AMANDA: Isn’t electricity a mysterious thing? Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who tied a key to the kite? We live in such a mysterious universe, don’t we? Some people say that science clears up all the mysteries for us. In my opinion it only creates more! Have you found it yet? JIM: No, Ma’am. All these fuses look okay to me.
LAURA: I don’t do anything — much. Oh, please don’t think I sit around doing nothing! My glass collection takes up a good deal of time. Glass is something you have to take good care of.
JIM: I hope it don’t seem like I’m rushing off. But I promised Betty I’d pick her up at the Wabash depot, an’ by the time I get my jalopy down there her train’ll be in. Some women are pretty upset if you keep ‘em waiting. AMANDA: Yes, I know — the tyranny of women!
AMANDA: It seems extremely peculiar that you wouldn’t know your best friend was going to be married! TOM: The warehouse is where I work, not where I know things about people. AMANDA: You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions! [He crosses to the door.] Where are you going? TOM: I’m going to the movies.
TOM: I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further — for time is the longest distance between two places. Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe-box. I left St. Louis. I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal.