Fifty Quotes

The other week I did one of those meme things on Facebook, where I posted fifteen quotes I liked a lot from fifteen films I liked a lot, to see if people could identify them. Amazingly -- to me at any rate -- nobody recognised lines from Seven Samurai, Rear Window, The Searchers, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Cinema Paradiso.

This tells me that my friends don't really know films, or that they don't know me, or that they can't be bothered with meme nonsense of this sort. I'm hoping for the latter.

While thinking of my fifteen films and looking up the relevant memorable lines on IMDB, I couldn't help but think of how many films I wanted to quote from. In an ideal world, aside from the fifteen films I chose, I'd have picked fifty others for people to try to spot. Mind, I reckon people would have gotten confused.

Still, if you're bored, have fun looking at these and trying to see you if you recognise any of the lines. You know the way it works. Do it from memory or deduction or intuition -- don't go looking for answers online! I'll post them in a couple of weeks anyway. Enjoy...

1.
"Well, what do you think of it?"
"Well, the grammar is appalling. On the first page you've doubled two negatives, split an infinitive and missed out three commas.
Negatives, infinitives, commas... he prattles punctuation while France is in agony!"

2.
"Reckon I'm right popular. You a bounty hunter?"
"A man's got to do something for a living these days."
"Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy."

3.
"Don't tell me, it's a flat tire."
"I can't understand it. This car hasn't given me a lick of trouble in nearly 6 hours."

4.
"Have you ever seen any of your victims?"
"You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays."

5.
"Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one."
"If I was, who would know it?"
"You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that."

6.
"Now listen to me you benighted muckers. We're going to teach you soldiering. The world's noblest profession. When we're done with you, you'll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men."

7.
"I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't."
"What does that tell you?"
"It means they could win."

8.
"I have to leave you now. I'm going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you."
"All right."
"I don't know how to say goodbye. I can't think of any words."
"Don't try."

9.
"Do you like our owl?"
"It's artificial?"
"Of course it is."
"Must be expensive."
"Very."

10.
"Okay, let's handle this thing logically. What exactly have you sworn?"
"I have sworn with my life's blood, none shall pass this way without my permission!"
"Well... May we have your permission?"
"Well I, uh... I... that is, uh... hm... Yes?"

11.
"The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her."
"What makes you think you have to conceal it?"
"She might find the idea objectionable."
"Then again, she might not."

12.
"Why Albania?"
"Why not?"
"What have they done to us?"
"What have they done FOR us? What do you know about them?"
"Nothing."
"See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable."

13.
"Do you think I'm weird?"
"Definitely."
"No man, seriously. Am I weird?"
"Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."

14.
"It's very pretty."
"Yeah, I've been fooling around with it for a few months."
"It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play."
"It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why."
"It's very nice."
"You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of..."
"What do you call this?"
"Well, this piece is called 'Lick My Love Pump'."

15.
"Do you think the Welsh can do better than that, Owen?"
"Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure."

16.
"I can put you in Queens on the night of the hijacking."
"Really? I live in Queens, did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?"

17.
"Sit down. What do you see here?"
"Bunkers, sir."
"What's in them?"
"Stuff they stole from Kuwait."
"Bullshit. I'm talking about millions in Kuwaiti bullion."
"You mean them little cubes you put in hot water to make soup?"
"No, not the little cubes you put in hot water to make soup."

18.
"What do I want? I'll tell you what I want! I want Ken Railings to walk in here right now, and say 'Pam Shortt's broken both her legs, and I wanna dance with YOU!' "
"Pam Shortt's broken both her legs, and I wanna dance with you."
"That was unexpected."

19.
"The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman legions. The Carthaginians were proud and brave but they couldn't hold. They were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances. The soldiers lay naked in the sun. Two thousand years ago. I was here."

20.
"You've just got to tell them."
"That we lost Apollo 11?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that first."
"What would you say first?"
"How about 'hey, you'll never guess what happened...'"

21.
"No! I tell you no! I won't have you bringing some young girl in for supper! By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap, erotic fashion of young men with cheap, erotic minds!"
"Mother, please...!"
"And then what? After supper? Music? Whispers?"
"Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry, and it's raining out!"
"'Mother, she's just a stranger'! As if men don't desire strangers! As if... ohh, I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me! You understand, boy? Go on, go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with MY food... or my son! Or do I have tell her because you don't have the guts! Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?"

22.
"You are in for a surprise."
"Am I?"
"Havin' a kid changes everything. There's burping, the midnight feeding, and the changing."
"You do any of that?"
"No. But I hear it's terrible. Then you spend years trying to corrupt and mislead this child, fill his head with nonsense, and still it turns out perfectly fine."
"You think I'm up for it?"
"You learned from the best."

23.
"Temper, temper. If I wanted nagging, I'd go back with my wife. I'm out. Who wants food?"
"What do you got?"
"I got, uh, brown sandwiches and, uh, green sandwiches. Which one do you want?"
"What's the green?"
"It's either very new cheese or very old meat."
"I'll take the brown."

