29 quotes found
"Something's gonna happen, Drake. Something bad, I don't know what. It's just a feeling I've had lately. Something I can't stop happening, that maybe I'm even responsible for in some way."
"[in a letter] Of course, Randy, it is a ghastly and terrible tragedy, particularly to have happened to Drake. He lived by his freedom and independence. He will feel, probably already feels, that he's lost both. It'll be your problem to restore them to him. The repairs to the body can sometimes be made in a short space of time. The injury to the mind, to what is called the psyche, this takes longer. The psychic injuries strike at his pride, his initiative, and we shall have to save them if we're to save Drake. Never when I decided to become a psychiatrist did I imagine I'd be writing my first prescription for my dearest friend. As soon as he's well enough, he must find an interest outside of himself. Some job to do that will force him to depend upon himself and make his own decisions. The helpless invalid complex must be avoided at all cost. In fact, he must be made to feel that since he was making a living for himself he will, of course, go on making a living. I've written to the bank instructing them to turn over to you the small Tower estate that was left me. Use it to make some sort of a new beginning for you. I don't care if it's real estate or chicken farming, so long as it is something that will take his mind off himself and make him realize that he's still some use in this world. I feel so helpless being way over here. I rely on you. You must obey my instructions faithfully."
"I didn't marry Drake out of pity, Parris...I never loved anyone else. Even in school I never had crushes on boys. I liked them or I didn't. They said naughty things to me and that was all. Aside from that, they treated me as one of themselves. Then that day I saw Drake at the station, well, he simply went to a place in my heart that had been waiting for him. Drake. Oh, Parris! Tall and laughing and going about with his head up. [she tears up] Then after his accident, I knew I had to ask myself a question and answer it. I'd loved Drake wholly. What about that now? What was left of it? I was half afraid I might love him less. That something I couldn't help, something physical, might turn me away from him. There was my question staring at me. Then, in one of your letters, there was a sentence, 'You must remember now, that Drake lives in a new world and that his relationship with it and with everyone in it will be changed.' I knew that applied to Drake and myself, too. An episode of youth and fun had closed, and with it had gone all the demands, forever. I knew then that I didn't love him any less, only differently. With an overwhelming, new, calm feeling, Parris, that so completely took the place of the old excitement that it would last forever."
"[after awaking to find his feet have been amputated] Randy, Randy - Where's the rest of me...?"
"Well, Mitchell, I don't know at all your approach to medicine. Perhaps you regard it as an opportunity to become one of those bedside manners with a list of proper pills to give the patient - particularly when you don't know what is the matter with him. Or perhaps your aim is to become an eminent carpenter with a knife and a chisel and a saw. Perhaps even you'll flow over with the nobility of relieving humanity's suffering. I'll tell you my approach to medicine! It is a game in which man pits his brains against the forces of destruction and disease. In the beginning I don't expect you to participate in the game. You'll only listen and accept. You will study and you will make notes and you will memorize... and you will do all this only because I tell you to."
"And in diagnosis, you must never underrate the value of subconscious observation. Instinct, if you want to call it that. Or, more properly, intuition. It's what makes a born physician."
"I only know that you have to judge people by what you find them to be and not by what other people say they are."
"He mustn't know, Anna....Don't cry, Anna, for me. It will be worse for him. My troubles are almost over and his are just beginning. Growing up is so difficult, Anna. The disappointments and the heartbreaks. The frightening problems. The meannesses and the cruelties of the world. How often I have wished that his mother be lived, or his father. Or that I were his mother. It isn't fair that a young boy should be brought up by an old woman who will leave him when he needs her most. What's going to happen to him?...I've done my best to make him into a gentleman. And my best to provide for his future. For the rest, everything must be pleasant for him until he goes away. I will try to live until then."
"[about the dying Madame von Eln] When she passes, how much passes with her! - a whole way of life, a way of gentleness and honor and dignity. These things are going, Henry, and they may never come back to this world."
"[referring to Drake] Funny thing, I sort of like that boy. Bold as brass, but he's the only young man in town beside Parris Mitchell who has grace enough to say 'sir' to his elders."
"The town they talk of in whispers."
"Have YOU been to KINGS ROW"
"Ann Sheridan - Randy Monaghan"
"Robert Cummings - Parris Mitchell"
"Ronald Reagan - Drake McHugh"
"Betty Field - Cassandra "Cassie" Tower"
"Charles Coburn - Dr. Henry Gordon"
"Claude Rains - Dr. Alexander Tower"
"Judith Anderson - Mrs. Harriet Gordon"
"Douglas Croft - Drake MacHugh as a Boy"
"Nancy Coleman - Louise Gordon"
"Kaaren Verne - Elise Sandor"
"Maria Ouspenskaya - Madame von Eln"
"Harry Davenport - Colonel Skeffington"
"Ernest Cossart - Pa Monaghan"
"Ilka Grüning - Anna"
"Pat Moriarity - Tod Monaghan"
"Minor Watson - Sam Winters"
"Emory Parnell - Harley Davis"