"We're British. We can say anything we want and people think it's Shakespeare." - The Nanny
“A football player, who happened not to be God’s gift to the intellectual life of Western civilization ...” - Prof. M. Wiebe
“The worst thing about growing older is it gets harder to find someone famous who at your age still amounted to nothing. My great hope is now Colonel Sanders.” - Prof. Wiebe
“There are a few stories like this, but they’re weird. Well, they’re all weird, but these are really weird.” - Prof. Griffith, on Greek myths
“Some of us are born virgins, others have virginity thrust upon them. Apollo falls into this category.” - Prof. Griffith
“When you’ve been walking for thousands of miles, across land, and your land suddenly runs out and all you can see is water, you are apt to turn to each other and ask, ‘What the hell is this?’.” - Prof. Griffith, on how the Greeks created a word for “sea”
“I have no idea, but that doesn’t usually keep me from talking. And neither shall it on this occasion.” - Prof. Griffith, after being asked a question in class
“And they made a fake Hera out of the clouds, and named her Nephele, which means cloud, because Greek gods were nothing if not imaginative.” - Prof. Griffith
“I guess to be a cat owner is to be a masochist. ‘Spurn me again! I love it!’” - Prof. Wiebe
“Imagine if on your first date the guy strangled your pet. It might give you pause as to whether this was the man of your dreams.” - Prof. Wiebe, on Wuthering Heights
“I’d like to have Mike Harris in my classroom, teach him a little Carlyle. That’d set him straight. Of course, *he* wouldn’t pass the entrance requirements.” - Prof. Wiebe
“It’s hard to b.s. in a language that’s dead.” - Amy Maloney, Arts ‘02, Queen’s University, about her Latin midterm
“If my life gets any worse I’m phoning Hell to ask about their exchange program.” - Niles (David Hyde Piece), on Frasier
“The lead actress of the Comedie Francaise, the wittiest woman in Europe ... ack, there’s a challenge!” - Christine Andreas, on the role of Marguerite in The Scarlet Pimpernel
“Frou-frou. Now, I wish I was wearing frou-frou at this moment.” - James Judy
“Sink me! Very fun to say, pretty hard to say without getting pretty damn silly very quick.” - James Judy
“Jiggered. This is not my word. I don’t have to define it.” - Douglas Sills
“I am Chauvelin, going on seventeen ...” - Terrence Mann
“What did you call me? Sinister? You called me sinister? Sinister and ...? Ah, thank you, sexy.” - Terrence Mann
“It’s like when you were kids and you used to go outside and you, like, played ‘get killed’.” - Terrence Mann on the sword fight in The Scarlet Pimpernel
“Well, we sometimes do our rug-hooking, we brought in our rug-hooking, and magazines, and, and, what else do we do? Make-up! We prepare for the show occasionally.” - various actresses in the dressing room at The Scarlet Pimpernel
Timon: “Hey, what's going on here? Who's the monkey!?”
Nala: “Simba's gone back to challenge Scar.”
Timon: “Who?”
Nala: “Scar.”
Pumbaa: “Who's got a scar?”
Nala: “No no no no, it's his uncle.”
Timon: “The monkey's his uncle?”
Nala: “NO! Simba's gone back to challenge his uncle to take his place as King.”
Timon and Pumbaa: “Ohhh.” - The Lion King
Timon: “We’re on her like stink on a warthog.”
Pumbaa: “Hey!”
Timon: “It’s a hard truth, Pumbaa. Live with it.” - The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride
“Gee, Simba. The good news is we found your daughter. The bad news is we dropped a warthog on her. Is there a problem with that?” - Timon, in The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride
Timon: “What’s your position?”
Pumbaa: “Upright, head turned slightly to the left, tail erect.”
Timon: “Why do I bother?” - The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride
“I’m a genius, not an engineer.” - Aramis (Jeremy Irons), in The Man in the Iron Mask
“It's this brain of mine, it's always makin' mistakes...it's got a mind of its own.” - Crutchy, in Newsies
“I believe you are blushing, Mr. Big Artiste. I can't imagine Monsieur Monet blushing.”
“He does landscapes.” - Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), in Titanic
“I'm going to cut his heart out with a SPOON!”
“Why a spoon, cousin? Why not...an ax -”
“Because it's DULL, you twit, it'll hurt more!” - The Sheriff of Notingham (Alan Rickman) and Guy of Gisbourne (Michael Wincott), in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
“Unlike some other Robin Hoods, *I* can speak with an English accent.” - Robin Hood (Cary Elwes), in Robin Hood: Men in Tights
“Emma, you didn't ask me to contribute a riddle.”
“Your entire personality is a riddle, Mr. Knightley. I thought you overqualified.” - Mr. Knightly (Jeremy Northam) and Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) in Emma
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What hapened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can't.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon. - Spaceballs
“So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.” - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) in Spaceballs
“This is your big moment. I want to see your insides.”
