Annie Sullivan: Disinter... disinterested... disinterested... where's discipline? What a dictionary this is. You have to know how something is spelt before you can look it up to see how it's spelt. Discipline... Huh. "Diskipline."

Annie Sullivan: I have to live with her somewhere else.
Kate Keller: For how long?
Annie Sullivan: Until she learns to listen to and depend on me.
Captain Arthur Keller: Miss Sullivan...
Annie Sullivan: Captain Keller, it meets both of your conditions. It's the one way I can get back in touch with Helen, and I don't see how I can be rude to you again if you're not around to interfere with me.
Captain Arthur Keller: And what's your plan if I say no? Pack the other half for home and abandon your charge to... to...
Annie Sullivan: The asylum? I grew up in such an asylum, the State Alms House. Rats? Why, my brother Jimmy and I used to play with the rats because we didn't have any toys. Maybe you'd like to know what Helen will find there, not on visiting days. One ward was full of the old women. Crippled, blind, most of them dying, but even if what they had was catching, there was nowhere else to move them. That's where they put us. Then there were younger ones across the hall, prostitutes mostly, with TB and epileptic fits. And some of the kind that keep after other girls, especially the young ones. And some were just insane. Some had the DTs. Then there were girls in another ward to have babies they didn't want. They started at thirteen, fourteen. They left afterwards, but the babies stayed. We played with them, too. There were a lot of them, with sores all over from diseases you're not supposed to talk about.

Annie Sullivan: It's less trouble to feel sorry for her than it is to teach her anything better.

Annie Sullivan: Pity for this tyrant? Is there anything she wants she doesn't get? I'll tell you what I pity... that the sun won't rise and set for her all her life, and every day you're telling her it will. What you and your pity do will destroy her, Captain Keller.