The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

A Stop at Willoughby (1960)

Patricia Donahue: Janie Williams

Photos 

Quotes 

• Janie Williams : And just where would you be if it weren't for my appetite?

  Gart Williams : I know where I'd like to be.

  Janie Williams : Where's that?

  Gart Williams : A place called Willoughby, a little town I manufactured in a dream.

  Janie Williams : Tell me about your dream, Gart.

  Gart Williams : It was an odd dream. Very odd dream. Willoughby. It was summer, very warm. Kids were barefooted. One of them had a fishing pole. It all looked like a Currier and Ives painting. Bandstand, bicycles, wagons. I've never seen such serenity. It was the way people must have lived a hundred years ago. Crazy dream.

• Gart Williams : I'm tired, Janie. I'm tired, and I'm sick.

  Janie Williams : Well, then you're in the right ward. We specialize in people that are sick, and tired, too, Gart. I'm sick, and I'm tired, of a husband who lives in a kind of permanent self-pity. A husband with a heart bleeding sensitivity that he unfurls like a flag, whenever he decides the competition is a little too rough for him.

  Gart Williams : Some people aren't built for competition, Janie, or big pretentious houses they can't afford, or rich communities they don't feel comfortable in, or country clubs they wear around their neck like a badge of status.

  Janie Williams : And you would prefer...?

  Gart Williams : I would prefer, though never asked before, a job, any job, any job at all where I could be myself! Where I wouldn't have to climb on a stage and go through a masquerade every morning at nine o'clock, and mouth all the dialogue and play the executive, and make believe I'm the bright young man on the way up, because I'm not that person, Janie! You've tried to make me that person, but that isn't me, that's isn't me at all! I'm... I'm a not very young, soon to be old, very uncompetitive, rather dull, quite uninspired, average type guy. With a wife who has an appetite.