Memorable quotes for
"American Playhouse" Into the Woods (1991)

Mysterious Man: Every knot was once straight rope.
Share this quote

Cinderella: Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.
Share this quote

Narrator: You need an objective observer to pass the story along.
Witch: Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: If the end is right it justifies the beans.
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince, Rapunzel's Prince: Near may be better than far, but it still isn't there.
Share this quote

Steward: Who are you, old man?
Mysterious Man: [with a suppressed sigh] When first I appear, I seem deleterious, but when explained -
Steward: Shut up!
Share this quote

Mysterious Man: When first I appear, I seem delirious, but when explained, I'm nothing serious.
Share this quote

Mysterious Man: When first I appear, I seem deleterious, but when explained, I'm nothing serious.
Share this quote

[a giant is running around the kingdom]
Witch: [to the baker and his wife] With a giant, We all have to go to battle! A giant's the worst! A giant has a brain. Hard to outwit a giant. A giant's just like us, only bigger. Much, much bigger! So big that we are just an expendable
[sees a bug on the floor]
Witch: bug, beneath it's feet.
[steps on the bug and cruelly drives her foot into it]
Witch: Boom! Crush!
[eats the bug and leaves]
The Bakers Wife: We are moving!
Share this quote

Cinderella's Stepmother: When going to hide, know how to get there.
Cinderella's Father: And how to get back.
Lucinda, Florinda: And eat first.
Share this quote

Cinderella: Now it's he and not you who is stuck with the shoe... in a stew... in the goo... and you've learned something too... something you never knew... on the steps of the palace!
Share this quote

Cinderella's Mother: Do you know what you wish? Are you certain what you wish is what you want? If you know what you want, then make a wish.
Share this quote

Cinderella: But then how do you know who you are till you know what you want? Which you don't. So then which do you pick? Where you're safe, out of sight, and yourself, but where everything's wrong? Or where everything's right and you know that you'll never belong? But whichever you pick, do it quick, 'cause you're starting to stick to the steps of the palace!
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: Please! I need your shoe to have a child!
Share this quote

The Baker: It takes care, it takes patience and fear and despair to change. Though you swear to change, who can tell if you do? It takes two.
Share this quote

Witch: Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. And learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be. Careful before you say, "Listen to me." Children will listen.
All: Careful the wish you make, wishes are children. Careful the path they take - wishes come true, not free. Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last beyond what you can see and turn against you.
Witch: Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell. Children will listen.
Share this quote

Witch: You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the Witch. You're the world.
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: Oh if life were made of moments, even now and then a bad one, but if life were made of moments then you'd never know you'd had one.
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: Rapunzel! Rapunzel! What kind of a name is that?
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: She went that way. I... I was trying to hold her here for you, but...
Cinderella's Prince: I can capture my own damsel, thank you.
Share this quote

The Baker: I'd have kept those beans, but our house was cursed. She made us get a cow to get the curse reversed!
Witch: It's his father's fault that the curse got placed, and the place got cursed in the first place!
Share this quote

Jack's Mother: Children can be very queer about their animals. You be careful with your children.
The Bakers Wife: [mournfully] I have no children.
Jack's Mother: That's okay too.
Share this quote

Jack's Mother: Giants never strike the same house twice.
Share this quote

Little Red Riding Hood: A wolf and a person aren't the same thing.
Witch: Ask a wolf's mother.
Share this quote

Little Red Riding Hood: You can talk to birds?
Share this quote

Little Red Riding Hood: [to Cinderella] You can talk to birds?
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: If it weren't for the thicket...
Rapunzel's Prince: A thicket's no trick, is it thick?
Cinderella's Prince: It's the thickest.
Rapunzel's Prince: The quickest is pick it apart with a stick.
Cinderella's Prince: Yes, but even one prick, it's my thing about blood...
Rapunzel's Prince: Well it's sick.
Cinderella's Prince: No sicker than your thing with dwarves.
Rapunzel's Prince: Dwarfs.
Cinderella's Prince: Dwarfs.
Rapunzel's Prince: Dwarfs are very upsetting.
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince, Rapunzel's Prince: Always in thrall most to anything, almost, or something asleep.
Share this quote

Wolf: There's no possible way to describe what you feel... when you're talking to your meal.
Share this quote

[Seeing the door to her Granny's cottage open]
Little Red Riding Hood: Oh dear. How uneasy I feel...
Share this quote

Lucinda: Never wear mauve to a ball.
Florinda: ...or pink!
Cinderella's Stepmother: ...or open your mouth.
Share this quote

Cinderella: [singing] He's a very smart Prince, he's a Prince who prepares. Knowing this time I'd run from him He spread pitch on the stairs. I was caught unawares. And I thought "Well, He cares." This is more than just malice! Better take stock while you're standing here stuck on the steps of the palace.
Share this quote

