Tracy Letts Quotes

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

  Tracy Letts

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

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

  Tracy Letts

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

  Tracy Letts

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• “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

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• “Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.”

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• “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.”

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• “Time wounds all heals.”

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• “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.”

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

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

  Tracy Letts

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• “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.”

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

  Tracy Letts

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

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• “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

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• “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.”

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• “EAT THE FISH, BITCH!”

  Tracy Letts

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• “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.”

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• “She's the Indian who lives in my attic.”

  Tracy Letts

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

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

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

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• “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

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• “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 . . .”

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• “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.”

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