Dr. John Montgomery: He had two cavities that needed filling. He put up a fight, but I took care of it. Christine Collins: And? Dr. John Montgomery: Your son's upper front teeth were separated by a small tissue, a diastema. It made them sit about an ...
Receptionist: I can't resist! You usually move through here so quickly and I just have so many questions I want to ask you. You have no idea what your work means to me. Melvin Udall: What does it mean to you? Receptionist: [stands up] When somebody o...
[watching Searles practice with his bayonet] Sgt. Mulcahy: Oh, what do we have here? Bonnie Prince Charley and his toy bayonet! You're not reading your books now. Stab me. Cpl. Thomas Searles: What? Sgt. Mulcahy: Stab-me. [Searles comes at him ginger...
[Peter watches as Ellie dunks her donut] Peter Warne: Say, where'd you learn to dunk? In finishing school? Ellie Andrews: Aw, now don't you start telling me I shouldn't dunk. Peter Warne: Of course you shouldn't - you don't know how to do it. Dunking...
Christian Szell: The gun had blanks, the knife, a retractable blade. Hardly original, but effective enough. I think you'll agree. I'm told you are a graduate student. Brilliant, yes? You are an historian, and I am part of history. I should have thoug...
[last lines] Milton Waddams: Excuse me? Excuse me, senor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a pina colada, and I said no salt, NO salt for the margarita, but it had salt on it, big grains of salt, floating in the g...
[first lines] Ada: The voice you hear is not my speaking voice - -but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why - -not even me. My father says it is a dark talent, and the day I take it into my head to stop breath...
Jack: I might be in love with another woman. Miles Raymond: In love? Really? 24 hours with some wine-pourer chick and you're fucking in love? Come on! And you're gonna give up everything? Jack: Here's what I'm thinking: you and me, we move up here, w...
Kay Eiffel: [Penny goes to answer phone] Don't answer that! Penny Escher: Didn't you say this phone never r - ? Kay Eiffel: Shh! [types another sentence; the phone rings and she runs to answer it] Kay Eiffel: Hello? Harold Crick: Is this Karen Eiffel...
Penny Escher: [sitting on bench under an umbrella] May I ask what we're doing out here? Kay Eiffel: [sitting next to Penny without an umbrella] We're imagining car wrecks. Penny Escher: I see. And we can't imagine car wrecks inside? Kay Eiffel: No. D...
[Lamia is about to cut out Yvaine's heart] Tristan: Yvaine, hold me tight and think of home. [Tristan lights his Babylon candle. They escape, but end up on a cloud in the middle of nowhere] Tristan: What the hell did you do? Yvaine: What did *I* do? ...
Katerina Cavalieri: I heard you met Herr Mozart. Antonio Salieri: News travels fast in Vienna. Katerina Cavalieri: And he's been commissioned to write an opera. Is it true? Antonio Salieri: Yes. Katerina Cavalieri: Is there a part in it for me? Anton...
Tre Styles: I get a discount on clothes, and shit. You like? Doughboy: Nigga, you look like you selling rocks! Chris: Yo, Tre' you be slinging that shit? Tre Styles: No, I don't sell that shit! Doughboy: You couldn't anyway! Pops will kick yo' ass! Y...
Jesse: So what kind of songs do you write? I didn't know you did that. Celine: What kind? Jesse: Yeah, sure. Celine: I don't know, just songs. Jesse: Like? Celine: Like, some are about, you know, people, uh, relationships. One's about my cat. Jesse: ...
...we have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where w...
The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or s...
He seems so frivolous and so careless, but he gives money to beggars, not frivolously or carelessly, but because he believes in giving money to beggars, and giving it to them “where they stand”. He says he knows perfectly well all the arguments a...
Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is cove...
Woolf drew on her memories of her holidays in Cornwall for To the Lighthouse, which was conceived in part as an elegy on her parents. Her father was a vigorous walker and an Alpinist of some renown, a member of the Alpine Club and editor of the Alpin...
An enlightened man had but one duty--to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images ...
So they gave me love in form of poison and tiny little pills, programming my emotions, teaching me how to feel. To act correct and talk correct and answer without knowing the question, because that, my dear, is how you get love. Yes that, dear youth,...