What are some key significant quotes from Buried Child by Sam Shepard?

Buried Child is the Pulitzer Prize
winning success of counter-culture playwright Sam Shephard. Centered on a Midwestern
family in the United States, it is a macabre examination of the dark secret behind this
family's present lives based on an act of incest. The play traces the family's
deterioration following the great travesty that resulted from the violation of incest.
One turns to an impotent lifestyle of self absorption, another to fanatical religious
fervor, a third to insanity and imprisonment. The play ends with the apparent absolution
of the curse upon them and forgiveness in the form of the return of an estranged son and
his girlfriend.

Some significant quotes
are:

href="http://www.fultonschools.org/teacher/cooney/Buried%20Child_files/Significant%20quotes%20I.pdf">Act
I

H: What’s it like down there?
D: (to
himself) Catastrophic. p8
D: My appearance is out of his domain! It’s even out
of mine! In fact, it’s disappeared! I’m an invisible man! p12
D: Where’d you
get that [the corn]?
T: Picked it.
D: You picked all that? You
expecting company?
T: No.
D: Where’d you pick it from?
T:
Right out back.
D: Out back where!
T: Right out back.
D:
There’s nothing out there—in back. p13

href="http://www.fultonschools.org/teacher/cooney/Buried%20Child_files/Significant%20quotes%20II.pdf">Act
II

S: (Laughing, gesturing to house.) This is it?
I don’t believe this is it!
V: This is it.
S: This is the
house?
V: This is the house.
S: I don’t believe it!
V: How
come? It’s just a house.
S: It’s like a Norman Rockwell cover or
something.
V: What’s a matter with that? It’s American.
S: American?
Where’s the milkman and the little dog? What’s the little dog’s name? Spot. Spot and
Jane. Dick and Jane and
Spot. See Spot run.
V: Come on! Knock it
off. It’s my heritage. (She laughs more hysterically, out of control.) Have some respect
would ya!
S: (Trying to control herself) I’m sorry.
V: I don’t want
to go in there with you acting like an idiot.
S: Yes sir p
28

href="http://www.fultonschools.org/teacher/cooney/Buried%20Child_files/Significant%20quotes%20III.pdf">Act
III

S: It’s already different. Last night I was
scared.
D: Scared a what?
S: Just scared.
D: Yeah, well
we’ve all got an instinct for disaster. We can smell it coming.
S: It was your
son. Bradley. He scared me. p 53

[Click the links at the
Act headings for more quotes made available by Fulton County
Schools, GA.]