Our Town Visions of America Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Line). Every time a character talks counts as one line, even if what they say turns into a long monologue.

Quote #1

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

Grover’s Corners is so small that the stores and schools are not referred to by name but by purpose.

Quote #2

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

Grover’s Corners is home to generations of the same families.

Quote #3

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

Read: everybody is in everybody else’s business.