“Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“You're thoughtful, Barbara, but you're not open. You're passionate, but you're hard. You're a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman, and I love you, but you're a pain in the ass.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“All women need makeup. Don't let anybody tell you different. The only woman who was pretty enough to go without makeup was Elizabeth Taylor and she wore a ton.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“Hey. Please. This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest, God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out of bed.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“Something has been said for sobriety but very little.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“We covered this around Year Three, Bill: that you're the Master of Space and Time and I'm a spastic Pomeranian.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“VIOLET: Oh, horseshit, horeshit, let's all say horseshit. Say horseshit, Bill.
BILL: Horseshit.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“My point is, it’s not cut and dried, black and white, good and bad. It lives where everything lives: somewhere in the middle. Where everything lives, where all the rest of us live, everyone but you.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“BARBARA: You do understand that it hurts, to go from sharing a bed with you for twenty-three years to sleeping by myself. BILL: I’m here, now. BARBARA: Men always say shit like that, as if the past and the future don’t exist. BILL: Can we not make this a gender discussion? BARBARA: Do men really believe that here and now is enough? It’s just horseshit, to avoid talking about the things they’re afraid to say.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“JOHNNA: What pills does she take? BEVERLY: Valium. Vicodin. Darvon, Darvocet. Percodan, Percocet. Xanax for fun. OxyContin in a pinch. Some Black Mollies once, just to make sure I was still paying attention. And of course Dilaudid. I shouldn’t forget Dilaudid.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“IVY: Mom believes women don’t grow more attractive with age. KAREN: Oh, I disagree, I— VIOLET: I didn’t say they “don’t grow more attractive,” I said they get ugly. And it’s not really a matter of opinion, Karen dear. You’ve only just started to prove it yourself.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“She's the Indian who lives in my attic.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“BARBARA: They're called Native Americans now, Mom.
VIOLET: Who calls them that? Who makes that decision?”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“By night within that ancient house Immense, black, damned, anonymous.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“IVY: This isn’t whimsy. This isn’t fleeting. This is unlike anything I’ve ever felt, for anybody. Charles and I have something rare, and extraordinary, something very few people ever have. KAREN: Which is what? IVY: Understanding.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“I don’t know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear . . .”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“MATTIE FAE: I don’t believe you. Watchin’ the baseball game and drinkin’ beers. Don’t you have any sense of what’s going on around you? This situation is fraught. CHARLIE: Am I supposed to sit here like a statue? You’re drinking whiskey. MATTIE FAE: I’m having a cocktail. CHARLIE: You’re drinking straight whiskey. MATTIE FAE: Just . . . show a little class.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“BARBARA: One of the last times I spoke with my father, we were talking about . . . I don’t know, the state of the world, something . . . and he said, “You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse, but at least it used to have some promise. Now it’s just a shithole.” And I think now maybe he was talking about something else, something more specific, something more personal to him . . . this house? This family? His marriage? Himself? I don’t know. But there was something sad in his voice—or no, not sad, he always sounded sad—something more hopeless than that. As if it had already happened. As if whatever was disappearing had already disappeared. As if it was too late. As if it was already over. And no one saw it go. This country, this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go. Here today, gone tomorrow. (Beat) Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“VIOLET: August . . . your month. Locusts are raging. “Summer psalm become summer wrath.” ’Course it’s only August out there. In here . . . who knows? All right . . . okay. “The Carriage held but just Ourselves,” dum-de-dum . . . mm, best I got . . . Emily Dickinson’s all I got . . . something something, “Horse’s Heads Were Toward Eternity . . .”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“BARBARA: Johnna . . . what did my father say to you? (Pause.) JOHNNA: He talked a lot about his daughters . . . his three daughters, and his granddaughter. That was his joy. BARBARA: Thank you. That makes me feel better. Knowing that you can lie.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse, but at least it used to have some promise. Now it’s just a shithole.”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
Tracy Letts
Born place: in Tulsa, Oklahoma, The United States
Born date July 4, 1965
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“What is it that demands an answer but never asks a question?”
― quote from Monster
“Weight Watchers holds as a descriptive axiom the transparently true fact that for each of us the universe is deeply and sharply and completely divided into for example in my case, me, on one side, and everything else, on the other. This for each of us exhaustively defines the whole universe... And then they hold by a prescriptive axiom the undoubtedly equally true and inarguable fact that we each ought to desire our own universe to be as full as possible, that the Great Horror consists in an empty, rattling personal universe, one where one finds oneself with Self, on one hand, and vastly empty lonely spaces before Others begin to enter the picture at all, on the other. A non-full universe... The emptier one’s universe is, the worse it is... Weight Watchers perceives the problem as one involving the need to have as much Other around as possible, so that the relation is one of minimum Self to maximum Other... We each need a full universe. Weight Watchers and their allies would have us systematically decrease the Self-component of the universe, so that the great Other-set will be physically attracted to the now more physically attractive Self, and rush in to fill the void caused by that diminution of Self. Certainly not incorrect, but just as certainly only half of the range of valid solutions to the full-universe problem... Is my drift getting palpable? Just as in genetic engineering... There is always more than one solution... An autonomously full universe... Rather than diminishing Self to entice Other to fill our universe, we may also of course obviously choose to fill the universe with Self... Yes. I plan to grow to infinite size... There will of course eventually cease to be room for anyone else in the universe at all.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from The Broom of the System
“Monopoly belonged to me and Alex. It was our game and they would never understand. There were strategies and traditions and they would never get all its complexities.
I didn't want them to play it.
I strode to the Toy Department for another divider, thinking that I would never play Monopoly with anyone besides Alex, ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever.
It was possible I was behaving somewhat like a child.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Sky on Fire
“She'd cook like an angel and fuck like a whore”
― Val McDermid, quote from Cross and Burn
“And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Treason
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Thomas the RhymerBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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