Inspired by the thread, "Lines to never use in movies" where we've listed cliché lines from films, this thread is for the best lines written for movies.
One of my favorite movies is Chinatown, with many great lines, like the opening line of the film:
"All right-enough's enough. You can't eat the venetian blinds, Curly. I just had them installed last Wednesday."
Another from Chinatown. Noah Cross commenting on the luncheon plate of fish that has just been served to Jake Gittes (investigating the murder of Cross's daughter's husband):
I believe they should be served with the head.
The Godfather:
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
The one I will probably remember for all times is from Trainspotting >
And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
{Though there was nothing like that in the book...}
Stop asking where is God and keep asking where the hell is human!
from Lost in Translation
the more you know who you are and what you want the less you let things upset you
From Withnail and I:
'Monty you terrible ****!'
It's better in the original!
I could almost quote the entire film. I also like:
'We've gone on holiday by mistake.'
and also the way they (falsely) tell the country people they want help from:
'We're not from London.'
Last edited by blp; 02-21-2009 at 09:25 AM.
IMDB has reminded me of the response:Originally Posted by firefangled
'Fine... long as you don't serve the chicken that way.'
My all-time favourite film is Godard's Weekend. Early on, there's a scene in which the main couple are trying to drive away from the parking lot outside their home and a kid wearing an Indian headdress is running around shouting insults, calling their car clapped out, then adding 'as clapped out as your wife.' Pulling away, they bang into another car and the man gets out, kicks at the other car, then heads back to his car.
Kid [shouting]: Mama! They've damaged the Dauphine! [to the couple] Particulars must be exchanged!
Man: I'll kick you in the particulars.
Kid: Mama! Mama!
Man: Fancy some money? Shut up then.
Kid: Thank you. Mama! Mama!
Later in the film, the couple are involved in a horrific, fiery three-care pileup and the woman climbs from the burning wreckage screaming:
'Aiee! Aieeeee! My Hermes handbag!'
A little later they find another wreck surrounded by corpses and the woman comments on a dead woman:
'Look. Trousers from Chez Ricky.' before pulling them off and putting them on herself.
They are carjacked by a man who claims to be the messiah
'Help, help!'
'Silence! Even God has his police!'
and proves his divinity thus:
'Look in the glove compartment.'
Woman pulls out an enormous hare. 'OH ****! A miracle!'
He says he's in a position to grant all their wishes and each of them deliver a long list of high-end consumer trash: 'A big Mercedes sports car...' 'An evening dress from Yves St. Laurent...' etc.
'Is that truly all you want?'
'Yes.'
'Oh ****! You're arseholes.'
'Quick! A miracle you swindler!'
'What? For arseholes like you?'
I also like the intertitles at the beginning of the film that describe it as
'A film adrift in the cosmos....a film found on a scrapheap.'
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. -Moulin Rouge
Of course I like you. It's because I like you that I don't want to be with you. It's a complicated emotion. -Finding Nemo
Yo. -Chicken Little
CARPE DIEM! Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary!
-Dead Poets' Society
I SWEAR, BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT, THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.
- John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
Laughed through the whole post!!! I haven't seen Weekend since it was released. And look, wide ties are back in style or perhaps going out of again. Thanks for reminding what a great film it was.
The pleasure's all mine, ff. Glad you enjoyed it.
New wave style skinny ties are experiencing a renaissance here, but there's bound to be a backlash.
In Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, the child-man Kaspar and his guardian, an intellectual, debate whether objects have wills and motive powers of their own. His guardian attempts to demonstrate that they do not by showing that he can stop an apple rolled by his colleague with his foot, and therefore that the apples movements and arrest of movement only occur as a result of outside influences. The apple bounces over his foot and rolls into the grass.
Kaspar: 'Clever apple! It jumped over your foot and ran away!'
One of my favorite films combining scifi and film noir was Blade Runner. One of the best lines comes at the end of a soliloquy spoken by Roy, the last Replicant that Decker (the Blade Runner) has hunted down. The Nexus Replicants were highly intelligent Cyborgs programmed for client-specific tasks from mining to prostitution. Roy has just spared Decker's life after an exhausting chase, knowing his own pre-programmed death is at hand. On a rooftop in the pouring rain, with a dove in his hand, Roy says:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. … Time to die."
Last edited by firefangled; 02-22-2009 at 04:31 PM.
From Cassavetes' Opening Night, my second favourite film of all time:
'Manny, I'm dying. [laughs] I know I'm dying 'cos I'm getting tired. [more laughter] It's always the same: you talk, I sleep. If I had known what a...boring man you were when I married you I wouldn't have gone through all those emotional crises.'
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