50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in ‘Away’ by Michael Gow

Download the Away Quotes here!

#11: But i’m much better now. That’s all over with, that part of my life is finished. I’ve learnt to start all over again. You have to in the end. 

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Imperative, irony
• Act 3, Scene 1 

#12: I’m doing so well, aren’t I? I’ve started taking such an interest in the world around me. 

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Irony, rhetorical question
• Act 3, Scene 1 

#13: Did you want to have something we’d all have to be sorry for the whole holiday? There’s always something we do wrong that takes you weeks to forgive.

• Character: Meg
• Technique: Accusatory tone
• Act 3, Scene 1 

#14: I love you. Don’t hide away like this. Don’t hide from me. I brought you a drink. To celebrate. To toast the New Year. We’ll make it a better year. No looking back. 

• Character: Roy 
• Technique: Truncated sentence 
• Act 3, Scene 5 

#15: Look at you. Look at me. I’ll lock you up if that’s what it takes. I’ll keep you under lock and key if you insist.

• Character: Roy
• Technique: Juxtaposition with the quote provided above
• Act 3, Scene 5

#16: Mad people, weird, sick, sordid people. How do they bear having no worthwhile aim? I’m tired to people who don’t to improve. I’m sick to death of people who are happy to just stay in the mud, in the swamp

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: sibilance, rhetorical question 
• Act 4, Scene 1

Class Quotes from Away

#17: She was saying what old Vivien Leigh said in Gone with the Wind – just before the intermission and the war’s been on and everyone’s dead and the houses’ wrecked and the crops burnt and everyone and she’s scratching around in the dirt

• Character: Jim
• Technique: Intertextuality, tricolon
• Act 3, Scene 2

#18: But seeing her upset made me remember that afternoon. “I will never be hungry again.”

• Character: Jim
• Technique: Intertextuality
• Act 3, Scene 2

#19: Some people may be happy living like pigs but I’m not.

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Simile
• Act 1, Scene 2

#20: And I can’t see any beach towels here. I hope no one expects to take any of my good towels down onto the beach. Did you hear me?

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Rhetorical question, demanding tone
• Act 2, Scene 2

#21: We have such a high standard of living here.

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Motif, she repeats it throughout the play
• Act 3, Scene 1

#22: I know so many people. There’s a couple who are both very ill and not telling each other. Cancer, I think. Quite a few marriages on the rocks. A lot of them can’t stand their own kids.

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Nonchalant tone, irony
• Act 3, Scene 1

#23: Gone through hardship so what happened to us will never happen to you. So you’ll never know what we saw…. Never see people losing jobs and never finding another one, never be without a home, never be without enough money for a decent meal, never be afraid that everything will fall apart at any second.

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Cumulative listing, anaphora
• Act 3, Scene 1

Youth and Discovery Quotes from Away by Michael Gow 

#24: Their legs and arms painted gold. And that boy’s hair, so black. “What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?”

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Vivid imagery, romantic imagery
• Act 1, Scene 3

#25: You’re still alive. You’re still alive and talking and laughing.

• Character: Corall, to Rick
• Technique: Repetition, tricolon
• Act 3, Scene 3

#26: Ever since you suggested it I’ve wanted to go. That day in the hospital and you brought in the tent and put it up in the ward. I couldn’t wait for summer to come.

• Character: Tom
• Technique: Irony
• Act 2, Scene 1

#27: She never writes, never rings. They could die and she wouldn’t find out for months. Isn’t that wanting to abandon someone? Wasn’t she pulled away?

• Character: Meg
• Technique: Meg points out the irony in her dad lecturing her about Tom, monologue
• Act 2, Scene 2

#28: You’re developing a nasty streak. A very nasty, cruel streak. You know what you’re becoming? Snide. A nasty snide girl, always arguing, always throwing a tantrum, getting your own way, answering back, correcting people, criticising, complaining..

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Cumulative listing
• Act 3, Scene 1

Death Quotes from Away

#29: We are not the first people in the history of the world to lose a son in war

• Character: Roy
• Technique: Imperative, exaggeration, matter of fact tone
• Act 2, Scene 3

#30: The Chinese don’t believe in being too upset when someone dies. That would mean you thought they’d died too soon and what they’d done up till then didn’t amount to much

• Character: Harry
• Technique: Idiom
• Act 4, Scene 1

#31: “Still water runs deep. My father’s always saying that.”

