Ya know, I've been thinking lately about some of the really great movie lines there have been. Some even seem to take on a life of their own, becoming ingrained pieces of our popular culture. A few are used so often that they're reduced to an almost cliché-like status...but then you actually hear Humphrey Bogart say, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” in Casablanca and suddenly you're struck by how great a line it is and why it achieved its household familiarity.
I'd like to share with you now some of my very favorite movie lines of all time. I was going to try to make this a top ten list, but I just couldn't narrow it down for the sake of sticking with a popular round number. Also, I knew that as soon as I published this blog I'd think of another one or two that should have made the list...and then the next week I'd remember more...and so on.
So here's a collection of my all-time favorite movie lines as of this posting:
“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. ... He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant, total amazement.”
- Meg Ryan as Patricia Graynamore in Joe Versus the Volcano
“A person is smart; people are dumb, panicky animals.”
- Tommy Lee Jones as Agent Kay in Men In Black
“He was gonna take the quotes off the ‘singer.’”
- Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane
“That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the f**k up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.”
- Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction
“I am big; it’s the pictures that got small!”
- Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard
Article comments
1 - D.B.Cooper
(1971) The Hospital written by the late, great Paddy Chayefsky
George C. Scott, as the chief doctor, arrives at the hospital one morning unshaven and hungover. He learns that an intern had sex with a young nurse in a spare bed, then later fell asleep in the spare bed where, the night before, a patient had died. A night shift nurse came on the floor and mistook the naked intern for the expired patient, who was now resting in the basement morgue. The nurse mistakenly shoots him up with a saline IV. The intern, diabetic, becomes comatose and dies. After the nurse administrator recounts this story, Scott stops dead in his tracks and hisses:
"Sounds like a Roman farce!"
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
wow, so many...
I like the one in rules of attraction - "i need you like i need an asshole on my elbow! an asshole!"
and "We don't ride with vampires... We do now!" from The Lost Boys
um... "What have you done with my balls!?" from SS Experiment camp...
the Plan 9 one you mentioned, and also some of criswell's introduction is fantastic.
loads more that i can't think of...
3 - Mark Saleski
"You're so critical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you"
-Nick (William Hurt), The Big Chill
4 - Mark Saleski
"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness."
-Miller (Repo Man)
5 - Mark Saleski
actually, Repo Man is chock full of screwy quotes.
6 - D.B.Cooper
"You're going the wrong way!" -- Planes, Trains & Automobiles
"Fear profits man nothing." -- The 13th Warrior
"What do you want to do, live forever?!" -- Conan the Barbarian
"Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!" -- Airplane
"We're gonna need a bigger boat." -- Jaws
"I think they ought to just leave it as is, a kind of monument to all the bullshit in the world." -- Towering Inferno
7 - JR
Oh, so we're doing this again?
8 - Eric Olsen
JR, we do EVERTHING again, we have very little institutional memory, and that's okay because we do it differently and new people are involved each time
9 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
"i love these calm little moments before the storm" - leon
10 - mike hollihan
From Buckaroo Banzai: "I've been ionized but I'm better now." and the legendary "No matter where you go, there you are."
From Six String Samurai (obscure but very highly recommended):
Bad Guy: "If I were you, I'd get outta here."
6SS: "If you were me, you'd be good looking."
2001: "Hal, open the pod bay doors."
And Silent Bob's entire speech in the diner, explaining what "chasing Amy" is, from the movie of the same name.
Of course, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is chock full of them: "You must spank us. And then comes the oral sex." "Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."
11 - El Bicho
Goddammit! That's the last time I get knifed by you! You hear me? - The Royal Tenenbaums