Cat on a Hot Tin Roof quotes

View Quote Big Mama: There ain't nothin' wrong with Big Daddy but nerves...He's as sound as a dollar, and now he knows he is. That's why he ate such a supper. He had a load off his mind, knowin' he wasn't doomed to what he'd thought he was doomed to.

View Quote Brick Pollitt: Family crisis brings out the best and the worst in every member of the family.

View Quote Mae Flynn Pollitt: [about her children] They're all Pollitts, I'm proud to say, every one of 'em. And I know that Big Daddy's just as proud as we are knowin' there's a whole dynasty of his flesh and blood waitin' to take over.

View Quote Big Daddy: But it's always there in the morning, ain't it - the truth? And it's here right now. You're just feelin' sorry for yourself. That's all it is - self-pity. You didn't kill Skipper. He killed himself. You and Skipper and millions like ya are livin' in a kid's world, playin' games, touchdowns, no worries, no responsibilities. Life ain't no damn football game. Life ain't just a bunch of high spots. You're a thirty-year old kid. Soon you'll be a fifty-year old kid, pretendin' you're hearin' cheers when there ain't any. Dreamin' and drinkin' your life away. Heroes in the real world live twenty-four hours a day, not just two hours in a game. Mendacity, you won't...you won't live with mendacity but you're an expert at it. The truth is pain and sweat and payin' bills and makin' love to a woman that you don't love anymore. Truth is dreams that don't come true and nobody prints your name in the paper 'til you die...The truth is, you never grow'd up. Grown-ups don't hang up on their friends...and they don't hang up on their wives...and they don't hang up on life. Now that's the truth and that's what you can't face!
Brick: Can you face the truth...?
Big Daddy: Try me!
Brick: You or somebody else's truth?
Big Daddy: Bull. You're runnin' again.
Brick: Yeah, I am runnin'. Runnin' from lies, lies like birthday congratulations and many happy returns of the day when there won't be any...
Big Daddy [realizing that Brick is telling him he is dying] I'll outlive you. I'll bury you. I'll buy your coffin...It's death, ain't it?
Brick: You said it yourself, Big Daddy, mendacity is a system we live in.

View Quote Big Daddy: I put up with a lot of bull around here because I thought I was dyin'. That's when you started takin' over. Your loud voice and your old busybody buttin' in here, there, and everywhere. Sashayin' around here, makin' a big noise like a boss. I'm the only boss around here. I built this place with no help from you. And I'll run this place 'til the day I die. Now is that plain to ya, Ida? Is that perfectly clear to ya? Now I ain't gonna die. There ain't nothin' wrong with me but a spastic colon! Made spastic, I reckon, by all the lies and liars I've had to put up with around here. And all the hypocrisy I've had to live with these forty years I've lived with you.
Big Mama: In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.

View Quote Big Daddy: I suddenly noticed that you don't call me Big Daddy anymore. Ah, if you needed a Big Daddy, why didn't you come to me? You wanted somebody to lean on, why Skipper and why not me? I'm your father! I'm Big Daddy. Me! Why didn't you come to your kinfolks - the peoples that love ya?
Brick: You don't know what love means. To you, it's just another four letter word.
Big Daddy: Why you've got a mighty short memory. What was there that you wanted that I didn't buy for ya...
Brick: You can't buy love! You bought yourself a million dollars worth of junk. Look at it. Does it love you?
Big Daddy: Who'd you think I bought it for? Me? It's yours. The place, the money, every rotten thing is yours!
Brick: I don't want things! [He pushes down and smashes vases, an old athletic trophy and other ac****ulated objects]...Waste! Worthless! Worthless! ...[He destroys a life-sized poster of himself throwing a football and then breaks down in a fit of uncontrollable tears]
Big Daddy: Don't son. Please don't cry, boy. That's funny. I never saw you cry before. How's that? Did you ever cry...?
Brick: Can't you understand? I never wanted your place or your money or any-...I don't wanna own anything. All I wanted was a father, not a boss - I wanted you to love me.
Big Daddy: I did and I do.
Brick: No. Not me, and not Gooper, and not even Mama.
Big Daddy: That's a lie. I did love her. I give her anything, everything she wanted...
Brick: Things. Things, Papa. You gave her things. A house, a trip to Europe, all this junk, some jewelry, things. You gave her things, Papa, not love.
Big Daddy: I gave, I gave her an empire, boy...
Brick: The men who build empires die, and empires die too.
Big Daddy: No. No it won't. That's why I've got you and Gooper.
Brick: Look at Gooper. Look at what he's become. Is that what you wanted him to be? And look at me. You put it very well indeed. I'm a thirty year old kid and pretty soon, I'm gonna be a fifty year old kid. I don't know what to believe in. Now what's the good of livin' if you've got nothin' to believe in? There's gotta be some, some purpose in life, some meanin'. Look at me, for the sake of God, look at me before it's too late. For once in your life, look at me as I really am. Look at me. I'm a failure. I'm a drunk. On my own in the open market, I'm not worth the price of a decent burial.
Big Daddy: You and Gooper and the rest of ya, blamin' me for everythin', huh?
Brick: Nobody, just...We've known each other all my life, and we're strangers. Now you own twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest..., you own ten million dollars, you own a wife and two children, you own us but you don't love us.
Big Daddy: In my own way, I've...
Brick: No sir. You don't even like people. You wanted Gooper to have kids. You wanted me to have kids. Why?
Big Daddy: 'Cause I want a part of me to keep on living. I won't have an end with the grave. Look. This is what my father left me. A lousy old suitcase. Now on the inside was nothin'. Nothin' but his uniform from the Spanish-American War. This was his legacy to me. Nothin' at all. And I built this place from nothin'.
...
Big Daddy: [about morphine, as the pain hits] I'm not gonna stupify myself with that stuff. I wanna think clear. I wanna see everything and I wanna feel everything. I won't mind goin'. I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, 'Have you got the guts to live?'

