The Prince of Tides

The Prince of Tides is a 1991 American drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Pat Conroy and starring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. It tells the story of the narrator's struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina.

[Luke shoots TV with shotgun]

Luke: TV's broken, you son of a bitch. Now you can watch your kids blow out their candles.

Herbert: That Stradivarius is worth over a million dollars!

Tom: Well, if I drop it, it won't be worth shit.

Susan: Don't do it, Tom.

Tom: Apologize to your wife, Herbert.

Herbert: You're bluffing.

Tom: I may be, but it's a powerful bluff. Isn't it, asshole?

[Tom throws fiddle high in the air]

Herbert: [screaming] I'm sorry, Susan!

[Tom catches fiddle]

Tom: Sincerity becomes you, Herbie. Now apologize to me for your unforgivable breach of etiquette at the dinner table tonight, you possum-bred cocksucker.

Herbert: I'm very sorry, Tom.

Tom: [narrating] From my mother, I inherited a love of language and an appreciation of nature. She could turn a walk around the island into a voyage of purest discovery. As a child, I thought she was the most extraordinary woman on earth. I wasn't the first son to be wrong about his mother.

Tom: [narrating] At the end of every day, I drive through the city of Charleston and I cross the bridge that will take me home. I feel the words building inside me, I can't stop them, or tell you why I say them, but as I reach the top of the bridge, these words come to me in a whisper. I say these words as a prayer, as regret, as praise, I say: Lowenstein, Lowenstein.

Tom: [narrating] I don't know when my parents began their war against each other - but I do know the only prisoners they took were their children.

Tom: [narrating] I suppose Henry Wingo would have been a pretty good father - if he hadn't been such a violent man.

Tom: [narrating] In New York, I learned that I needed to love my mother and father in all their flawed, outrageous humanity, and in families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness. But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now. I look to the north, and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man - and every woman.

Tom: [narrating] There are families who live out their entire lives without a single thing of interest happening to them. I've always envied those families.

Tom: I'm sick of my sister's attraction to razor blades - and I'm sick of shrinks who can't do a fucking thing to help her.

Tom: How about Luke? Do you ever think about Luke? Does he ever cross your mind?

Lila: Who taught you to be so cruel?

Tom: You did, Mama. You did.

• A story about the memories that haunt us, and the truth that sets us free.

• Barbra Streisand - Dr. Susan Lowenstein
• Nick Nolte -Tom Wingo
• Blythe Danner - Sallie Wingo
• Kate Nelligan - Lila Wingo Newbury
• Jeroen Krabbé - Herbert Woodruff, Lowenstein's husband
• Melinda Dillon -Savannah Wingo
• George Carlin - Eddie Detreville, Savannah's neighbor
• Jason Gould - Bernard Woodruff, Lowenstein's son (and Streisand's real life son with Elliot Gould)

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The Prince of Tides

• The Prince of Tides quotes at the Internet Movie Database