Death of a Salesman Quotes

Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it any more. I’m just what I am, that’s all.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Biff is said to be "at the peak of his fury" with his father when he says this to him. Told all his life by Willy that he was born to succeed, Biff is having a hard time getting through to a delusional Willy. Unlike his father, Biff doesn’t want to spend his life constantly working for material success, he wants to live a basic life and earn enough to get by. But Willy has unrealistic dreams of his son being rich and successful, after failing to achieve that dream for himself.

Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Biff’s desperation is apparent as he confronts Willy about his "phony" American Dream of material success. The stage directions describe him as crying and broken when he makes this anguished plea to his father in his attempt to be honest with him. It is an important moment of self-discovery for Biff. He signals that he wants to stop deceiving himself in his efforts to fulfill his father’s false dreams. He begs to be released from them, so that he can follow his own more reality-based dreams.

(Biff’s fury has spent itself, and he breaks down, sobbing, holding on to Willy, who dumbly fumbles for Biff’s face.)…
WILLY (after a long pause, astonished, elevated): Isn’t that – isn’t that remarkable? Biff – he likes me!
LINDA: He loves you, Willy!
HAPPY (deeply moved): Always did, Pop.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. An exhausted Biff, having told his family that he is going to leave them forever, breaks down and cries and holds onto his father. In the final scene between them Willy realizes that Biff actually likes him. Touched by his son’s display of emotion, he feels a bonding and strengthening of their father-son relationship, which has been fraught for much of the play. This is reinforced by Linda and Happy assuring Willy that Biff always loved him.

WILLY: Oh, Biff! (Staring wildly.) He cried! Cried to me. (He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise.) That boy – that boy is going to be magnificent!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. This is Willy’s reaction when Biff breaks down in tears and holds on to his father, pleading with him to let him go and see him for who he really is. Biff wants to opt out of Willy’s grandiose and deluded dreams of success he is trying to achieve through his son. Biff wants to follow his own different path in life. But Willy completely misunderstands his son and continues to deceive himself about him. He still views Biff as the young football hero he once was, who is destined for great success and is "going to be magnificent."

I’m getting married, Pop, don’t forget it. I’m changing everything. I’m gonna run that department before the year is up. You’ll see, Mom.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Happy says this to Willy and Linda at the end of the play just after the final argument between Biff and Willy. Happy blows out hot air and talks a lot of nonsense, this is evident when nobody responds or offers congratulations – they don’t take him seriously. Happy is not marrying anybody, he is just seeking his parents’ attention.

Loves me…Always loved me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing? Ben, he’ll worship me for it!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. There is tragic irony in Willy’s realization that Biff really does love him and this provides him with another reason to commit suicide. Having already decided to take his life, Willy believes that Biff will love him even more when he shares in the twenty thousand dollar life insurance payout to the Lomans. Willy, blinded by a distorted view of reality and clinging to the materialistic values of capitalism, manages to transforms a moment of happiness at his estranged son loving him into something tragic. He is a deluded man who never learns from his actions. Willy remains misguided and deceives himself to the end, even in his final act of love. Biff is not interested in his father’s money, he simply wants to to enjoy an honest relationship with Willy that is based on the truth of who each of them really is. Willy’s immiment suicide is foreshadowed here.

There were a lot of nice days. When he’d come home from a trip, or on Sundays, making the stoop, finishing the cellar, putting on the new porch; when he built the extra bathroom; and put up the garage. You know something, Charley, there’s more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Biff is standing at his father’s graveside reminiscing about times in the Loman household. Despite a difficult relationship with Willy fraught with disagreements, Biff has fond memories of family life. Speaking to Willy’s friend Charley, he tells of his father’s heroic efforts to build a good life for the Lomans through the many improvements he made to the house. In fact Willy seemed happier working with his hands on the house than he did in his sales job.

LINDA: Why didn’t anybody come?
CHARLEY: It was a very nice funeral.
LINDA: But where are all the people he knew? Maybe they blame him.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Willy Loman was the great deceiver, but most of all he deceived himself. He believed that his funeral would be massive with large numbers of friends, other salesman and customers turning up on account of him being so well liked. Yet the only people present apart from family were neighbors Charley and Bernard. Willy wasn’t anything as popular as he made himself out to be. He lived in a world of illusion and his final and one of his biggest illusions was the spectacular funeral he predicted after his death by suicide.

LINDA: I can’t understand it. First time in thirty-five years we were just about free and clear. He only needed a little salary. He was even finished with the dentist.
CHARLEY: No man only needs a little salary.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Linda cannot understand why Willy would kill himself for financial reasons when they were so close to paying off all their debts. All Willy needed was a small salary, she says. Charley’s reply refers to the idea that people need a dream and Willy’s dream was to be a rich and successful salesman.

