Willy Loman Quotes

I’m tired to the death. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In the first scene of the play, Willy Loman explains to his wife Linda why he couldn’t make it to his sales calls that day in New England. The 63-year-old salesman is exhausted traveling from New York to England for his job. Having returned home early to New York, the mentally and physically spent Willy’s words foreshadow his suicide later in the play. They also highlight how he constantly falls short in his desperate attempts to achieve his unattainable American Dream of prosperity and success.

WILLY: I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee…I suddenly couldn’t drive any more. The car kept going off onto the shoulder, y’know?
LINDA: Oh. Maybe it was the steering again…Maybe it’s your glasses.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. A physically and emotionally drained Willy arrives home early to his wife Linda after struggling to drive and being a danger behind the wheel of his car. He deludes himself into blaming the coffee. Linda feeds her husband’s self-deception by putting it down to the car’s steering or his spectacles. From the very opening of the play, it appears that everything is not OK with Willy. This exchange is foreshadowing of his death in a faked car accident so that his family can collect Willy’s life insurance. We also witness Linda making excuses for her husband’s mistakes and acting as if nothing is wrong with him. Thus Linda acts as an enabler of the dysfunction in the Loman family, by ignoring and brushing aside her husband’s mistakes and mental problems.

I was driving along, you understand? And I was fine. I was even observing the scenery. You can imagine, me looking at scenery, on the road every week of my life. But it’s so beautiful up there, Linda, the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm. I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me. And then all of a sudden I’m goin’ off the road! I’m tellin’ya, I absolutely forgot I was driving. If I’d’ve gone the other way over the white line I might’ve killed somebody. So I went on again – and five minutes later I’m dreamin’ again.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Having been on the road as a traveling salesman for 34 years, Willy Loman is showing signs of mental instability. In this conversation with his wife Linda, he describes how he lapses in and out of a dream state while driving on his sales trip to New England, almost careering off the road. Willy’s difficulty in distinguishing between reality and illusion is shown here, as his mind constantly oscillates between one state and the other. This speech also deals with the theme of nature vs city. Willy rhapsodizes about the heavenly scenery of rural America that he encounters on his trip – "so beautiful up there…the trees are so thick, and the sun is warm." With his passion for nature, Willy should have taken a job ourdoors, instead of an office job. His decision to opt for a life in New York city clearly seems to be the wrong one. He is a man more in tune with the natural world who in this passage is yearning to escape and be free. Willy’s suicide is foreshadowed here.

WILLY: I have such thoughts, I have such strange thoughts.
LINDA: Willy, dear. Talk to them again. There’s no reason why you can’t work in New York.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy arrives home to wife Linda after his aborted sales trip to New England, mentally troubled. He has confessed to lapsing into a trance-like state while driving and almost going off the road in his car. At the beginning of the play, we learn that Willy is considering suicide, admitting to having "strange" thoughts. But Linda does not confront Willy about this, despite the fact that he is in clear need of phychological help and care. She insists that he is just tired and asks him to request a job transfer to New York, so he doesn’t need to travel anymore. Linda’s failure to admit to her husband’s mental problems means that she is a classic enabler who prevents Willy from getting the help he clearly needs. Willy’s words foreshadow his suicide.

I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. This is the proud reply of a self deceiving Willy, when Linda suggests that he should transfer job to New York to save him the pressure of traveling. He mistakingly believes that his sales presence is vital in New England. Willy is in denial and cannot face the reality that his sales have decreased so he is no longer needed by his employer. He feels the need to buoy up his feeling of self-worth by insisting that he is a critical part of the company that employs him.

If old man Wagner was alive I’d a been in charge of New York now! That man was a prince, he was a masterful man. But that boy of his, that Howard, he don’t appreciate. When I went north the first time, the Wagner Company didn’t know where New England was!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy’s imagination goes into overdrive yet again. He deludes himself into believing that he is a great businessman who would be given a top job in the company if his old boss were still alive. The reality is, as we learn later, he is a salesman working for commission, with no guaranteed salary and has to borrow money from a neighbor to live.

Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. A pessimistic Willy is hit by the realization of the pointlessness of working hard all his life to to pay for his own home, only for his sons to leave him and him to grow old and die. This quote is linked to Willy’s feeling of failure to achieve the American Dream. It’s also about the themes of abandonment and family. His words are echoed by wife Linda at the end of the play in the Requiem. As she mourns her husband’s death by suicide, she says over Willy’s grave: "I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home."

