August: Osage County

Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.

My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.

I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.

We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.

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.

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.

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.

The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.

Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out of bed.

Something has been said for sobriety but very little.

We covered this around Year Three, Bill: that you're the Master of Space and Time and I'm a spastic Pomeranian.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She's the Indian who lives in my attic.

BARBARA: They're called Native Americans now, Mom. VIOLET: Who calls them that? Who makes that decision?

By night within that ancient house Immense, black, damned, anonymous.

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.

I don’t know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear . . .

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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.