“Ah, right-o. No pressure then.” - director Ang Lee and actor Hugh Grant on the set of Sense and Sensibility
“I wish to check the position of the Nile. My sister says it is in South America.”
“Oh! No, no indeed. She is quite wrong. For I believe it is in Belgium.”
“Belgium? Surely not. You must be thinking of the Volga.”
“Of course. The Volga, which, as you know, starts in ...”
“Vladivostok, and ends in ...”
“Wimbledon.”
“Indeed. Where the coffee beans come from.” - Edward and Elinor (Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson), in Sense and Sensibility
“There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.” - Charlotte Bronte, in Jane Eyre
“Without tears in the eyes there can be no rainbow in the soul.” - Lakota saying
“It’s easy to jump off the merry-go-round. It’s harder to stay on and not get dizzy.” - Glenn Ridless
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of the imagination is boundless.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” - A.A. Milne
“Who wants to creep along in comfort when there is one chance in a thousand of flying?” - Gail Godwin
“At leve er ikke nok. Solskin, frihed og en lille blomst ma man have.” - Hans Christian Andersen (“To live is not enough. Sunshine, freedom and a little flower must one have.”)
“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” - Dolly Parton
“Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet.” - Roger Miller
“Without the assistance of that Divine being ... I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.” - Abraham Lincoln
“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend/All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.” - William Shakespeare, sonnet 30
“Musick is the thing of the world that I love most.” - Samuel Pepys
“Have no friends not equal to yourself.” - Confucius
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” - Aristotle
“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.” - Quintilian
“If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a hyacinth.” - Persian saying
"Well, Belle, is it 'yes' or is it 'oh, yes'?" - Gaston, in Beauty and the Beast
"I think it is a sweet face. I say I think it is but as I've never had the opportunity of comparing you with other women I just may be mistaken." - Frederick (Rex Smith), in The Pirates of Penzance
"... in this effective but alarming costume." - Frederick (Rex Smith), in The Pirates of Penzance - somehow I don't think the line was supposed to be as funny as I found it, but he was wearing a rather alarming costume! :-)
"Oooh, I love a good paradox." - Frederick (Rex Smith), in The Pirates of Penzance
"I can't eat this! This is art! I just ate a piece of art!" - Tim Howar at the stage door, about the chocolates Stacy made for him
"But you guys, you're normal." - Tim Howar, obviously mistaking Stacy and I for someone else
"What's his name? Colm Wilkinson? He'd better be good."
"He is." - me, harrassing innocent ignorant theatre goers outside the Princess of Wales theatre
"Yes, it's true. I was on The Price is Right."
"What was your price?" - Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, on Rosie Thurs., Dec. 10/98
"Have you ever noticed that we base our assessment of the intelligence of others almost
entirely on how closely their thinking matches our own?" Belgarath in "Belgarath the Sorcerer", by David Eddings
“He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.” - William Blake
“Certain strains of music affect me so strangely - I can never hear them without their
changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroism.” - The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot
“I’ve never been afraid of ghosts. I live with them daily, after all ... Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheets of words.” - from the Prologue to “Drums of Autumn”, by Diana Gabaldon
“If you’re following what I’m saying, you may have a question in mind, which is, ‘How do I drop this course?’.” - Dr. Rae, in “Literary Theory and Criticism”, after explaining a particularly mind-boggling theoretical concept
“Yes, well, that’s part of the whole ‘not liking you’ extravaganza.” - Pheobe, on Friends
"It left us speechless, quite speechless I tell you, and we have not stopped talking of it since." - Miss Bates (Sophie Thompson), in Emma
"These are the family guardians. They ..."
"... protect the family."
"And you, oh demoted one?"
"I ring the gong." - Mushu, in Mulan
"Don't make me have to singe nobody to prove no point." - Mushu, in Mulan
"Play nice with the other kids. Unless, of course, the other kids want to fight. Then you gotta kick the other kids's butts." - Mushu, in Mulan
"Ooh, I think my bunny slippers just ran for cover." - Mushu, in Mulan
"Well, I think Ping and I can take you."
"I really don't want to take him anywhere." - Mulan
"'From General Li: Dear son, we're waiting for the Huns at the pass. It would mean a lot if you'd come and back us up.' Hmmm, that's great except you forgot 'And since we're out of potpourri, perhaps you wouldn't mind bringing up some.' Hello!?! This is the army! Make it sound more urgent, please!" - Mushu, in Mulan
"Ooh, nice, very nice. You can sit by *me*." - Mushu, in Mulan
"Would you like to stay for dinner?"
