American Playhouse (TV Series)

Into the Woods (1991)

Bernadette Peters: The Witch

Quotes 

• Narrator : You need an objective observer to pass the story along.

  Witch : Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.

• Witch : What's the matter?

  Rapunzel : Oh, nothing! You just locked me in a tower without company for fourteen years, then you blinded my Prince and banished me to a desert where I had little to eat, and again no company, and then bore twins! Because of the way you treated me, I'll never, never be happy!

  [she cries] 

  Witch : [pause]  I was just trying to be a good mother.

• Witch : You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the Witch. You're the world.

• [a giant is running around the kingdom] 

  Witch : [to the baker and his wife]  With a giant, We all have to go to battle! A giant's the worst! A giant has a brain. Hard to outwit a giant. A giant's just like us, only bigger. Much, much bigger! So big that we are just an expendable

  [sees a bug on the floor] 

  Witch : bug, beneath it's feet.

  [steps on the bug and cruelly drives her foot into it] 

  Witch : Boom! Crush!

  [eats the bug and leaves] 

  The Bakers Wife : We are moving!

• Witch : Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. And learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be. Careful before you say, "Listen to me." Children will listen.

  All : Careful the wish you make, wishes are children. Careful the path they take - wishes come true, not free. Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last beyond what you can see and turn against you.

  Witch : Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell. Children will listen.

• The Baker : [trying to guess what destroyed the witch's garden]  Do you think it was a bear?

  Witch : A bear? No, bears are sweet! Besides, you ever see a bear with forty-foot feet?

  The Bakers Wife : A dragon?

  Witch : No scorch marks. Usually they're linked.

  The Baker : Manticore?

  Witch : Imaginary!

  The Bakers Wife : Gryphon?

  Witch : Extinct.

  The Baker : Giant?

  Witch : [pauses]  Possible. Very, very possible.

• The Baker : I'd have kept those beans, but our house was cursed. She made us get a cow to get the curse reversed!

  Witch : It's his father's fault that the curse got placed, and the place got cursed in the first place!

• Little Red Riding Hood : A wolf and a person aren't the same thing.

  Witch : Ask a wolf's mother.

• Witch : My mother warned me that I'd be severely punished if I were to lose any of the beans!

  The Bakers Wife , The Baker : Beans?

  Witch : The special beans! I let him go, I didn't know he'd stolen my beans! I was watching him crawl back over the wall when BANG! CRASH! The lighting flashed! And... well, that's another story, nevermind.

• Steward : We must be gone if we're to arrive before nightfall.

  The Baker : Where are you going?

  Lucinda : We're off to a hidden kingdom.

  Cinderella's Stepmother : Shhh. We can't take everyone.

  Witch : Fools! There is nowhere to hide!

  The Baker : You'll never get there. We have to stay and find our way out of this together.

  Cinderella's Stepmother : Some people are cut out to battle Giants, and others are not. I don't have the constitution. And as long as I can be of no help, I'm going to hide. Everything will work out fine in the end.

  [Cinderella's father, stepmother, stepsisters and the steward exit] 

  Little Red Riding Hood : I hope the giant steps on them all.

  The Bakers Wife : You shouldn't say that!

  Witch : You were thinking the same thing.

• Witch : [to the giantess]  Would you like a blind girl insread?

  Cinderella's Stepmother : How dare you?

  Witch : Put them out of their misery!

  Lucinda , Florinda : We're not that miserable