A Raisin In the Sun Quotes

“Mama: Oh—So now it’s life. Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life—now it’s money. I guess the world really do change . . . Walter: No—it was always money, Mama. We just didn’t know about it. Mama: No . . . something has changed. You something new, boy. In my time we was worried about not being lynched . . . You ain’t satisfied or proud of nothing we done. I mean that you had a home; that we kept you out of trouble till you was grown; that you don’t have to ride to work on the back of nobody’s streetcar—You my children—but how different we done become.”

“Walter: You wouldn’t understand yet, son, but your daddy’s gonna make a transaction . . . a business transaction that’s going to change our lives. . . . That’s how come one day when you ‘bout seventeen years old I’ll come home . . . I’ll pull the car up on the driveway . . . just a plain black Chrysler, I think, with white walls—no—black tires . . . the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges and he’ll say, ‘Good evening, Mr. Younger.’ And I’ll say, ‘Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?’ And I’ll go inside and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and we’ll kiss each other and she’ll take my arm and we’ll go up to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you. . . . All the great schools in the world! And—and I’ll say, all right son—it’s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you’ve decided? . . . Just tell me, what it is you want to be—and you’ll be it. . . . Whatever you want to be—Yessir! You just name it, son . . . and I hand you the world!”

“Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.”

“Walter: (Violently) No! ‘Cause ain’t nobody with me! Not even my own mother!”

“Mama: Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out all seem to cost twice as much as other houses. I did the best I could.”

“Asagai: …You came up to me and you said… “Mr. Asagai—I want very much to talk with you. About Africa. You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my identity! (He laughs).”

“Mama: If you a son of mine, tell her! (WALTER picks up his keys and his coat and walks out. She continues, bitterly) You…you are a disgrace to your father’s memory. Somebody get me my hat!”

“Lindner: …most of the trouble exists because people just don’t sit down and talk to each other…That we don’t try hard enough in this world to understand the other fellow’s problem. The other guy’s point of view.”

“Walter: Sometimes it’s like I can see the future stretched out in front of me – just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me — a big, looming blank space – full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don’t have to be.”

“Asagai: Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man? Beneatha: AND YOU CANNOT ANSWER IT! Asagai: I LIVE THE ANSWER!”

“I wonder if the quiet was not better than … death and hatred. But … I will not wonder long.”

“That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world … Don’t understand about building their men up and making ‘em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.”

“Walter: We have decided to move into our house because my father—my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money.”

“Son — I come from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers – but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay ‘em no money that was a way of telling us we wasn’t fit to walk the earth. We ain’t never been that poor. We ain’t never been that — dead inside.”

“Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, ‘Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.”

“I guess that’s how come that man finally worked hisself to death like he done. Like he was fighting his own war with this here world that took his baby from him.”

“Asagai, while I was sleeping in that bed in there, people went out and took the future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me – they just went out and changed my life.”

“Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning – because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

“It’s dangerous, son …When a man goes outside his home to look for peace.”

“a woman who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of strength. She has, we can see, wit and faith of a kind that keep her eyes lit and full of interest and expectancy. She is, in a word, a beautiful woman. Her bearing is perhaps most like the noble bearing of the women of the Hereros of Southwest Africa - rather as if she imagines that as she walks she still bears a basket or a vessel upon her head.”