Rapunzel's Prince: High in her tower she sits by the hour maintaining her hair, blythe and becoming and frequently humming a light-hearted air, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah Agony! Far more painful than yours, When you know she would go with you, if there only were doors
Rapunzel's Prince, Cinderella's Prince: Agony! Oh the torture they teach
Rapunzel's Prince: What's as intriguing
Cinderella's Prince: Or half so fatiguing
Rapunzel's Prince, Cinderella's Prince: As what's out of reach!
Share this quote

Little Red Riding Hood: Nice is different than Good.
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: Life is often so unpleasant, you must know that as a peasant, best to take the moment present as a present for the moment.
Share this quote

Witch: What's the matter?
Rapunzel: Oh, nothing! You just locked me in a tower without company for fourteen years, then you blinded my Prince and banished me to a desert where I had little to eat, and again no company, and then bore twins! Because of the way you treated me, I'll never, never be happy!
[she cries]
Witch: [pause] I was just trying to be a good mother.
Share this quote

The Bakers Wife: ...You have a princess.
Cinderella's Prince: Yes.
The Bakers Wife: And I... I have a... a baker.
Share this quote

Jack's Mother: We've no time to sit and dither while her withers wither with her!
Share this quote

Jack's Mother: Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.
Share this quote

Jack's Mother: The slotted spoon can catch the potato.
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: [Prince is "looking" for the giant, and the Baker's Wife is looking for Jack] Anything can happen in the woods... May I kiss you?
[Baker's Wife gasps]
Cinderella's Prince: Any moment we could be crushed!
The Bakers Wife: Uh...
Cinderella's Prince: Don't feel rushed.
[He kisses her, she pulls away for just a moment to look at the audience]
The Bakers Wife: This is ridicuous, what am I doing here, I'm in the wrong story!
[goes back to kiss him again]
Share this quote

All: I wish...
Share this quote

Cinderella's Prince: Did you learn her name?
Rapunzel's Prince: No there's a dwarf standing guard!
Share this quote

The Baker: [trying to guess what destroyed the witch's garden] Do you think it was a bear?
Witch: A bear? No, bears are sweet! Besides, you ever see a bear with forty-foot feet?
The Bakers Wife: A dragon?
Witch: No scorch marks. Usually they're linked.
The Baker: Manticore?
Witch: Imaginary!
The Bakers Wife: Gryphon?
Witch: Extinct.
The Baker: Giant?
Witch: [pauses] Possible. Very, very possible.
Share this quote

Little Red Riding Hood: Into the woods to bring some bread to Granny who is sick in bed. Never can tell what lies ahead - for all that I know, she's already dead.
Share this quote

Jack: Into the woods to sell a friend.
Jack's Mother: Someday, you'll have a real pet, Jack.
Jack: [eagerly] A piggy?
Jack's Mother: No!
Share this quote

Mysterious Man: You'd be lucky to exchange her for a sack of beans!
Share this quote

Narrator: And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with a single bound he was devouring the little girl.
[laughs]
Narrator: Well, it was a full day of eating for both.
Share this quote

Witch: My mother warned me that I'd be severely punished if I were to lose any of the beans!
The Bakers Wife, The Baker: Beans?
Witch: The special beans! I let him go, I didn't know he'd stolen my beans! I was watching him crawl back over the wall when BANG! CRASH! The lighting flashed! And... well, that's another story, nevermind.
Share this quote

Steward: We must be gone if we're to arrive before nightfall.
The Baker: Where are you going?
Lucinda: We're off to a hidden kingdom.
Cinderella's Stepmother: Shhh. We can't take everyone.
Witch: Fools! There is nowhere to hide!
The Baker: You'll never get there. We have to stay and find our way out of this together.
Cinderella's Stepmother: Some people are cut out to battle Giants, and others are not. I don't have the constitution. And as long as I can be of no help, I'm going to hide. Everything will work out fine in the end.
[Cinderella's father, stepmother, stepsisters and the steward exit]
Little Red Riding Hood: I hope the giant steps on them all.
The Bakers Wife: You shouldn't say that!
Witch: You were thinking the same thing.
Share this quote

[upon seeing his wife in the woods, after he has forbidden it]
The Baker: What are you doing here now?
The Bakers Wife: [ignoring him] I see you've the red cape!
The Baker: Yes! Yes, I've the cape! I've only two items left to locate!
The Bakers Wife: Three!
The Baker: Two! I've the cow and the cape!
The Bakers Wife: [triumphantly] You've the cape!
[her smile fades, as she has lost the cow...]
Share this quote

The Baker, The Bakers Wife, Cinderella's Mother, Florinda, Lucinda, Jack, Jack's Mother: Wishes may bring problems, such that you regret them, better that though than to never get them.
Share this quote

Witch: [to the giantess] Would you like a blind girl insread?
Cinderella's Stepmother: How dare you?
Witch: Put them out of their misery!
Lucinda, Florinda: We're not that miserable
Share this quote