Top 96 Quotes About Letts
#1. The nature of the beast is that film is a director's medium. It's not a Tracy Letts play, it's a John Wells film. 'August: Osage County,' as a play, is done. Written. On the shelf. It'll be performed in its entirety for years.
Tracy Letts
#2. Who letts his wife goe to every feast, and his horse drinke at every water, shall neither have good wife nor good horse.
George Herbert
#4. BARBARA: They're called Native Americans now, Mom.
VIOLET: Who calls them that? Who makes that decision?
Tracy Letts
#5. I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.
Tracy Letts
#6. Home is the place that'll catch you when you fall. And we all fall.
Billie Letts
#7. My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.
Tracy Letts
#8. Just as ballroom dancing and pair skating command partners to work together seamlessly, in the sport of dressage, the rider performers an intricate pas de deux with his partner - a twelve-hundred-pound four-footed beast.
Elizabeth Letts
#9. 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
#10. I do think the internet has killed the mystery of the planet. It's removed the pain, the passion, and the struggle - I firmly believe they're all part of creativity.
Don Letts
#11. I like Shakespeare, but I never know what the hell is going on.
Tracy Letts
#12. She always set three alarms for fear that the first employees to arrive would discover her sleeping - a Goldilocks without her bears
Billie Letts
#13. BARBARA: You're never coming back to me, are you, Bill? BILL: Never say never, but ... BARBARA: But no. BILL: But no.
Tracy Letts
#14. 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
#15. CHARLIE: So you can't even see Ivy's point? MATTIE FAE: No. CHARLIE: That Little Charles and Beverly share some kind of ... complication. MATTIE FAE: Honey, you have to be smart to be complicated. CHARLIE: That's our boy. Are you saying our boy isn't smart? MATTIE FAE: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Tracy Letts
#16. 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
#17. A man can't love you because you haven't read as many books as he has? He can't love you because you don't speak French or because you don't go to operas? You're telling me we have to fall in love with people who are just like us?
Billie Letts
#18. Sometimes my family thinks I've made my childhood a bit more Dickensian than it was, and it probably wasn't all that bad. But I was uncomfortable as a kid.
Tracy Letts
#19. Beauty is learned, my love, and you know every trick in the book,
Jason Letts
#20. 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
#21. I never know what the hell I'm writing about, I never know what the next thing I'm writing about is, I never have a plan.
Tracy Letts
#22. I'm sick of the whole notion of the enduring female. GROW UP! 'Cause while you're going through your fifth puberty, the world is falling apart and I can't handle it! (Barbara Weston)
Tracy Letts
#23. 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
Tracy Letts
#24. Novalee watched his lips shape the words ... the sounds, like whispered secrets, hanging in the air.
Billie Letts
#25. If you're not entertaining, what the hell's the point?
Tracy Letts
#26. Home gives you something no other place can ... your history. Home is where your history begins.
Billie Letts
#27. One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations.
Tracy Letts
#28. Thank God we can't tell the future. We'd never get out of bed.
Tracy Letts
#29. Thank God we can't see the future, we'd never get out of bed.
Tracy Letts
#30. We're all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.
Tracy Letts
#31. 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?
Tracy Letts
#32. I like it when actors get an opportunity to chew into something. They love scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends - scenes that give an arc to their characters and allow audiences to get to know these people.
Tracy Letts
#33. The stallion's crest was arched, his nose was perpendicular to the floor, and his hind legs were gathered underneath him, showing off the powerfully developed muscles in his massive hindquarters. His ears cocked back toward his rider - he was concentrating.
Elizabeth Letts
#34. I try to write fun - though difficult and challenging - things for actors to do, because I know if they're having fun, they're going to give it everything they got.
Tracy Letts
#35. If you feel like you're in control of everything, and then things aren't going well, you feel like you're failing.
Tracy Letts
#36. After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.
Tracy Letts
#37. I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
Tracy Letts
#38. 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
Tracy Letts
#39. We covered this around Year Three, Bill: that you're the Master of Space and Time and I'm a spastic Pomeranian.
Tracy Letts
#40. I used to be afraid of the dark. But sometimes, it's the best place to be. Sometimes you can see things in the dark that you can't see in the light.
Billie Letts
#41. I don't believe moviegoers don't have patience. Screenwriters are told a scene can't be longer than three minutes, that you have to cut to the chase. Not true!
Tracy Letts
#42. I'm aware that a film is different than a play, and that a film isn't going to be the filmed record of the play. It's its own separate entity, and I've come to peace with that.
Tracy Letts
#43. You ever think about this? Every year you live, you pass the anniversary of your death. Now you don't know what day it is, of course.
Billie Letts
#44. 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.
Tracy Letts
#45. Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age ... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.
Tracy Letts
#46. I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good.
Tracy Letts
#47. What they frequently want to do with a movie is, they want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks. And valleys are important; the valleys make the peaks stand out.
