50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in A Streetcar Named Desire

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#11: Delicate piece she is…She is. She was. You didn’t know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley (Speaker)
• Techniques: Parallel syntax, contrast, anecdote 
• Scene 9

#12: There isn’t a goddamn thing but imagination!…And lies and conceit and tricks!

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker), Blanche
• Techniques: Polysyndeton, motif
• Scene 10

#13: You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles–unless it’s the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker), Blanche
• Techniques: Motif, symbolism 
• Scene 11

Class Difference

#14: Stanley is Polish, you know…Oh, yes, They’re something like Irish, aren’t they?

• Characters: Stella (Speaker), Blanche (Speaker)
• Techniques: Juxtaposition, símile 
• Scene 1 

#15: Oh, I guess he’s just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he’s what we need to mix with our blood now that we’ve lost Belle Reve.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker)
• Techniques: Metonym, double entendre 
• Scene 2

#16: No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instil a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Literary allusion, juxtaposition
• Scene 3

#17: You’re simple, straightforward and honest, a little bit on the primitive side, I should think. To interest you a woman would have to… -To lay her cards out on the table.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley (Speaker)
• Techniques: Sibilance, innuendo 
• Scene 3

#18: Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is – Stanley Kowalski – survivor of the Stone Age!…Don’t – don’t hang back with the brutes!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella 
• Techniques: Metaphor, hyperbole, characterisation,
• Scene 5

#19: He stalks through the rooms in his underwear at night. And I have to ask him to close the bathroom door. That sort of commonness isn’t necessary.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Tricolon, connotations
• Scene 6

#20: He hates me. Or why would he insult me? The first time I laid eyes on him I thought to myself, that man is my executioner! That man will destroy me, unless –

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), 
• Techniques: Hyperbole, diction, dramatic foil
• Scene 6

#21: I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker), Blanche
• Techniques: Metonym, superlative, characterisation
• Scene 8

#22: She’s not stayin’ here after Tuesday. You know that don’t you? Just to make sure I bought her ticket myself. A bus-ticket!

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker), Blanche
• Techniques: Plain colloquial language, symbolism, dramatic irony 
• Scene 8

Performance of Gender Expectations

#23: You know, I haven’t put on one ounce in ten years, Stella? I weigh what I weighed the summer you left Belle Reve. The summer Dad died and you left us…

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Symbolism
• Scene 1

#24: I never met a woman that didn’t know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they’ve got.

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker)
• Techniques: Motif
• Scene 2

#25: After all, a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley
• Techniques: Parataxis, motif
• Scene 2

#26: It looks to me like you have been swindled, baby, and when you’re swindled under the Napoleonic code I’m swindled too. And I don’t like to be swindled. 

• Characters: Stanley (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Repetition, polysyndeton
• Scene 2

#27: I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Motif, characterisation
• Scene 3

#28: It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I—I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Motif, foreshadowing, metaphor, amplification
• Scene 5

#29: Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good—and keep my hands off children.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Young Man
• Techniques: Juxtaposition, characterisation
• Scene 5

#30: I want his respect. And men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand men lose interest quickly. Especially when the girl is over—thirty. They think a girl over thirty ought to—the vulgar term is—“put out.”

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Pathos, characterisation, foreshadowing
• Scene 5

#31: What are you laughing at honey?…Myself, myself, for being such a liar! I’m writing a letter to Shep.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella, Shep
• Techniques: Repetition, irony 
• Scene 5

#32: I want to rest! I want to breathe quietly again! Yes – I want Mitch… very badly!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker)
• Techniques: Symbolism, tricolon, juxtaposition
• Scene 5

#33: Never inside, I didn’t lie in my heart…

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Metaphor
• Scene 9

#34: Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley
• Techniques: Polysyndeton, auxesis, exclamatory language 
• Scene 10

#35: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Matron
• Techniques: Motif, characterisation
• Scene 11

#36: The rest of my days I’m going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I’m going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), stella
• Techniques: Anticlimax, juxtaposition 
• Scene 11

Death and Passion

#37: They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, contrast, metaphor 
• Scene 1

#38: And funerals are pretty compared to deaths.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Juxtaposition, motif 
• Scene 1

#39: But you are the one that abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Auxesis, hyperbole
• Scene 1

#40: Well, no you talk. Open your pretty mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Juxtaposition, demanding tone, characterisation
• Scene 1

#41: Our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications—to put it plainly!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley
• Techniques: Polysyndeton, subversion
• Scene 2

#42: Poems a dead boy wrote. I hurt him the way you would like to hurt me, but you can’t! I’m not young and vulnerable anymore. But my young husband was and I—never mind about that! Just give them back to me!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley
• Techniques: Contrast, motif, pathos
• Scene 2

#43: Show me a person who hasn’t known any sorrow and I’ll show you a superficial.

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Repetition, parallel syntax, chiasmus
• Scene 3

#44: Why! I’ve been half crazy, Stella! When I found out you’d been insane enough to come back in here after what happened—I started to rush in after you!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Motif, subversion 
• Scene 4

#45: There are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark–that sort of make everything else seem–unimportant.

• Characters: Stella (Speaker), Blanche
• Techniques: Innuendo, motif
• Scene 4

#46: What such a man has to offer is animal force and he gave a wonderful exhibition of that! But the only way to live with such a man is to—go to bed with him! And that’s your job—not mine!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stanley
• Techniques: Parataxis, contrast, irony, antanagoge
• Scene 4

#47: Well, honey, a shot never does a coke any harm!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Stella
• Techniques: Humour, characterisation, logical fallacy
• Scene 5

#48: Don’t you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it?

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Young man
• Techniques: Memento mori, metaphor 
• Scene 5

#49: Sometimes–there’s God–so quickly!

• Characters: Blanche (Speaker), Mitch
• Techniques: Fragmented language, parallel syntax
• Scene 6

#50: Tiger–tiger! Drop the bottle-top! Drop it! We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning!

• Characters: Stanley, Blanche (Speaker)
• Techniques: Repetition, intimidating tone, foreshadowing
• Scene 10