A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Diana Sands: Beneatha Younger

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Quotes 

• Beneatha Younger : Will you call me Monday?

  Asagai : Of course. We have a great deal to talk about, you and I. I mean about identity and all that. And time.

  Beneatha Younger : Time?

  Asagai : How much time one needs to know what one feels.

  Beneatha Younger : You see? You never understood. More than one feeling can exist between a man and a woman. At least there should be.

  Asagai : Between a man and woman, there need be only one kind of feeling. And I have that for you. Now even, right this moment.

  Beneatha Younger : I know, and it just won't do. I can find that anyplace.

  Asagai : It should be enough.

  Beneatha Younger : Because that's what it says in all the novels that men write. But it isn't. Go ahead and laugh, but I'm not interested in being someone's little episode in America, or one of them. It's real funny, huh?

  Asagai : It's just that every American woman I have ever met has always said that to me. In this, you are all the same. And the same speech too.

  Beneatha Younger : Yuk, yuk, yuk.

  Asagai : It's how you can tell that the world's most liberated woman isn't liberated at all. You all talk about it too much.

• Lena Younger : Of course, you'll be a doctor, God willing.

  Beneatha Younger : God hasn't got a thing to do with it.

  Lena Younger : That just wasn't necessary.

  Beneatha Younger : Neither is God. I get sick of hearing about God all the time. I mean it. I'm just tired about hearing about God all the time. What has he got to do with anything? Does he pay tuition?

  Lena Younger : You about to get your fresh little jaw slapped.

  Ruth Younger : That's what she needs.

  Beneatha Younger : Why can't I say what I want to say, like everybody else?

  Lena Younger : Because it's not nice to talk like that. You wasn't raised that way. Me and your daddy got you and brother to church every Sunday.

  Beneatha Younger : You don't understand. It's all a matter of ideas, and God is one idea that I don't accept. Now it's not important. I'm not going to be immoral or commit crimes because I don't believe. I don't even think about that. I just get so tired of him taking the credit for things the human race achieves through its own effort. Now there simply is no God. There's only man. And it's he who makes miracles.

  Lena Younger : Now you say after me: In my mother's house there is still God. In my mother's house there is still God.

  Beneatha Younger : In my mother's house there is still God.

  Lena Younger : There's just some things we won't have around here, not long as I'm still head of this family.

  Beneatha Younger : Yes, ma'am.

• Asagai : Is there something wrong?

  Beneatha Younger : We've all got acute ghetto-itis.

• Asagai : You wear it well, very well, mutilated hair and all.

  Beneatha Younger : My hair, what's wrong with my hair?

  Asagai : Were you born with it like that?

  Beneatha Younger : No, of course not.