View Quote Big Daddy: Now, why do ya drink?!
Brick: Give me my crutch.
Big Daddy: Tell me first.
Brick: No, you give me a drink first and I'll tell ya.
Big Daddy: Tell me first! First you gotta tell me!
Brick: All right, disgust!
Big Daddy: DISGUST WITH WHAT?
Brick: You strike a hard bargain.
Big Daddy: Boy, do you want liquor that bad?
Brick: Yes, sir. I want liquor that bad. [Big Daddy hands him his crutch]
Big Daddy: Now tell me, what are you disgusted with?
Brick: Mendacity. You know what that is. It's lies and liars.
Big Daddy: Who's been lyin' to ya? Maggie? Has your wife been lyin' to ya?
Brick: No. Not one lie, not one person. The whole thing.
Big daddy: Mendacity. What do you know about mendacity? I could write a book on it...Mendacity. Look at all the lies that I got to put up with. Pretenses. Hypocrisy. Pretendin' like I care for Big Mama, I haven't been able to stand that woman in forty years. Church! It bores me. But I go. And all those swindlin' lodges and social clubs and money-grabbin' auxiliaries. It's-it's got me on the number one sucker list. Boy, I've lived with mendacity. Now why can't you live with it? You've got to live with it. There's nothin' to live with but mendacity. Is there?
Brick: Oh, yes sir. [Lifting his glass] You can live with this.
Big Daddy: That's not livin', that's a-dodgin away from life.
Brick: I want to dodge away from it.
Big Daddy: Then son, why don't you kill yourself?
Brick: 'Cause I like to drink.
Big Daddy: I can't talk to you.
Brick: I'm sorry.

View Quote Big Daddy: They say Maggie sleeps on the bed and you sleep on the sofa. Is that true or not? If you don't like Maggie, get rid of her! What are you doin' over there now?
Brick: Fresh'nin' up my drink.
Big Daddy: Son, you know you got a real liquor problem?
Brick: Yes sir, I know.
Big Daddy: Is that why you quit your job, sports announcin', because of the liquor?
Brick: I guess so, yes sir, that's it.
Big Daddy: Don't guess about it, son, it's too important.

View Quote Big Daddy: What are you runnin' away from? Why'd you hang up on Skipper when he called you? Answer me. What did he say? Was it about him and Maggie?
Brick: He said they'd made love.
Big Daddy: And you believed him.
Brick: Yes.
Big Daddy: Then why haven't you thrown her out? Somethin's missin' here. Now, now why did Skipper kill himself?
Brick: 'Cause somebody let him down. I let him down. When he called that night, I couldn't make much sense out of...There was one thing that was sure. Skipper was scared. Scared! It would happen that day on the football field, that I'd blame him, scared that I'd walk out on him. Skipper afraid - I couldn't believe that. I mean inside, he was real deep-down scared. And he broke like a rotten stick. He started cryin': 'I need you.' He kept babblin': 'Help me! Help me!' Me help him? How does one drownin' man help another drownin' man?
Big Daddy: So you hung up on him.
Brick: And then that phone started to ring again. And it rang and it rang and it wouldn't stop ringin'. And I lay in that hospital bed. I was unable to move or run from that sound and still, it kept ringin' louder and louder! And the sound of that was like Skipper screamin' for help. And I couldn't pick it up.
Big Daddy: So that's when he killed himself.
Brick: Yep. 'Cause I let him down. [Tears well up in his eyes] So that disgust with mendacity is really disgust with myself. And when I hear that click in my head, I don't hear the sound of that phone ringin' anymore. And I can stop thinkin'. I'm ashamed, Big Daddy. That's why I'm a drunk. When I'm drunk, I can stand myself.

