from "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof"

Big Daddy:

What do you know about this mendacity thing? Hell! I could write a book on it! Don't you know that? I could write a book on it and still not cover the subject? Well, I could, I could write a goddam book on it and still not cover the subject anywhere near enough!!--Think of all the lies I got to put up with!--Pretenses! Ain't that mendacity? Having to pretend stuff you don't think or feel or have any idea of? Having for instance to act like I care for Big Mama!--I haven't been able to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty years now!--even when I laid her!--regular as a piston. . . .

Pretend to love that son of a bitch of a Gooper and his wife Mae and those five same screechers out there like parrots in a jungle? Jesus! Can't stand to look at 'em!

Church!--it bores the Bejesus out of me but I go!--I go an' sit there and listen to the fool preacher!

Clubs!--Elks! Masons! Rotary!--crap!

(A spasm of pain makes him clutch his belly. He sinks into a chair and his voice is softer and hoarser.)

You I do like for some reason, did always have some kind of real feeling for--affection--respect--yes, always. . . .

You and being a success as a planter is all I ever had any devotion to in my life!--and that's the truth. . . .

I don't know why, but it is!

I've lived with mendacity!--Why can't you live with it? Hell, you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?