all my sons key quotes

• Joe

  • Reading the want ads of the Sunday paper, the other sections of which lie neatly on the ground beside them.
  • A heavy man of stolid mind.
  • But with the imprint of the machine-shop worker and boss still upon him.
  • With the terrible concentration of the uneducated man.
  • A man among men.
• Joe: 'I ignore what i gotta ignore.'
• Joe: 'Because what the hell did I work for? That's only for you Chris, the whole shootin match is for you.'
• Joe: 'I dont understand you do i?'
• Joe: 'The story was I pulled a fast one getting myself exonerated.'
• Joe: 'I got out of my car- but not in front of the house… on the corner.'
• Joe: 'Walkin down the street that day i was guilty as hell. Except i wasn't.'
• Joe: 'It was a madhouse. Every half hour the major calling for cylinder heads, they were whippin us with the telephone. The trucks were hauling them away hot, damn near.'
• Joe: 'I mean just try to see it human, see it human.'
• Joe: 'If i could have gone in that day id a told him- junk em steve, we can afford it.'
• Joe: 'That's a mistake but it aint murder.'
• Joe: '[frightened but angry.], [desperately]'
• Kate

  • A woman of uncontrolled inspirations and an overwhelming capacity for love.
  • the only thing is i think her nose got longer.
  • That's the way I saw him. Only high up. Way way up where the clouds are.
  • We should never have planted that tree. I said so in the first place, it was too soon to plant a tree for him.
  • I want you to act like hes coming back.
  • Because if he's not coming back then ill kill myself.
  • As long as you're here, Annie, I want to ask you to never say that again.
  • What your father did had nothing to do with larry. Nothing.
  • she speaks with warning
  • mother sits in a chair downstage, stiffly, staring,seeing.
• Chris


  • you're always reading the book section and you never buy a book.
  • I don't know why it is but every time i reach out for something i want, i have to pull back because other people will suffer.my whole bloody life, time after time after time.
  • Ive been a good son too long, a good sucker. I'm through with it.
  • If I have to grub for money all day long at least at evening , I want it beautiful. I want a family, I want some kids, I want to build something i can give myself too.
  • we're like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes in.
  • he likes everybody. In the Battalion he was known as Mother McKeller.
  • with admiration] Joe Mcguts.
  • So who flew those p-40s, pigs?
  • Isnt he a great guy.
  • This kid came to me and gave me his last pair of dry socks. [...] That's only a little thing… but… thats the kind of guys i had.
  • a little more selfish and they'd've been here today.
  • Everything was being destroyed,see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of … responsibility. Man for man.
  • there was no meaning in it here: the whole thing to them was kind of a - bus accident.
  • I felt [...] ashamed some-how because nobody was changed at all.
  • I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank-book, to drive the new car, to see the refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you've got to know that it came out of the love a man have for a man.
  • Otherwise what you have is really loot, and theres blood on it.
• Ann

  • gentle but despite herself capable of holding fast to what she knows.
  • boy, the poplars got thick, didn't they?
  • resolutely] no, kate.
  • with growing ill-ease.] i really don't know, i…
  • a little ashamed but determined] No, I've never written to him.
  • Father or no father, there's only one way to look at him. He knowingly shipped out parts that would crash an airplane. And how do you know Larry wasn't one of them?
  • Yes, they'll all be here. Nobody's running away from you. And try to get a hold of yourself will you.
• Frank: 'What she wants to find out is whether November 25th was a favorable day for larry.'
• Jim: 'over my dead body he'll be a doctor. A good beginning, too.'
• Jim: 'I would love to help humanity on a Warner brothers salary.'
• Jim: 'The block can use a pretty girl. In the whole neighborhood there's not a damned thing to look at.'
• Sue: 'It seems to me that for ten dollars you could hold his hand.'
• Jim: 'When you marry, never- even in your mind - never count your husband's money.'
• Joe: 'A father is a father!'
• Joe: 'As long as i know him, twenty five years, the man never learned how to take the blame.'
• Joe: 'Then remember them, remember then. There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they'll take the blame.'
• Joe: He never flew a p-40
• Joe: 'You're a boy what could i do?'
• Joe: 'You lay 40 years into a business and they knock you out in five minutes, what could i do, let them take 40 years, let them take my life away?'
• Joe: 'Chris, i did it for you, it was a chance and i took it for you.'
• Kate: 'you notice there's more light with that thing gone?'
• Kate: 'I made a grape drink for georgie. He always liked grape.'
• Kate: 'What's the matter with your mother, why don't she feed you?'
• Kate: 'None of us changed georgie. We all love you. Joe was just talking about the day you were born and the water got shut of.'
• Kate: 'Listen, to hell with the restaurant! I got a ham in the icebox, and frozen strawberries and avocados and…'
• Kate: 'well,l chris, if they can't stay, don't…'
• Kate: 'Why should he argue? [she goes to him with desperation and compassion, stroking his hair] georgie and us have no argument. How could we have an argument georgie? We all got hit by the same lightening, how can you…? Did you see what happened to larry's tree georgie?'
• Kate: 'then let your father go.'
• Chris: 'Do you think I could forgive him if he'd done that thing?'
• Chris: 'How dare you come in here with that rot?'
• Chris: 'that's all, nothing more till christ comes, about the case or larry as long as i'm here!'
• Chris: 'And i'm his brother and he's dead, and I'm marrying his girl.'