View Quote Big Daddy: Why did you and Brick suddenly decide to drive up from New Orleans?
Maggie: For your birthday, what else?
Big Daddy: I had a birthday last year and the year before. I didn't see ya then.
Maggie: Well, you know how Brick is sometimes.
Big Daddy: Maybe he thought he was comin' to my funeral instead of my birthday?
Maggie: Why Brick loves you! Well he does.
Big Daddy: But does he love you?
Maggie: What do you want - Truth?
Big Daddy: If I was married to you three years, you'd have the livin' proof. You'd have three kids already and the fourth in the oven.

View Quote Big Daddy: You expect me to turn over twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of valley Nile to a fool on the bottle?
Brick: No sir.
Big Daddy: I like you son, but why should I subsidize worthless behavior? Rot? Corruption?
Brick: Then turn it over to Gooper and Mae.
Big Daddy: I can't stand Gooper and Mae and those five screamin' monkeys. You know, I don't have to turn it over to any of ya. This day, I ain't made no will. And now I don't have to. The pressure's off. I can just wait and see if you pull yourself together or if you don't... [tenderly] Let's don't leave it like this, like all them other talks we've had. We always seem to talk around things. We seem to leave things unsaid and unspoken. But now we gotta talk straight.

View Quote Big Mama: Oh shoot, Maggie, you just don't like children.
Maggie: Why that's not true! I adore them - well brought up.
Big Mama: Well why don't you have some then and bring them up well instead of all the time pickin' on Gooper's an' Mae's?
Maggie: ...Big Mama, what you said about havin' children, it's still kind of a secret but...
Big Mama: Oh shoot, Maggie, stop playing so dumb. I mean, is he still drinkin' this stuff much?
Maggie: Oh, well he may have had a little highball...
Big Mama: Don't laugh about it! Some single men stop drinking when they get married. Others start. Brick never touched liquor before he was...
Maggie: [crying out] THAT'S NOT FAIR.
Big Mama: Fair or not fair. I want to ask you a question, one question: 'Do ya make Brick happy?' Well?
Maggie: Why don't you ask me if he makes me happy?
Big Mama: Cause I know that ...
Maggie: It works both ways.
Big Mama: Somethin' ain't right. You're childless and our son drinks... [she pats the bed for emphasis] When a marriage goes on the rocks, the rocks are there, right there!
Maggie: [now alone in the room] That's not fair.

View Quote Big Mama: The exploratory operation proved there's nothin' wrong with Big Daddy. Nothin' at all. Just a little ol' spastic colon and that's all.
Maggie: That's the best birthday present of all.
...
Big Daddy: Well, I'm gonna live, Maggie, I'm gonna live. You know, they had me real scared. You know, I've wasted so much time, you know, I've got a million different kinds of feelings left in me. And I want to use 'em. I want to use 'em all.

View Quote Brick: [about Maggie and Mae] Well, they're a couple of cats. They're sittin' on the middle of a big piece of land, you know, twenty-eight thousand acres - that's a lot of land. And they're both squarin' off, each determined to knock off a bigger piece whenever you let go.
Big Daddy: Well, I got a surprise for them babies. I ain't gonna let go for a long time yet if that's what they're waitin' for.

View Quote Brick: [after Maggie closes and locks the door] Now what did you do that for, Maggie?
Maggie: To give us a little privacy for a while.
Brick: Don't make a fool of yourself, Maggie.
Maggie: I don't mind makin' a fool of myself over you.
Brick: Well I mind. I feel embarrassed for you.
Maggie: Feel embarrassed! But I can't live on this way.
Brick: Now you agreed to accept that condition.
Maggie: I know I did, but I can't, I can't. [She fiercely hugs him.]
Brick: Let go, Maggie. [She doesn't respond and he pulls her away.] Now let go, Maggie.