Quotes from Tracy Letts

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

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

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.

VIOLET: Oh, horseshit, horeshit, let's all say horseshit. Say horseshit, Bill. BILL: Horseshit.

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

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: 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.

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.

She's the Indian who lives in my attic.

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.

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.

BILL: I have not forsook my responsibilities!- BARBARA: It's "forsaken," big shot! BILL: Actually, "forsook" is also an acceptable usage!- BARBARA: Oh, "forsook" you and the horse you rose in on!

Thank God we can't see the future, we'd never get out of bed.

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.

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.

BILL: Please, sweetheart, we need to know what went on here. JEAN: Nothing "went on." Can we just not make a federal case out of everything?

Now think of it this way: which do you think would be better for Dottie, havin' ten thousand dollars so maybe she could go to that Amazon school, or havin' a beat-up, old, ugly, naggy, alcoholic

Now think of it this way: which do you think would be better for Dottie, havin' ten thousand dollars so maybe she could go to that Amazon school, or havin' a beat-up, old, ugly, naggy, alcoholic mother for another twenty years or so?

STEVE: No, we maintain the accounts offshore, just until we get approvals. BILL: To get around approvals? STEVE: To get around approvals until we get approvals. There's a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy. I

Does everybody have a point at which they have to look in the mirror and ask themselves some of the bigger questions? Is it possible to go through life without ever doing that?