Tracy Letts
#48. The money The girl stiffened at something she heard in his voice, something jagged and sharp, like words torn by the blade of a knife.
Billie Letts
#49. Basically the subcultures formed in the U.K. because the mainstream was not satisfying the needs of certain people like myself. So through music and through style, we found our tribe, we found like-minded rebels.
Don Letts
#51. Never act like you want it, darlin'. Act like you wouldn't own it if they paid you. Tell them it's dirty, broken ... a useless thing. Then make an offer.
Billie Letts
#52. I used to think that if I were a certain kind of person I would spend all my time creating something beautiful. Well, it turns out I am, and I am.
Jason Letts
#53. The boy, a ten-year-old copy of the man...
Billie Letts
#54. I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies.
Tracy Letts
#55. And the needles of the pine trees, freshly washed to a deep, rich green, shimmered with droplets that blinked like clear crystals.
Billie Letts
#56. That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it.
Winifred Mary Letts
#57. 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!
Tracy Letts
#58. The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.
Tracy Letts
#59. I said to my wife just the other day, I was actually taking some time to consider all the blessings in my life and that things are really good. I said, you would have to be a real churl to complain about the life I'm living right now. Everything's going great. I'm having a good time.
Tracy Letts
#60. In England, where I come from, fashion and music go hand in hand. They're integral to each other.
Don Letts
#61. VIOLET: Oh, horseshit, horeshit, let's all say horseshit. Say horseshit, Bill.
BILL: Horseshit.
Tracy Letts
#62. A normal person is just someone you don't know real well.
Tracey Letts
#63. I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.
Tracy Letts
#64. Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.
Tracy Letts
#65. In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.
Tracy Letts
#67. MATTIE FAE: I'm still very sexy, thank you very much. VIOLET: You're about as sexy as a wet cardboard box, Mattie Fae, you and me both. Don't kid yourself.
Tracy Letts
#68. I'm kind of perverse in that I think pessimism is helpful. My pessimism is my own kind of patriotism. My dissent.
Tracy Letts
#69. Fantastic," I said without an ounce of enthusiasm. "I'm just one more embarrassing confession away from taking over the world."
Spencer Nye
Jason Letts
#70. Some small and very specialized breeding operations bred saddle horses for hunter and jumper competitions - these tended to be small-scale operations owned by wealthy private breeders who kept one or two horses at stud.
Elizabeth Letts
#71. Great dressage demands more than skill; it engages a rider's inner wisdom and his ability to communicate with a mount in the silent language of horsemanship.
Elizabeth Letts
#72. But if it's something you want, then time doesn't matter. Time doesn't matter at all.
Billie Letts
#73. 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
#74. The way we tell our stories on stage is that we use spoken word to convey action, and in movies, we use visual images to convey action.
Tracy Letts
#75. The whole journey of style-driven subcultural movements is finished now in the UK. The internet kind of killed it.
Don Letts
#76. 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
#77. Come on, Forney.'
Novalee, it's a parasite.'
But it's a tradition.'
It's a parasite! And you expect people to stand under it and kiss?'
Yes! it's what people do with mistletoe.
Billie Letts
#78. 'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
Tracy Letts
#79. A certain giving up of control is good for the soul.
Tracy Letts
#80. Tell them that our lives can change with every breath we take. Lord, we both know that. Tell them to let go of what's gone because men like roger Briscoe never win. And tell them to hold on like hell to what they've got- each other, and a mother who would die for them, and almost did.
Billie Letts
#81. Awake, she struggled to fill the hours until she could sleep again. But nothing she did made her feel whole. If she ate, she didn't taste the food. If she read, she couldn't remember the words. If she rested, she still felt tired
Billie Letts
#82. Our lives can change with every breath we take.
Billie Letts
#83. Remember this: change is brought about by good purpose.
Billie Letts
#84. An old adage says that a good rider can hear his horse speak and a great rider can hear his horse whisper.
Elizabeth Letts
#85. I'm fifty-six years old - I'm as old as rock 'n roll.
Don Letts
#86. When books and plays are made into movies, they frequently want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks.
Tracy Letts
#87. I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The gray spires of Oxford Against a pearl-gray sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.
Winifred Mary Letts
#88. Tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That's why we've got to make sure we pass it on.
Billie Letts
#90. I'm just a Chicago actor who's a playwright. Even with the success of 'August,' the people in town who come to our theater know me by sight, because they've seen me onstage so much.
Tracy Letts
#91. Only Certain offered no enticements, for she knew nothing could ease the pain. Not books or photography or food. Not even love.
Billie Letts
#92. You don't work as hard to watch a movie. You work harder to watch a play, so what the audience puts into it is interesting.
Tracy Letts
#93. She's the Indian who lives in my attic.
Tracy Letts
#94. By night within that ancient house Immense, black, damned, anonymous.
Tracy Letts
#95. 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
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