Crimes of the Heart (1986)

Jessica Lange: Meg Magrath

Photos 

Quotes 

• Meg Magrath : Why'd you do it, Babe ? Why'd you put your head in the oven?

  Babe Magrath : I don't know... I'm having a bad day.

• [last lines] 

  Meg Magrath : Oh, how I do love birthday cake.

• Babe Magrath : I don't know what's happening to Lenny.

  Meg Magrath : What do you mean?

  Babe Magrath : Well, she's turned into old grandmama.

  Meg Magrath : You think so?

  Babe Magrath : [looking at Lenny out in the garden]  Well more and more. Look there. She's even taken to wearing old grandmama's torn sun hat and her lime green garden gloves. Lenny works out in the garden wearing the lime green gloves of a dead woman.

• Meg Magrath : So how are things with you Babe?

  Chick Boyle : Well, things are dismal if you want my opinion. She's refusing to cooperate with her lawyer, that nice looking young Lloyd boy, and she won't tell any of us why she's committed this heinous crime.

  Babe Magrath : Oh look! Lenny brought my saxophone from home and my suitcase. Thank you.

  Lenny Magrath : You're welcome.

  Babe Magrath : Meg, look at my saxophone. Went to Jackson and bought it used. It's so heavy.

  Chick Boyle : Now listen Rebecca, that lawyer wants some concrete answers. No more stubbornness or they're gonna put you in jail and throw away the key. Isn't that right daddy? Won't they just put her in jail and throw away the key?

  Uncle Watson : Well honey, umm, I don't know about that.

  Chick Boyle : Well they will, and they'll leave you there to rot!

• Chick Boyle : So, cousin Margaret, how's your singing career goin'? We've been looking to see your picture in all those movie magazines.

  [Meg takes out a cigarette and lights it] 

  Chick Boyle : Oh, you shouldn't smoke. It causes cancer of the lungs. Each one of those little cigarettes is a stick of death.

  Meg Magrath : That's what I like about it Chick, taking a drag off death.

  [Meg takes a drag off of the cigarette] 

  Meg Magrath : What power! What exhilaration! Here, you want a drag?

  [Meg offers Chick the cigarette] 

  Lenny Magrath : Did ya'll hear that Zackery's liver's been saved? His sister told me his liver's been saved. I think that's just the best news.

  Uncle Watson : Yes, that's fine news. That's mighty fine news. Did you hear all that news about the liver, little chicken?

  Chick Boyle : I heard it.

  Meg Magrath : Cluck.

  Chick Boyle : And don't call me chicken!

  Meg Magrath : Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.

  Chick Boyle : I have told you a hundred times if I've told you once, do not call me chicken! I'm not twelve years old anymore!

  Meg Magrath : Cluck cluck, cluck cluck cluck.

• Babe Magrath : You know, Chick's hated us ever since we had to move here from Dixieville to live here with old grandmama and old granddaddy.

  Meg Magrath : Well, she's an idiot.

  Babe Magrath : Yeah. You know what she said to me this morning when I was still behind bars and couldn't get away?

  Meg Magrath : What?

  Babe Magrath : She told me how embarrassing it was for her all those years ago. You know, when mama...

  Meg Magrath : Yeah, down in the cellar.

  Babe Magrath : She said our mama had shamed the entire family and that we were known notoriously all through Hazelhurst. Then she went on to say how I would now be getting just as much bad publicity and humiliating her and the family all over again.

  Meg Magrath : Just forget about it Babe.

  Babe Magrath : I told her, I said mama got national courage, NATIONAL! If Zackery wasn't a senator from Copiah County, I probably wouldn't even get statewide!

  Meg Magrath : Of course you wouldn't.