24.
"What do you do for recreation?"
"Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback."

25.
"And you know, when you think about it, that's exactly what happens to us when we're born. We're dropped down a random chimney and we have to get on with the strangers we find there. Typical Chesterton there to describe a chimney as a kind of uterus."

26.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because a little thing can effect them. A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. You may be a bit of undigested beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese. Yes. There's more gravy than of grave about you."
"More gravy than of grave?"
"What a terrible pun. Where'd you get those jokes?"
"Leave comedy to the bears, Ebenezer."

27.
"You claim you love her."
"I do love her!"
"Can you prove it?"
"Well give me time, sir. Fifty years will do."
"But can you prove it?"
"Well, can a starving man prove he's hungry except by eating?"
"Would you die for her?"
"I would, but, er, I'd rather live."

28.
"My mum always said: 'It's a dog-eat-dog world, son. You get them before they get you. Eat your greens. Stop embarrassing me in front of the neighbors. Maybe it would best if you leave home and never come back!' She wasn't even my real mum. She bought me from a man."

29.
"Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me."
"Oh, it does, does it? Well, it's not your job to diagnose."
"But I thought..."
"You thought, you thought. Just go. Three years of nursery school and you think you know it all. Well, you're still wet behind the ears. It's not a subdural hematoma. It's epidural. Ha."

30.
"But surely you must have some suspicion. Who work the heist rackets in this territory?"
"Beg your pardon, lady?"
"Oh really! I can't make myself much plainer. Which hoodlums around here specialize in toby jobs?"

31.
"Shall we let bygones be bygones?"
"Of course, mon ami. I told you she would break the spell!"
"I beg your pardon, old friend, but I believe I told you."
"No, you didn't. I told you!"
"You most certainly did not, you pompous, paraffin-headed peabrain!"
"En garde, you... you overgrown pocket watch!"

32.
"This will take brains, not brawn."
"You better believe it, and I'm loaded with both."

33.
"Judgment of any system, or a priori relationship or phenomenon exists in an irrational, or metaphysical, or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself."
"Yes, I've said that many times."

34.
"If I'm gonna front the band, I like the sound of 'Deco.'"
"Deco the bus conductor. Is that 'top-Deco' or 'bottom-Deco'?"

35.
"Do you eat oysters?"
"When I have them, master."
"Do you eat snails?"
"No, master."
"Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?"
"No, master."
"Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?"
"Yes, master."
"And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals."
"It could be argued so, master."
"My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters."

36.
"Sir, have you read Don Quixote?"
"I've practically lived it!"

37.
"Why if I had half a chance, I could make an entire movie using this stock footage. The story opens on these mysterious explosions. Nobody knows what's causing them, but it's upsetting all the buffalo. So, the military are called in to solve the mystery."
"You forgot the octopus."
"No, no, I'm saving that for my big underwater climax."

38.
"You're not afraid?"
"I wonder what I'd do in their place. The same thing."
"You'd throw stones?"
"In their place? Of course. And that goes for everyone I judged. Given their lives, I would steal, I'd kill, I'd lie. Of course I would. All that because I wasn't in their shoes, but mine."

39.
"I think the important thing is not to make it look like we're panicking."
"See, and I think the important thing is actually not to BE panicking."

40.
"Couldn't you like me, just me the way I am? When we first started out, it was so good; w-we had fun. And... and then you started in on the clothes. Well, I'll wear the darn clothes if you want me to, if, if you'll just, just like me."
"The color of your hair..."
"Oh, no!"
"Judy, please, it can't matter to you."

41.
"Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed."
"You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!"
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

42.
"I sure do miss my bed."
"You said that last night."
"No, last night I said I missed my wife, tonight I just miss my goddamn bed."

43.
"I don't like your manners."
"And I'm not crazy about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind if you don't like my manners, I don't like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don't mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

44.
"Well, the little guy was kinda funny-lookin'."
"In what way?"
"I dunno... just funny-lookin'."
"Can you be any more specific?"
"I couldn't really say... He wasn't circumcised."

45.
"This place is uninhabitable."
"Give it a chance. It's got to warm up."
"Warm up? We may as well sit round this cigarette. This is ridiculous. We'll be found dead in here next spring."

46.
"I had to kill him."
"Oh, yeah. He's as dead as Julius Caesar... Would you rather it was you?"
"No, I would not."
"Well, then, you've done your job. Go home and sleep well tonight."

47.
"Verewolf!"
"Werewolf?"
"There."
"What?"
"There, wolf. There, castle."
"Why are you talking that way?"
"I thought you wanted to."
"No, I don't want to."
"Suit yourself. I'm easy."

48.
"I can't make out whether you're bloody bad-mannered or just half-witted."
"I have the same problem, sir."


49.
"Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?"
"Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say."
"And I'm exactly the same way."
"I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?"

50.
"Lieutenant, in the next 15 minutes we have to create enough confusion to get out of here alive."
"Major, right now you got me about as confused as I ever hope to be."

Yeah, I know, but it should keep you thinking for a while, anyway.