LINDA: Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.
WILLY: No, no, some people – some people accomplish something.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda is speaking to Willy about their two adults sons who have returned to live with them. She uses a knitting metaphor to compare life to finishing a completed, knitted item with a tying off stitch to prevent it from unraveling. As the voice of reason, she tries to get her husband to understand that not everything in life can be controlled. But Willy subscribes completely to the American Dream of prosperity and success and cannot fathom why he has achieved so little in this regard.

WILLY: How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!
LINDA: He’s finding himself, Willy.
WILLY: Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy is bitterly disappointed at son Biff when he returns home from the West after working as a farmhand for a few dollars a week. He views Biff’s failure to achieve financial success as a kind of betrayal of his own expections for his 34-year-old elder and favorite son. He feels Biff is wasting away his life working on a Texas farm. The irony is that Willy himself often yearns for the simpler life away from the city and close to nature, the one his son has been living. Linda defends Biff saying he is still trying to find himself.

Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such – personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff – he’s not lazy.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Early in the play Willy reveals his skewed version of the American Dream, believing that the country rewards someone who is a hard worker, physically attractive and well liked. His son Biff has these attributes, he feels, but he is just lost. Willy has fallen out with his son because in his eyes he hasn’t accomplished anything and has been working as a low paid farm worker.

WILLY: Why do you get American when I like Swiss?
LINDA: I just thought you’d like a change – .
WILLY: I don’t want a change! I want Swiss cheese. Why am I always being contradicted?
LINDA (with a covering laugh): I thought it would be a surprise.
WILLY: Why don’t you open a window in here, for God’s sake?
LINDA (with infinite patience): They’re all open, dear.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. This exchange shows how Willy likes routine and hates change. It also demonstrates how Linda goes out of her way to make her husband happy, but he on the other hand doesn’t treat her well. When she changes his cheese and offers him American whipped instead of Swiss, she is shouted at by an uncompromising Willy.

The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses. Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swing between them?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy to Linda. Willy bemoans that what’s left of the natural environment in Brooklyn, New York, is being overtaken and swallowed up by urbanization. The expanding city with its apartment blocks is encroaching on the fresh air, the grass, the gardens and the trees. Willy sees this kind of rampant capitalist growth and commercialism as destroying nature.

There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. The competition is maddening! Smell the stink from that apartment house! And another one on the other side.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy is commenting on how out of control post-war American capitalism is with rampant urbanization is destroying the country. He feels trapped in his city home with tall apartment blocks built all around him, leading to the denudation of nature in urban centers like Brooklyn.

Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, that’s all. Don’t make any promises. No promises of any kind. Because a girl, y’know, they always believe what you tell ’em, and you’re very young, Biff, you’re too young to be talking seriously to girls.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy shows himself to be a poor role model to his sons, with this kind of terrible advice he offers them about how to treat women. He is essentially telling Biff that women are not to be trusted and he shouldn’t make any promises to them. Foreshadowed here are now shabbily the Loman men treat women. Linda observes that her teenage Biff is "too rough with the girls," Happy grows up to be a womanizer who has sex with the fiances of his managers, and Willy is unfaithful to Linda.

Coach’ll probably congratulate you on your initiative!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In a not very smart move for a father, Willy condones and even encourages theft by his son. Instead of disciplining Biff for stealing a football from his coach’s locker room, he laughs and actually congratulates him on his initiative. This goes to the theme of self-deception, with Willy fooling himself into believing that values of honesty, integrity and morality are not important to teach his sons. As a result Biff develops a liking for stealing throughout his adult life and even winds up in jail for stealing a suit.

WILLY: Don’t say? Tell you a secret, boys. Don’t breathe it to a soul. Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more.
HAPPY: Like Uncle Charley, heh?
WILLY: Bigger than Uncle Charley! Because Charley is not – liked. He’s liked, but he’s not – well liked.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In a scene from the past, Willy proudly tells his sons how he is going to live out the American dream by being a successful business owner. But he is just deluding himself in this first flashback in the play, never amounting to anything more than a struggling salesman. He also reveals his belief that being well liked is the key to success, which his neighbor Charley is not, he claims. However, the irony is that Charley becomes the successful business and Willy does not.

Well, I got on the road, and I went north to Providence. Met the Mayor…He said, "Morning!" And I said, "You got a fine city here, Mayor." And then he had coffee with me.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy is talking to his sons in this flashback scene, telling Biff the story of meeting the Mayor of Providence and sharing coffee with him. It is unlikely that Willy ever met the city’s first citizen, never mind got to shoot the breeze with him over coffee. But Willy likes to lie and tell tall tales in order to create the fiction that he is more important that he actually is, especially to his sons.

