Grand Avenue (1996 TV Movie)

Tantoo Cardinal: Nellie

Quotes 

• Nellie : Nothing changes with them whites, nothing! All we got to call our own is a few graves. And some man wants to move 'em. I raised you, you know what's right! We leave the dead alone.

• Nellie : You know the spider, she taught us to weave. There was a girl one time and her grandma was real sick. That old woman couldn't even make it to the creek and she needed water. And that girl started crying. And the spider heard her. She said 'I'll teach you to weave. I'll teach to weave a basket so tight, you can carry water in it.' That's how it started these baskets. That girl started to weave. And that's why we don't forget the spider. We love her just like that little girl loved her grandmother.

• Nellie : It ain't a perfect world. It ain't heaven, it's earth. Things gonna happen, accidents, cancer, pain. It's gonna happen.

• Nellie : Then when he was a teenager he was too busy coming down here skinny dipping.

  Raymond : Skinny dipping? Dad?

  Nellie : Yeah! I seen you. You and you're friends

  Steven : What were you doing watching?

  Nellie : I came down here to pray. And there you were naked as can be. Just hoppin and hollering the whole bunch of you. Girls too. What you looking like that for? Ain't nothing I ain't seen before. Been changing you diapers since you were six months old. It's good place. Me and my husband we used to go down there by the river and just go at it. Nature and birds, water. You oughta try it sometime.

  [to Raymond] 

• Nellie : Best not be walking down Grand in broad daylight with a TV.

  [to Alice after almost being jumped] 

• Nellie : Spirits got a plan. Sometimes that plan ain't the way we think about it. It ain't just the way we want it. That's the first test of faith.

  Alice : I want my sister. I wanted her to live! What's wrong with that!

  Nellie : Nothing. Nothing at all. But that don't mean that that basket you started making in there and these songs in here aren't part of the spirit's plan.