The Miracle Worker

Quotes: « Annie Sullivan: Pity? For this tyrant? The whole house turns on her whims! Is there anything she wants she doesn't get? I'll tell you what I pity: that the sun won't rise and set for her all her life, and every day you're telling her it will! What good will your pity do when you're under the strawberries, Captain Keller? » « Annie Sullivan: I have to live with her somewhere else. » « Kate Keller: For how long? » « Annie Sullivan: Until she learns to listen to and depend on me. » « Captain Arthur Keller: Miss Sullivan… » « Annie Sullivan: Captain Keller, it meets both of your conditions. It's the one way I can get back in touch with Helen, and I don't see how I can be rude to you again if you're not around to interfere with me. » « Captain Arthur Keller: And what's your plan if I say no? Pack the other half for home and abandon your charge to… to… » « Annie Sullivan: The asylum? I grew up in such an asylum, the State Alms House. Rats? Why, my brother Jimmy and I used to play with the rats because we didn't have any toys. Maybe you'd like to know what Helen will find there, not on visiting days. One ward was full of the old women. Crippled, blind, most of them dying, but even if what they had was catching, there was nowhere else to move them. That's where they put us. Then there were younger ones across the hall, prostitutes mostly, with TB and epileptic fits. And some of the kind that keep after other girls, especially the young ones. And some were just insane. Some had the DTs. Then there were girls in another ward to have babies they didn't want. They started at thirteen, fourteen. They left afterwards, but the babies stayed. We played with them, too. There were a lot of them, with sores all over from diseases you're not supposed to talk about. » « Captain Arthur Keller: Miss Sullivan, I find it difficult to talk through those glasses. Why do you wear them? The sun's been down over an hour. » « Annie Sullivan: Any kind of light hurts my eyes. » « Captain Arthur Keller: Well, put them on, Miss Sullivan. I've decided to give you a second chance. » « Annie Sullivan: To do what? » « Captain Arthur Keller: To remain our employee! But on two conditions! I'm not accustomed to rudeness! If you want to stay, there must be a radical change of manner! » « Annie Sullivan: Whose? » « Captain Arthur Keller: Yours, young lady! Isn't it obvious? You must convice me that there's the slightest hope of you teaching a child who now flees from you like the plague. » « Annie Sullivan: There isn't. It's hopeless here. » « Captain Arthur Keller: Am I to understand… » « Annie Sullivan: We all agree it's hopeless here. The next question is… » « Kate Keller: Miss Annie, I'm not agreed! She did fold her napkin. She learns. She learns! Did you know she began talking when she was only six months old? She could say water. Well, not really. Wah-wah. But she meant water! She knew what it meant at only six months old! I never saw a child so bright or outgoing! It's still in her, somewhere. Miss Annie, put up with her and with us. » « Captain Arthur Keller: Us? » « Kate Keller: Please. Like the lost lamb in the parable, I love her all the more. » « Annie Sullivan: Mrs. Keller, I don't think Helen's greatest handicap is deafness or blindness. I think it's your love and pity. All these years you've felt so sorry for her you've kept her like a pet. Well, even a dog you housebreak. »