He never knew who he was.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Biff says that his father didn’t know who he really was in the way that Biff now knows who he is. Willy’s self-deception blinded him to the reality that he chose the wrong dreams and career. Willy dreamed of making it rich as a successful salesman, but he didn’t have the personality and skills to go with that role. Willy should have pursued a career that suited him better, Biff believes. For example, we learn in the play that Willy had a love of nature and the outdoors, and he was also good at working with his hands.

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a Shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back – that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. In this graveside eulogy to Willy, neighbor Charley empathizes with his friend’s dreams and elevates them to a heroic level. Summing up Willy’s life, he speaks poetically about the spirit that drives a salesman, giving him almost a mythic quality. He uses metaphorical language "out there in the blue" to compare Willy to the heroic sailor riding the waves with only a smile and a shoeshine to carry him towards a successful sale. Charley’s funeral monologue is a fitting tribute from a sympathetic friend. He defends Willy and understands the enormity of the challenge faced by the salesman. Charley recognizes that the American Dream can be difficult, when people stop smiling back in support of that dream it’s as devastating as an earthquake, he says in a metaphor.

I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Happy is determined to follow in his late father’s footsteps of self-deception and make-believe. He declares himself to be the inheritor of Willy’s flawed American Dream, and is fully invested in it. He vows to achieve what their father set out to do but failed: make his fortune by being the number-one salesman. Happy is reacting angrily to brother Biff’s claim that Willy never knew who he was and had the wrong dreams. He strongly defends his father’s dream and his struggle for it to succeed. Speaking at Willy’s graveside, Happy sees Willy as a kind of hero.

I’m not licked that easily. I’m staying right in this city, and I’m gonna beat this racket! (He looks at Biff, his chin set.) The Loman Brothers!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. After Willy Loman’s suicide, Biff invites Happy to travel with him to the West to find a job. But Happy is a clone of his father and suffers from the same self-delusions. He vows to remain in New York, believing he can make his father’s unachievable American Dream a reality for him. He will "beat this racket" and make his fortune as a successful businessman. While the "Loman Brothers" sporting goods business dream died when Biff couldn’t get a loan from Bill Oliver, Happy still believes he can make it big in business. Like his father, he is simply deceiving himself, suffering from the same over-confidence and tendency to avoid reality.

I know who I am, kid.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Unlike his father, Biff has acquired self knowledge and is completely sure of who he is by the end of the play. He speaks this to brother Happy at the graveside of their father Willy. Willy’s pursuit of a distorted American Dream of wealth and success has led him to commit suicide. Biff doesn’t want to live the lie of his father and rejects the false allure of his dream. Instead he plans to return to the West to find another job. In the play’s closing scene, Biff is responding to brother Happy’s defiant outburst defending their father’s dream and promising to fulfill it for him.

Why did you ever do that? Help me Willy, I can’t cry. It seems to me that you’re just on another trip. I keep expecting you. Willy, dear, I can’t cry. Why did you do it? I search and search and I search, and I can’t understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. (A sob rises in her throat.) We’re free and clear. (Sobbing more fully, released.) We’re free. (Biff comes slowly toward her.) We’re free…We’re free.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Linda feels abandoned by Willy after his suicide and tries to make sense of what he did. Speaking directly to him at his graveside, she begs him to help her understand. To Linda they had achieved their American Dream by owning their own house, she having made the final mortgage payment the day of his funeral. They were finally free and clear of debt, she sobbingly tells her dead husband. But it’s a hollow kind of freedom, with no Willy home to enjoy it with her. Linda feels lost and there is a bitter and tragic irony in these last words spoken in the play by her. Willy felt he was doing something good by killing himself in a car crash, because of the financial security the insurance money would provide for his family. But Willy’s final act was resented by his family, who simply wanted the father and husband they loved to be with them. By killing himself he betrayed them.

(Biff lifts her to her feet and moves out up right with her in his arms. Linda sobs quietly. Bernard and Charley come together and follow them, followed by Happy. Only the music of the flute is left on the darkening stage as over the house the hard towers of the apartment buildings rise into sharp focus, and the curtain falls.)

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. These are the closing words of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, regarded as one of the great plays of the 20th century and often said to be America’s greatest. The sound of flute music opens the play and also closes it, it is the last thing that the audience hears. It symbolizes Willy’s connection with his flute maker father, his longing for the past, and the relationship between fathers and sons. It is also symbolic of the death of Willy’s dreams. The visual image of the towering apartment buildings represent how society encroached on and swallowed up those hopes and dreams.
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