The Money Pit Quotes

Walter: Ahh, home crap home!

Walter: Mozart? Mozart is dead, his problems are over, help ME!

Walter: What has Max got that I haven't got?
Anna: Walls.

Anna: That is such a dumb idea. Sometimes it amazes me you ever passed the bar.
Walter: I'm sure it does, you've never passed a bar in you life.
Anna: You are so much less attractive when I'm sober.
Walter: Thank goodness it's not that often.

Walter: Stairs! Ha! A Staircase! We have stairs! Oh, hello, Mr. Stairs. I've missed you.

Walter: I'm not trying to tell you your business but you haven't even looked at my pipes.
Brad Shirk: I looked at them three years ago. You figure they've improved with age?

Walter: You know what this is? This is the short line in Motor Vehicles.
Anna: What?
Walter: Yeah! You go to Motor Vehicles to get your license renewed, and you get on this line that reaches to Spain, and right next to it is this little short line with only two guys on it, but you don't get on that line, 'cause you think something must be "wrong" with it - otherwise everyone else would be on it - so you waste three hours!
Anna: I got on the short line once. It was for farm vehicles.

Water Fielding: Do you know how hard it is to find a really good carpenter? Besides, I think he's got a brother who's a plumber!
Anna Crowley: Really? A brother who's a plumber?
Water Fielding: I think so.
Anna Crowley: Do you think I should sleep with him?
Water Fielding: Maybe just this once.

Walter Fielding: Just because they showed up to collect the money, is no guarantee that they'll show up to do the work... and if they do... I can't pay for it!

Walter: Look, I'm very sorry I wasn't here this afternoon. What can I say? My wife was poisoned and taken to the hospital. Well, what would cut any ice with you? A bribe? Sure, can you be here in a half an hour? All right. Cash, no problem.

Anna: This is my house, too. I want to help.
Walter: Do you have a gun?

Walter: Is it me? I'm speaking so loud I'm hallucinating! For a while, I thought the Care Bears were here!

Art Shirk: Usually when a women calls a carpenter, she want the old hammer and nail.


Walter: Jack can help us.
Anna: Isn't Jack in jail?
Walter: No. No, he got off with a small fine. Jack's a perfectly legitimate real estate agent.

Jack: The point is: You get to capitalize on a fellow human being's misfortune. That's the basis of real estate.

Max: What do you mean "no"? Why not?
Anna: I love Walter.
Max: "Walter"? What Walter?
Anna: Oh, Max, you know exactly what Walter.
Max: Don't be ridiculous. He's not even a musician.
Anna: Many people aren't.

Owner: Goddamn bloodsucking lawyers are bleeding me dry.

Anna: I'm putting in half the money, or I'm not going in.
Walter: Great!
Anna: I thought you'd give me an argument.
Walter: If I had any money, I would.

Walter: What the hell was that?
Anna: All I did was
turn on the water.

Walter: The land, at least, has got to be worth something.

Mattress Guy: Hey, buddy, did you really buy this house?

Walter: In spite of all the problems...
In spite of the prospect of indentured
servitude for the rest of my life, in debt beyond
my wildest dreams...I love the house.
Anna: So do I.
Walter: And I love you.

Walter: We have very weak trees.

Walter: Little problem in the kitchen. Nothing trivial.

Contractor: I'm from Shirk Brothers. Your number came up in the drawing this morning. We work today!

Anna: Max, I'm desperate. I need money. I need new plumbing. I need new appliances. A new staircase, Max.
Max: Stop, please. Too boring.
Anna: Plastering, landscaping, painting, a roof.
Max: Too middle class. Stop.

Contractor: The permit man was pretty agitated. Really steamed his clams. Said he'd be back when you grow udders and get milked.
Walter: That's a long time.

Walter: Honey, we're living in Swiss cheese with a door.

Walter: You hear about that guy up in the Bronx, went crazy, thought he was a pigeon? They found him in the park throwing bread crumbs at himself. He was just putting in a guest bathroom.


Anna: What have we done? Oh, my God!
Max: Calm down. You were a little looped. You sang a few songs.
Anna: The Beatles?
Max: The entire catalogue.
Anna: What else?
Max: You don't remember? It was duck for dinner. Followed by crepe Suzettes.
Anna: I don't remember the crepe Suzettes.
Max: You don't remember the piano?
Anna: No.
Max: Under the piano?
Anna: I don't wanna hear any more.
Max: It was incredible. Better than Zurich.
Anna: Zurich?
Max: The police came. You don't remember any of this?
Anna: Oh, no.


Walter: Did you sleep with him?
Anna: I hope you don't mind. Of course, we can't go back
to the Four Seasons again.

