seeing our side
 * Jack, Red: Our side..
 * Baker, Cinderella: Our side--
 * All: Maybe we forgot: They are not alone. No one is alone.

 * Cinderella: Hard to see the light now.
 * Baker: Just don't let it go
 * Both: Things will come out right now. We can make it so.

 * FINALE: CHILDREN WILL LISTEN

 * Jack's Mother: The slotted spoon can catch the potato.

 * Mysterious Man: Every knot was once straight rope.

 * Baker: [to baby] Once upon a time... in a far-off kingdom... lived a young maiden, a sad young lad, and a childless baker... with his wife.

 * Witch: Careful the things you say, Children will listen.

 * Witch: Children may not obey but children will listen.

Dialogue

 * Jack's Mother: "You foolish child! What in heaven's name are you doing with a cow inside the house?"
 * Jack: "A warm environment might just be what Milky-White needs to produce his milk!"
 * Jack's Mother: "It's a she! How many times do I have to tell you? Only shes can give milk!"

 * Baker: "No, no, the spell is on my house. Only I can lift the spell, the spell is on my house."
 * Baker's Wife: "No, no, the spell is on our house. We must lift the spell together, the spell is on our house."

 * Jack's Mother: "You be careful with your children."
 * Baker's Wife: "I have no children."
 * Jack's Mother:(Staring off into space) "That's okay, too."

 * Rapunzel's Prince: "I stand beneath her tower and say, 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me.' And she lowers the longest, most beautiful head of hair - yellow as corn - which I climb to her."
 * Cinderella's Prince: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel... What kind of a name is that? You jest!"

 * Baker's Wife: "I need your shoe to have a child!"
 * Cinderella:(puzzled) "Well, that makes no sense."

 * Baker's Wife: "These are no ordinary beans, son. These beans carry magic."
 * Jack: "What kind of magic?"
 * Baker's Wife: (to Baker) "Tell him."
 * Baker: (nervous and confused) "Magic that... (after long thought)... defies description!"

 * Baker's Wife: "I see you've the red cape."
 * Baker: "Yes, only two more items left to locate."
 * Wife: "Three."
 * Baker: "Two. I've the cape and the cow."
 * Wife: "You've the cape!"
 * Baker: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE COW?!"

 * Jack: "What a beautiful cape!"
 * Red Riding Hood: (pulls out a knife & points it at Jack) "Stay away from my cape or I'll slice you into a thousand bits!"
 * Jack: "I don't want it, I was just admiring it!"
 * Red Riding Hood: "My granny made it for me from a wolf that attacked us. I got to skin the animal. And best of all, she gave me this beautiful knife for protection."
 * Jack: "Well, look what I have: a hen that lays golden eggs."
 * Red Riding Hood: "I don't believe that egg came from that hen. Where did you get that egg?"
 * Jack: "I stole this from the kingdom of the Giant up there, (points upward) and if you think this is something, you should see the golden harp the giant has. It plays the most beautiful tunes without you even having to touch it."
 * Red Riding Hood:(sarcastically) "Of course it does. Why don't you go up to the kingdom right now and bring it back and show me?"
 * Jack: "I suppose I could."
 * Red Riding Hood: "You could not!"
 * Jack: "I could!"
 * Red Riding Hood: "You could not, Mr. Liar!"
 * Jack: "I'm not a liar! I'll get that harp, you'll see!"

 * Narrator: "It's interesting to examine the moral issue at question here. The finality of stories such as these dictates..."
 * (he looks upstage and notices everyone staring at him; he advances toward them)
 * Narrator: "Sorry, I tell the story. I'm not part of it."
 * Red Riding Hood: "That's right."
 * Witch: "Not one of us."
 * Baker: "You're always on the outside!"
 * Narrator: "Well, that's my role! You must understand, there must always be someone on the outside!"
 * Steward: "Well, you're going to be on the inside now!"
 * Narrator: "You're making a big mistake!"
 * Stepmother: "Nonsense!"
 * Narrator: "You need an objective observer to pass the story along!"
 * Witch: "Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it."
 * Narrator: "If you drag me into this mess, you won't know how the story ends! You'll be lost!"
 * Baker: "Wait! He's the only one who knows the story."
 * Narrator: "Do you think it'll be much fun having to finish it yourselves? Think of your baby."
 * Baker's Wife: "He's right. (to Red Riding Hood) You put that away."
 * (Red Riding Hood puts her knife away)
 * Narrator: "Now that's better. You don't want to live in a world of chaos. There must always be..."
 * Witch: "Here's the lad!" (throws the Narrator offstage)
 * Narrator: "I'M NOT THE LAD!!!"
 * Giantess: "This is not the lad!"
 * Baker: "Don't drop!"
 * (we hear a squish, indicating that the Narrator has been killed by the Giantess)
 * Baker: "Why did you push him into her arms?"
 * Witch: "You wanted to get rid of him, too."
 * Baker's Wife: "We might have thought of something else."
 * Witch: "If it were up to you, a decision would have never been made."
 * Red Riding Hood: "Well, now that he's gone, we'll never know what'll happen next."
 * Baker's Wife: "We'll manage."

