The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974 TV Movie)

Michael Murphy: Quentin

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Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Quentin : [voice over]  On July nineteenth, nineteen sixty-two, five months after the last of these interviews was recorded, Miss Jane Pittman died at the age of a hundred and ten.

• Quentin : Are you 110 years old?

  Jane Pittman : So they tell me.

  Quentin : How far back can you remember?

  Jane Pittman : How far back do you wanna go?

• Quentin : Do you remember getting your freedom?

  Jane Pittman : I hope I never forget it.

• Jane Pittman : You think I'm crazy?

  Quentin : Ma'am?

  Jane Pittman : I talk to this tree, you know? Ol' sister Oak. Look at me. I'm more than 110 years old. Now, if it ain't the Lord that's keepin' me going, what is it? See? I can sit in the sun, and I can walk. Not like I used to, but I do pretty well. Sometimes, when I feel very good, I walk all the way down to the road, and I looks at the river. Generally, though, I just come up the quarters a piece, and I sit here under this old oak. Look, the peoples done fixed me a nice clean place to sit and talk with my God. Or sometimes I'll sit here for an hour, just thankin' Him for His blessin'. And then I go back home. There's only just a few of us left, you know? And I have seen - enough years to last two lifetimes. I don't mind seein' a few more, though. He'll know when to call me. And when He call me, I'll be ready. 'Til then, I'll just have some of the children read me the Bible and the sports page and - and the funnies. I like the funnies, too, you know? And I do enjoy my vanilla ice cream. I have my vanilla ice cream. I like that. You know, this oak tree I'm sure has been here as long as this place been here. And I ain't ashamed to tell ya that I talk to it. And I ain't crazy, either. It ain't - it ain't necessary craziness to talk to the rivers and the trees. Of course, now, when you talk to the teches in the bayous, that's different, because a teche ain't nothin', and a bayou ain't much more. But, oh, the rivers and the trees. Unless'n, of course, you talk to a china ball tree. Anybody get caught talkin' to a china ball tree or a thorn tree, they got to be crazy. But an old oak, like this one here, that's been here all these years and knows more than you'll ever know, it ain't craziness, son. It's just the nobility you respects.