Walter: I do not wish to discuss
my domestic difficulties with you, Julio.

Anna: He couldn't forgive me,
and I can't forgive him for that.

Max: Do you realize what you've done? You've taken
a woman who loves you...One of the great women
on the face of this Earth and thrown her away.
I've lost her too, but I'll get over it
because I am shallow and self-centred.
But you, you won't
because you are complex.
You will suffer terrible anguish
for the rest of your life.


Driver: They testing missiles here?

Max: Can I speak frankly?
Anna: Anything is possible.

Walter: Here lies Walter Fielding. He bought a house, and it killed him.

Ani DiFranco Quotes and Lyrics

"You rhapsodize about beauty,
and my eyes glaze.
Everything that I love is ugly.
I mean really, you would be amazed.
Just do me a favor,
it's the least that you can do,
just don't treat me like I am
something that happened to you."


"I put a cup out on the windowsill
to catch the water as it fell.
Now I got a glass half full of rain
to measure the time between
when you said you'd come
and when you actually came."

"If you see me,
walk by.
You better just let me
walk by.
You better not
bat your pretty eyes.
You better not
stop me to say hi."

"She taught me how to wage a cold war
with quiet charm,
but I just want to walk
through my life unarmed."

"Like how could you do nothing,
and say, 'I'm doing my best.'
How could you take almost everything,
and then come back for the rest?
How could you beg me to stay,
reach out your hands and plead,
and then pack up your eyes and run away
as soon as I agreed?"

"I did not design this game.
I did not name the stakes.
I just happen to like apples,
and I am not afraid of snakes."

“Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.”

“Taken out of context I must seem so strange.”

“I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do then survive.”

"You've left me with nothing, but I have worked with less.”

“Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot.”

"God forbid you be an ugly girl, of course too pretty is also your doom, because everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room."

“My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.”

"I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between."

“Squint your eyes and look closer. I'm not between you and your ambitions."

"I owe my life to the people that I love.”

"Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"It seems that different people have an idea of what I am and what I should be. And then there's me."

"People need something or someone to fasten themselves to in order to reassure themselves that they are real."

"I smoke and I drink."

"Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say because if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way."

"Imagine you're a girl,
just trying to finally come clean,
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling."


"He was a handsome musician,
but he had an ugly scar.
You could not see it on him,
but you could hear it when he played guitar."


"I am writing graffiti on your body.
I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.
I am watching your chest rise and fall
like the tides of my life,
and the rest of it all.
And your bones have been my bedframe,
and your flesh has been my pillow.
I am waiting for sleep
to offer up the deep
with both hands."

"He didn't understand me, and
I don't know why I didn't go.
He didn't understand me, and
he had every chance to know."

"You were fresh off the boat
from Virginia,
I had a year of NYC
under my belt.
We met in a dream.
We were both 19.
I remember where we were standing,
I remember how it felt."

"I can jump ship and swim--
that the ocean will hold me,
that there's got to be more
than this boat I'm in."

"I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous."

“Self-preservation is a full-time occupation."

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Quotes - Betty Smith

"Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?"

"The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret."

I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, you'll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.

The library was a little old shaby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.

"Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and the picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!

No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion--the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke, she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line.

I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.

People looking up at her--at her smooth pretty vivacious face--had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.

Those were the Rommely women: Many, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices...But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

The world was hers for the reading.

Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books.

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

Look at everthing as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.

"Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."

"Well," Francie decided, "I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but."

Everyone said it was a pity that a slight pretty woman like Katie Nolan had to go out scrubbing floors. But what else could she do considering the husband she had, they said.

Francie knew that mama was a good woman. She knew. And papa said so. Then, why did she like her father better than her mother? Why did she? Papa was no good. He said so himself. But she liked papa better.

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

Maybe that decision was her great mistake. She should have waited until some man came along who felt that way about her. Then her children would not have gone hungry; she would not have had to scrub floors for their living and her memory of him would have remained a tender shining thing. But she wanted Johnny Nolan and no one else and she set out to get him.

And Francie, pausing in her sweeping to listen, tried to put everything together and tried to understand a world spinning in confusion. And it seemed to her that the whole world changed in between the time that Laurie was born and graduation day.

And he asked for her whole life as simply as he'd ask for a date. And she promised away her whole life as simply as she'd offer a hand in greeting or farewell.

Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them.

So like papa...so like papa, she thought. But he had more strength in his face than papa had had.

A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grow towards the sky again. Annie, the fir tree, that the Nolans had cherished with waterings and manurings, had long since sickened and died. But this tree in the yard--this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump--this tree had lived!