You can’t be much of a movie lover without also being a movie-line lover.
I’ve been both since I was a kid, plunking down a dime at the Town Theater in Long Beach to watch a short subject, opening cartoons, previews, then two feature films.
Having learned and then loved the movie-going experience – expectation and curiosity while you settle into your seat, lights dimming, big screen swallowing you into an alternate world – for the better part of my life, certain lines from certain movies have always stuck with me.
Since we’re missing the cinema house pleasures during this crazy season, I thought that, while we’re waiting for them to reopen, we could recall some of our all-time favorite movie lines.
Here are mine, in order from Number Ten Favorite to Number One. (I’d love knowing what yours are, too.)
Favorite Quote #10
-from A River Runs Through It (1992)
“For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. But we can still love. We can love completely without complete understanding.”
Favorite Quote #9
-from The Miracle Worker (1962)
“Pity? For this tyrant? The whole house turns on her whims, is there anything she wants she doesn’t get? I’ll tell you what I pity, that the sun won’t rise and set for her all her life, and every day you’re telling her it will. What good will your pity do her when you’re under the
strawberries, Captain Keller?”
Favorite Quote #8
-from The Crucible (1996)
“There is a promise made in any bed. Spoken or silent, a promise is
surely made.”
Favorite Quote #7
-from Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
“On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo
the past.”
Favorite Quote #6
-from The Best Years of our Lives (1946)
“How many times have I told you I hated you and believed it in my heart? How many times have you said you were sick and tired of me; that we were all washed up? How many times have we had to fall in love all over again?”
Favorite Quote #5
-from Reds (1981)
“When you separate a man from what he loves the most, what you do is purge what’s unique in him, and when you purge what’s unique in him, you purge dissent, and when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution and revolution IS dissent!”
Favorite Quote #4
-from Psycho (1960)
“Mother isn’t herself today.”
Favorite Quote #3
-from Moonstruck (1987)
“A person can see where they’ve messed up in their life, and they can change the way they do things. So maybe my nature does draw me to you. That doesn’t mean I have to go with it. I can say ‘yes’ to some things and ‘no’ to other things that are gonna ruin everything. I can do that. Otherwise, you know, what good is this life that God gave us?”
Favorite Quote #2
-from Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)
“But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men, even able and extraordinary men, can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. Before the people of the world, let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth… and the value of a single human being.”
Favorite Movie Quote #1
-from A Man For All Seasons (1966)
“I am the king’s true subject, and I pray for him and all the realm. I do none harm. I say none harm. I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, then in good faith, I long not to live.”
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