Captain Arthur Keller Quotes in The Miracle Worker (1962)

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.

Aunt Ev: There's a very famous Perkins School in Boston. They're supposed to do wonders.

Captain Arthur Keller: The child's been to specialists everywhere. They couldn't help her in Baltimore or Washington, could they?

Kate Keller: I think the captain will write to the Perkins School.

Captain Arthur Keller: Katie, how many times are you going to let them break your heart?

Kate Keller: Any number of times. As long as there's the slightest chance for her to see or hear.

Captain Arthur Keller: From the minute she stepped off the train she's been nothing but a burden! Incompetent, impertinent, ineffectual, inmodest, and...

Kate Keller: She folded her napkin, Captain.

Captain Arthur Keller: She what?

Kate Keller: Not ineffectual. Helen did fold her napkin.

Captain Arthur Keller: What in heaven's name is so extraordinary about folding a napkin?

Kate Keller: Well, it's more than you did, Captain.

Captain Arthur Keller: Katie, the point is she's ruined any chance she ever had of getting along with the child. If you can see any point or purpose of her staying on here longer, it's more than I can.

Kate Keller: What do you wish me to do?

Captain Arthur Keller: I want you to give her notice!

Kate Keller: I can't.

Captain Arthur Keller: Then if you won't, I must!

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: What would another week accomplish? We are more than satisfied. You taught her things to do, how to behave. She's more manageable, cleaner.

Annie Sullivan: Cleaner?

Captain Arthur Keller: Well, we say cleanliness is next to godliness.

Annie Sullivan: Cleanliness is next to nothing! Give me more time with her.

Captain Arthur Keller: Look, what's she spelling? Teaching a dog to spell? The dog doesn't know what she means any more than she knows what you mean, Miss Sullivan. I think you ask too much of her and yourself. God may not have meant Helen to have the eyes you speak of.

Annie Sullivan: I mean her to.

Annie Sullivan: All's fair in love and war.

Captain Arthur Keller: This is not war.

Annie Sullivan: Well, it's not love!

Kate Keller: She's a defective child! It's not her fault!

Captain Arthur Keller: I didn't say it was her fault!

Kate Keller: Well, I don't know what to do. How can I teach her, beat her till she's black and blue?

Captain Arthur Keller: We can't have her running around loose! There must be some way to confine her!

Kate Keller: Where, in a cage? She's a growing child!

Captain Arthur Keller: Answer me one thing. Is it fair to the baby there?

Kate Keller: Are you willing to put her away? She wants to talk, like me, like you and me. Every day she slips further and further away. I don't know how to call her back.

Aunt Ev: I have a mind to write to Boston myself. If that school can't help her, maybe they'll send somebody who can.