 * Baker: "We had a cow as white as milk, honestly we did!"
 * Witch: "Then where is she?"
 * Wife: "She's dead."
 * Baker: "We thought you'd prefer a live cow."
 * Witch: "Of course I'd prefer a live cow. So bring me the dead cow and I'll bring her back to life!"
 * Baker: "You can do that?"
 * Witch: (pauses, then yells) ''Go!"

 * (Rapunzel comes in, screaming hysterically)
 * Witch: "What's the matter?"
 * Rapunzel: (stops and speaks very calmly) "Oh... nothing. You just locked me in a tower without company for fourteen years, then blinded my prince and banished me to a desert where I had little to eat and again no company...and then bore twins! Because of the way you treated me, I'll never, never be happy!"
 * Witch: "I was just trying to be a good mother."

 * Granny: No! Let the animal die a slow, painful, agonizing death!
 * Little Red Riding Hood: (startled) Grandmother!
 * Granny: Oh hush child! (excitedly) Now, you go get some great stones, we'll fill his belly with them, and then we'll watch him try to run away!

 * Baker's Wife: (to Baker, referring to Little Red Riding Hood) Well, there's no use frightening the poor thing.
 * Baker: You can't frighten her.

 * Baker: (directed towards Cinderella) You look just like the princess...only dirty. You are the princess!

 * Jack: Wait till my mother hears that I've slain the giant.
 * Baker: Jack, your mother's dead.
 * Jack: (shocked) Dead? Was she killed by the giant?
 * Baker: She was arguing with the giant, trying to protect you, and she struck a deadly blow by the Prince's Steward.
 * Jack: Why would he do such a thing?
 * Baker: He thought she was provoking the giant, trying to get us all killed.
 * Jack: Nobody can bring her back to life?
 * Baker: Nobody.
 * Jack: (with hostility) That Steward will pay for this. After we've slayed the giant, I will slay him, too!
 * Baker: (also with hostility) You will do no such thing!
 * Jack: But he shouldn't have killed my mother, right?
 * Baker: I guess not.
 * Jack: He must die.
 * Baker: Well, no.
 * Jack: Why not?
 * Baker: Because that would be wrong.
 * Jack: But what he did was wrong. He should be punished.
 * Baker: And he will be, somehow.
 * Jack: How?
 * Baker: I don't know! Stop asking me questions that I can't answer!
 * Jack: I'm gonna kill him!
 * Baker: Then kill him! (pause; calms down) No, don't kill him.

Rapunzel: Ooh...ooh...(screams loudly)

Rapunzel's Prince (sighs) Rapunzel.

 * Cinderella's Prince: My love, why so cold?
 * Cinderella: Maybe it's because I am not your only love, am I?
 * Cinderella's Prince: (beat) I love you. I do.(pause)But yes, it's true.
 * Cinderella: Why, if you love me, would you have strayed?
 * Cinderella's Prince: I thought if you were mine, that I could not wish for more. And part of me is content and as happy as I have ever been. But there remains a part that continually needs more.
 * Cinderella: I have, on occasion, wanted more. But that doesn't mean I went in search of it. If this is how you behave as a Prince, what kind of King will you be?
 * Cinderella's Prince: I was raised to be charming, not sincere. I didn't ask to be born a king, and I'm not perfect. I am only human.
 * Cinderella: (after a pause) I think you should go.
 * Cinderella's Prince: Leave? But I do love you.
 * Cinderella: Consider that I have been lost. A victim of the Giant.
 * Cinderella's Prince: Is that what you really wish?
 * Cinderella: My father's house was a nightmare. Your house was a dream. Now I want something in between. Please go.
 * Cinderella's Prince: (Begins to exit and stops) I shall always love the maiden that ran away.
 * Cinderella: And I, the faraway Prince.

Other Quotes

 * "I wish..." (Opening and closing lines of the play)

 * "The Woods are just Trees. The Trees are just Wood."

 * All: "Into the woods, and out of the woods, and home before dark!"

 * "One midnight gone!"

 * All: "Careful the things you say... children will listen."

 * Steward: (to Mysterious Man) Shut up.

Cast

 * Bernadette Peters - Witch
 * Chip Zien - Baker
 * Joanna Gleason - Baker's Wife
 * Tom Aldredge - Narrator/Mysterious Man
 * Robert Westenberg - Wolf/Cinderella's Prince
 * Kim Crosby - Cinderella
 * Danielle Ferland - Little Red Riding Hood
 * Ben Wright - Jack
 * Barbara Bryne - Jack's Mother
 * Merle Louise - Grandmother/Cinderella's Mother/Giant
 * Chuck Wagner - Rapunzel's Prince
 * Pamela Winslow - Rapunzel
 * Philip Hoffman - Steward
 * Lauren Mitchell - Lucinda
 * Kay McClelland - Florinda
 * Edmund Lyndeck - Cinderella's Father
 * Joy Franz - Cinderella's Stepmother
 * Cindy Robinson - Snow White
 * Maureen Davis - Sleeping Beauty

title: Into the Woods