Tracy Letts Quotes & Sayings

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

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

'Killer Joe' was originally written in 1991 and first produced in '93 at the Next Theater's Lab - a 40 seat black box theater in Evanston, Illinois - back when I was getting started. I was just 25 and I had been acting for awhile, but it was my first play and the one that really got me noticed, especially by Steppenwolf. — Tracy Letts

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

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

I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies. — Tracy Letts

If you're not entertaining, what the hell's the point? — Tracy Letts

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

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

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

A certain giving up of control is good for the soul. — Tracy Letts

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

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

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

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

I'm kind of perverse in that I think pessimism is helpful. My pessimism is my own kind of patriotism. My dissent. — Tracy Letts

You know, people see [August: Osage County], and I tell them that it's based on my family, and they assume that I came from some kind of horrible, hysterical circumstances. That's not true. My family, my nuclear family, was actually very close. My mom and dad were great parents and they encouraged a real rich, creative life for me and my brothers. My extended family, like every family, has some darkness, and some violence of some kind, emotional or otherwise, in their past. — Tracy Letts

It's not a natural translation, transition, to take something from stage to screen. Onstage your action is communicated through the spoken word primarily, and on screen it's communicated through pictures. So it's always been kind of unnatural to take something that lives on the stage and turn it into moving pictures. — Tracy Letts

Well, one of the things we're supposed to be able to do as playwrights is write from a place of empathy, get into another character's shoes and experience things both mundane and tragic. And people don't
like me right now
people aren't necessarily the most eloquent when trying to express their emotions. I guess I feel as a playwright that those people deserve a voice, too, a voice that isn't so articulate that they themselves can no longer identify with it. — Tracy Letts

Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat. — Tracy Letts

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

BARBARA: You're never coming back to me, are you, Bill? BILL: Never say never, but ... BARBARA: But no. BILL: But no. — Tracy Letts

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

When books and plays are made into movies, they frequently want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks. — Tracy Letts

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

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

She's the Indian who lives in my attic. — Tracy Letts

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

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

I don't have a great face for camera. — Tracy Letts

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

Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'm quite sure that any of the actors who did the original production of 'August' could have done the film of 'August.' I don't think any of them were particularly surprised when they didn't wind up doing the film. — Tracy Letts

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

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

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

Time wounds all heals. — Tracy Letts

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

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

One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations. — Tracy Letts

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

EAT THE FISH, BITCH! — Tracy Letts

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

BARBARA: Even if things don't work out with you and Marsha. BILL: Cindy. BARBARA: Cindy. BILL: Right. Even if things don't work out. BARBARA: And I'm never really going to understand why, am I? (Bill struggles ... it seems as if he might say something more, but then BILL: Probably not. (Silence. Bill heads for the door. Barbara watches him go and sobs.) BARBARA: I love you ... I love you ... (He stands for a moment, his back to her. He exits. Barbara stands, alone.) — Tracy Letts

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

'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

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

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

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

When I write a play, and we read it for the first time, the great fear is that everybody is going to say, 'You're a bum and you can't write. This stinks.' and throw the script in the garbage. The great hope is that they're all going to lift me up on their shoulders and carry me to the streets, singing, 'He's a genius, he's a genius!' — Tracy Letts

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

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

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

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

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

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

You ever hear of Killer Joe Cooper? — Tracy Letts

I like Shakespeare, but I never know what the hell is going on. — Tracy Letts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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