The Tree of Life Quotes

Jack: [voice over] Brother. Keep us. Guide us. To the end of time.

R.L.: Tell us a story from before we can remember.

Young Jack: [voice over] Where were You? You let a boy die. You let anything happen. Why should I be good ? When You aren't.

Mrs. O'Brien: [voice over] Help each other. Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive.

Young Jack: [voice over] How do I get back? To where they are.

Young Jack: [voice over] What I want to do, I can't do. I do what I hate.

Young Jack: [voice over] I didn't know how to name You then. But I see it was You. Always You were calling me.

Jack: [voice over] I see me as a child... I see my brother. True. Kind. He died when he was 19.

Young Jack: [voice over] Mother. Make me good. Brave.

Young Jack: I am sorry. You are my brother.

Mrs. O'Brien: [voice over] Lord, Why? Where were you? Did you know what happened? Do you care?

Prologue: [on screen, unspoken] "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4,7

Mrs. O'Brien: [pointing to the sky] That's where God lives!

Mr. O'Brien: [voice over] You're all I have. You're all I want to have. You're a sweet boy.

Mr. O'Brien: Toscanini once recorded a piece sixty five times. You know what he said when he finished? "It could be better." Think about it. Think about it. Twenty-seven patents your father had. It means ownership, ownership of ideas. You gotta sew 'em up. Get them by the nuts if you pardon my French.

Mr. O'Brien: Your mother's naive. It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world. If you're good, people take advantage of you.

Father Haynes: Do you trust in God? Job too, was close to the Lord. Are your friends and children, your security? There is no hiding place in all the world where trouble may not find you. No one knows when sorrow might visit his house, any more than Job did. At the very moment everything was taken away from Job. He knew it was the Lord who had taken it away.

Mr. O'Brien: The world lives by a trigger. If you want to succeed, you can't be too good!

Young Jack: She only loves ME!

Mr. O'Brien: Be rich. You make yourself what you are. You have control of your own destiny. Can't say I can't. You see I'm having trouble. I'm not done yet. Can't say I can't.

Mrs. O'Brien: What are we to you?

Mrs. O'Brien: [voice over] The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it, when love is smiling through all things. They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you. Whatever comes.

Title Card: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? -Job 38:4-7

Jack: How did you come to me? In what shape? What disguise? I see the child I was. I see my brother. True. Kind.

Jack: How did I lose you? Wandered. Forgot you.

Mrs. O'Brien: You'll be grown before that tree is tall.

Father Haynes: Job imagined he might build his nest on high. That the integrity of his behavior would protect him against misfortune. And his friends thought mistakenly that the Lord could only have punished him because secretly he had done something wrong. But no. Misfortune befalls the good as well. We can't protect ourselves against it. We can't protect our children. We can't say to ourselves, even if I'm not happy, I'm going to make sure they are. We run before the wind, we think that it will carry us forever. It will not. We vanish as a cloud, we whither as the autumn grass. And like a tree, are rooted up.

Father Haynes: Is there some fraud in the scheme of the universe? Is there nothing which is deathless? Nothing, which does not pass away? We cannot stay where we are. We must journey forth. We must find that which is greater than fortune or fate. Nothing can bring us peace, but that.

Father Haynes: He saught that which is eternal. As he alone see God's hand, who sees that he gives? Or does not also the one see God's hand, who sees that he takes away? Or does he alone see God, who sees God turn his face towards him? Does not also he see God, who sees God turn his back?

Young Jack: Father... Mother... Always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.