“Still water stinks”

• Character: Meg and Tom
• Technique: Foreshadowing, symbolism
• Act 1, Scene 2

#32: Is it better for them to die like that? Looking like gods? Burning, gold, white.

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Rhetorical question, tricolon, truncated sentence, simile, intertextuality
• Act 1, Scene 3

#33: It is the struggle between man and nature, as well as between man and man, and between man and himself”

• Character: Miss Latrobe
• Technique: Intertextuality, tricolon
• Act 5, Scene 2

#34: She looks awful, poor woman. Her son, you know.

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Foreshadowing
• Act 1, Scene 2

#35: When you’re married to someone, do you ever wish they were dead?

• Character: Meg
• Technique: Rhetorical question, irony
• Act 2, Scene 2

Authenticity Quotes from Away

#36: Even if it is slow, if you could try and still have a good time, look like you’re having a good time. I’m asking this for your mother. It’s for her.

• Character: Harry
• Technique: Imperative, truncated sentence
• Act 2, Scene 1

#37: We have a game we play every year. We sneak presents home, we hide them, we wrap them up in secret even though we can hear the sticky tape tearing and the paper rustling; we hide them in the stuff we take away, we pretend not to see them until Christmas morning even when we know they’re there and we know what’s in them because we’ve already put in our orders so there’s no waste or surprise.

• Character: Meg
• Technique: Anaphora, run-on sentence
• Act 3, Scene 2

#38: “I cannot walk. I am afraid.”

“I will show you how”

• Character: Coral and Tom
• Technique: Truncated sentence, imperative, allegory
• Act 4, Scene 1

#39: When that woman woke up and saw that donkey at her feet I thought my heart would break… To wake up and find something you want so badly. Even an animal.

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Intertextuality, humour
• Act 1, Scene 3

#40: If we’re going to have any sort of reasonable holiday we’re going to have to pay for it. We’re paying for it now, by spending all the night packing up to go.

• Character: Gwen
• Technique: Foreshadowing
• Act 2, Scene 2

#41: “You aren’t enjoying it. Have you ever enjoyed it?”

“Why don’t you go and live with your friend for a while, then, if you want to have fun all the time? They look like they always have fun. Nothing to show for it, of course”

• Character: Meg and Gwen
• Technique: Sarcastic tone
• Act 2, Scene 2

#42: I miss the boy too. I feel it. I suffer for it. Will you allow me that? Could you let me in on the sadness just a little? Because Christ I feel it.

• Character: Roy
• Technique: Anaphora, tricolon
• Act 2, Scene 2

#43: I won’t think about death, about –

• Character: Coral
• Technique: begging tone, irony
• Act 2, Scene 2

#44: I’ll be silent on all the controversial topics. Will that do? I won’t bring up anything upsetting or worrying. Death, war, loss –

1. Character: Carol
2. Technique: Irony, critique of the government
3. Act 2, Scene 2

#45: Your father will enjoy this trip…. But if you could just pretend a bit… if you have to. For your dad

• Character: Vic
• Technique: reflection of previous conversation with Tom’s dad
• Act 2, Scene 3

#46: Everyone’s enjoying themselves but, I don’t know, I feel it’s a bit forced, do you feel that? Are you really enjoying yourself? Or are you only pretending? To please your husband, perhaps?

• Character: Coral
• Technique: Truncated sentence, rhetorical question
• Act 3, Scene 1

#47: My husband has been sleeping with a twenty-year old girl. I know where she lives, I want to kill her. I’m going to have my dinner now. With my husband.

• Character: Woman at the hotel
• Technique: Contrast, suddenly Coral does not seem as delusional as she did initially
• Act 3, Scene 1

#48: It must have come. Oh no.. All my presents for you. I hid them in a little carton and put it with all the other stuff so you wouldn’t notice.

• Character: Jim
• Technique: Regretful tone, foreshadowing
• Act 3, Scene 2

#49: I’m going to end up in a straight-jacket. Everything I do is wrong. But I can’t help myself. I just do things and I don’t see why.

• Character: Rick
• Technique: Dramatic irony, Rick speaks of himself but it is what Coral experiences too
• Act 3, Scene 3

#50: The FAIRIES return and stage a spectacular storm, emptying the stage to the sound of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

• Character: None!
• Technique: Stage directions, play within a play
• Act 4, Scene 3