You and Hap and I, and I’ll show you all the towns. America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own. This summer, heh?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In a flashback scene with his two sons Willy promises to take them on a business trip and show them all the towns in New England and introduce them to the finest people. Carried away with an inflated sense of his own importance, a proud Willy boasts of how his car has the protection of the police wherever he parks it. This is clearly not true and an example of Willy deceiving himself about his own popularity and significance.

BIFF: Oh, Pop, you didn’t see my sneakers! (He holds up a foot for Willy to look at.)
WILLY: Hey, that’s a beautiful job of printing!
BERNARD (wiping his glasses): Just because he printed University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean they’ve got to graduate him. Uncle Willy!
WILLY (angrily): What’re you talking about? With scholarships to three universities they’re gonna flunk him?
BERNARD: But I heard Mr. Birnbaum say…
WILLY: Don’t be a pest, Bernard! (To his boys.) What an anemic!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. At the beginning of the play young Biff’s University of Virginia sneakers are symbolic of the promising future he has before him. The star of his high school football team, a proud Willy boasts that Biff has scholarships to three universities and there is little standing in the way of his success. But it is the misplaced pride of a deluded father, who deceives himself into believing that Biff’s popularity rather than hard work is his springboard to success. A young Bernard, son of Willy’s friend Charley, makes his first appearance in this flashback of Willy’s. But Willy ignores the studious boy’s warnings that Biff’s high school teacher is threatening to fail him at math because he is not studying. Bernard’s role in the play may be minor one, but it is a significant one. His warning to Willy is foreshadowing of Biff’s failure to graduate from high school.

Bernard can get the best marks in school, y’understand, but when he gets out in the business world, y’understand, you are going to be five times ahead of him. That’s why I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. "Willy Loman is here!" That’s all they have to know, and I go right through.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. This speech showcases a delusional Willy’s tendency towards self-deception. Typical of the Loman men’s inflated view of themselves and their own abilities, Willy shows a false pride in his sons and himself. Using a simile he compares Biff and Happy to Adonis, the beautiful mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone of Greek mythology. He convinces himself that he is some sort of super salesman that buyers cannot wait to buy from, when nothing can be further from the truth. Willy is contemptuous of educational pursuits being the key to delivering the American Dream. Instead he argues that success is achieved by looking good and being well liked, not by study and hard work. He is having a dig at Biff’s studious friend Bernard, who ironically goes on to be a highly successful lawyer. During this scene Willy is experiencing one of his hallucinatory episodes, imagining himself talking to his young sons Biff and Happy, as well as Bernard.

I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston…Well, I didn’t figure it yet, but…Well, I – I did – about a hundred and eighty gross in Providence. Well, no – it came to – roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Fresh home from a big sales trip, Willy is asked by Linda if he sold anything and he goes straight into exaggeration mode. He lies and boasts of selling five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred in Boston, leading an excited Linda to look forward to the huge commission her husband will receive. But then Willy admits inflating his numbers and revises them downward to just two hundred gross for the whole trip.

WILLY: Oh, I’ll knock ’em dead next week. I’ll go to Hartford. I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me.
LINDA: Oh, don’t be foolish.
WILLY: I know it when I walk in. They seem to laugh at me.
LINDA: Why? Why would they laugh at you? Don’t talk that way, Willy.
WILLY: I don’t know the reason for it, but they just pass me by. I’m not noticed.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. The theme is illusion vs reality is found here and throughout the play. Willy has convinced himself that he is a well liked salesman, who never has to stand in line to see a buyer. But this is part of Willy’s self-deception and he is not a popular as he makes himself out to be. In this exchange with Linda, he tells her that people either laugh at him or ignore him.

I’m fat. I’m very – foolish to look at, Linda. I didn’t tell you, but Christmas time I happened to be calling on F. H. Stewarts, and a salesman I know, as I was going in to see the buyer I heard him say something about – walrus. And I – I cracked him right across the face. I won’t take that. I simply will not take that. But they do laugh at me. I know that.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In this flashback of arriving home after a work trip, Willy shares his feelings of diminishing self-worth and self-esteem with his wife Linda. He criticizes his own physical appearance and admits to losing his temper and physically attacking someone who dared to refer to him as a "walrus." An image obsessed Willy deceives himself into believing that his business problems have to do with his appearance, he doesn’t accept that he is simply a failed salesman.
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