“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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“It was one of those moments when you can look in someone else’s eyes and see your own reflection so sharp and true that it slices like glass.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Strange Candy
“For once I am living my life rather than watching it pass in review.”
― Lee Smith, quote from Oral History
“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another” (Gal. 5:17). They are in opposition because the Holy Spirit, like Jesus, will not operate independently of our heavenly Father, but the flesh does. The flesh may be defined as existence apart from God—a life dominated by sin or a drive opposed to God. The flesh is self-reliant rather than God-dependent; it is self-centered rather than Christ-centered.”
― Neil T. Anderson, quote from Victory Over the Darkness
“that's what God does. He moves the wind across the water or leaves it still. He can do all that. That's God doing that and He can do it on any lake that He wants to.”
― quote from Life is So Good
“Europe is haunted by the shadow of the Emperor. One senses his absence just as vividly as in former times one sensed his presence. Because the emptiness of the wound speaks, that which we miss knows how to make us sense it.
Napoleon, eye-witness to the French Revolution, understood the direction which Europe had taken—the direction towards the complete destruction of hierarchy. And he sensed the shadow of the Emperor. He knew what had to be restored in Europe, which was not the royal throne of France—because kings cannot exist for long without the Emperor—but rather the imperial throne of Europe. So he decided to fill the gap himself. He made himself Emperor and he made his brothers kings. But it was to the sword that he took recourse. Instead of ruling by the sceptre—the globe bearing the cross—he made the decision to rule by the sword. But, “all who take up the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew xxvi, 52). Hitler also had the delirium of desire to occupy the empty place of the Emperor. He believed he could establish the “thousand-year empire” of tyranny by means of the sword. But again—“all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword”.
No, the post of the Emperor does not belong any longer either to those who desire it or to the choice of the people. It is reserved to the choice of heaven alone. It has become occult. And the crown, the sceptre, the throne, the coat-of-arms of the Emperor are to be found in the catacombs…in the catacombs—this means to say: under absolute protection.”
― quote from Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
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The Before Now and A...BookQuoters 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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