“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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“To fear what you do not understand is to mistake ignorance for safety.”
― Ginn Hale, quote from Lord of the White Hell, Book 1
“Just as we leave the effects of our work behind in results, we leave the effects of our interactions with people in their hearts, minds, and souls.”
― Henry Cloud, quote from Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality
“The banishing of a leper seems harsh, unnecessary. The Ancient East hasn’t been the only culture to isolate their wounded, however. We may not build colonies or cover our mouths in their presence, but we certainly build walls and duck our eyes. And a person needn’t have leprosy to feel quarantined. One of my sadder memories involves my fourth-grade friend Jerry.1He and a half-dozen of us were an ever-present, inseparable fixture on the playground. One day I called his house to see if we could play. The phone was answered by a cursing, drunken voice telling me Jerry could not come over that day or any day. I told my friends what had happened. One of them explained that Jerry’s father was an alcoholic. I don’t know if I knew what the word meant, but I learned quickly. Jerry, the second baseman; Jerry, the kid with the red bike; Jerry, my friend on the corner was now “Jerry, the son of a drunk.” Kids can be hard, and for some reason we were hard on Jerry. He was infected. Like the leper, he suffered from a condition he didn’t create. Like the leper, he was put outside the village. The divorced know this feeling. So do the handicapped. The unemployed have felt it, as have the less educated. Some shun unmarried moms. We keep our distance from the depressed and avoid the terminally ill. We have neighborhoods for immigrants, convalescent homes for the elderly, schools for the simple, centers for the addicted, and prisons for the criminals. The rest simply try to get away from it all. Only God knows how many Jerrys are in voluntary exile—individuals living quiet, lonely lives infected by their fear of rejection and their memories of the last time they tried. They choose not to be touched at all rather than risk being hurt again.”
― Max Lucado, quote from Just Like Jesus: Learning to Have a Heart Like His
“At that age, they’re as happy as they can be. Life seems endless, the sorrows few.”
― Henning Mankell, quote from One Step Behind
“if we as human beings saw the intimate connection between all these, between politics, religion, economics, and social life, if we saw the connection, then we would not think and act separately, individualistically.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, quote from Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
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