"Would you like to stay forever?" - Mulan and Grandmother, after meeting Shang, in Mulan
"Your inner child's pretty much running the place, huh." - Oswald's date, on The Drew Carey Show
"We're going to talk to God now, not each other." - my grandfather, Rev. Robert Belbin, trying to make it through the children's story without smacking any of the children :-)
"I went through a phase this morning. (pause) It was a short phase." - Stacy, trying (fairly unsuccessfully!) to tell me a story
"And that's my little massage story for the day." - Stacy, in the same conversation
"I reserve the right to be full of caca." - Brian Stokes Mitchell
"Don't get me wrong, I love you both separately. But together, you're a whirling vortex of evil." - Dharma (Jenna Elfman), on Dharma and Greg
"We'll take the question on couplets."
"How heroic of you." - Dr. Lock, in Restoration Lit
Greg: "Now I'm going to read the bible."
Dharma: "Well, I can help you there. First part: don't mess with God. Second part: be nice to people." - Dharma and Greg
Dharma: "Why can't your daughter-in-law just stop by to say howdy-do?"
Kitty: "Because we are not mountain folk." - Dharma and Greg
"Ok, I'm fighting the impulse to point out how pathetic that is. Whoops, I guess I lost." - Oh, Grow Up
"They have the best stuff in there." - Pheobe, on Friends, about the rainforest
I am totally on board with the total honesty thing. Just not with stuff that's gonna get you in trouble!" - Joey, on Friends
Niles: "I kept my tongue sheathed until he described Bernstein's conducting as 'overrated'."
Frasier: "I assume you pounced!"
Niles: "Like a ninja!" - Frasier
"Might he not think it odd that you come along?" - Stacy, discussing how we might get me into her interview with a certain favourite actor
Stacy: "I talked to Tanya ... they got front row!! I'm a little upset, 'cause I know I bought our tickets before she got hers. Humph."
Me: "Oh, well. We'd probably get spit on in the front row anyway."
Stacy: "Very true." - Stacy and I, discussing the merits of front row seats for Jekyll and Hyde
"You know, they teach us in journalism class that lying is bad." - Stacy ... I think the the quote is funny enough without any further explanation! :-)
"The cape's working for me." - Stacy, on Chuck Wagner's Henry Jekyll in full evening dress
"They're coming to take him home!" - Me, when it looked like a spaceship was going to land on stage during This Is the Moment
"The first time I took my son to a chatroom he was, like, 'you suck!". I was, like, 'Son, there's a better way to communicate!!!'." - Chuck Wagner
a posting on the J&H board: "Robert Cuccioli said that he 'wore a wig at one point during the show but you have to guess where.' ...do you know?"
Chuck Wagner's response: "I wear mine on my head!"
Me (as we pass a bakery on our way to Jekyll & Hyde): "I could give Chuck a loaf of bread as a present."
Stacy: "Yeah, and you could tell him you stole it, and then he'd have to chase you for twenty years."
"You know what I've discovered? Since I don't have a computer, I spend a lot less time playing computer games!" - Stacy, making perfect sense as usual :-)
"It's in the title, people." - me, exasperated with an Ottawa review discussing how Ragtime celebrates the jazz age
"Maybe he just forgot it was a musical?" - Laurie, on the Coalhouse I saw on Broadway who chose to speak Make Them Hear You
"Ooh, reconaissance mission. Good idea." - Elizabeth, on our plan to find the theatre in Stratford soon after arrival, but several hours before the show started :-)
"The Stratford Optimists' Club? Bet they're not going to see Hamlet." - me, getting a little giddy after a long car ride :-)
"I wish I was a duck." - Elizabeth
Me: "I think we missed the turn to the theatre."
Stacy (queen of the non-sequitor): "There are some really pretty houses around here."
"Newsflash! It's not a baseball game!" - Elizabeth, commenting on the theatre garb of fellow patrons
"I have a stupid question for you."
"I probably have a dumb answer." - Stacy and Paul Gross, at the stage door after Hamlet
"Well, that was worth coming down for." - me, tears still streaming down my face, making the understatement of the year after watching Fiddler
"Can I throw the bread in the water?"
"Yes."
"But it'll get soggy!"
"Stacy, they're *ducks*." - Stacy and me, discussing the finer points of feeding the ducks
Later in the same conversation ...
"I prefer my food dry."
"You're not a duck."
"So much for Operation Subtlety." - my cousin, Lucas, after our family made fools of ourselves in a Swiss Chalet
"It sounds like a Chinese Samba." - overheard at band
"If we could get some fluttertongue in there, that'd be fun." - Deanna, the band leader, taken totally out of context
"Let's leave the brainwork to the people with the brains, shall we?" - the new Buzz Lightyear movie (not Toy Story 2 - the other one) - I'm adopting it as my new slogan :-)
"That is one polluted stream of consciousness." - Will to Karen, Will and Grace (my new favourite show!)
"So we're the off-beats of the off-beats?" - also overheard at band
"Let's just hope he remembers to run the bases counter clockwise!" - Bob Costas during a New York/Seattle game, after a batter broke an 0 for 41 slump
"Oh, come on, Shnookums. We can get through this."
"What did you call me?"
"Shnookums? It's an attempt at a pet name."
"If it's all the same to you, could we keep looking?" - Niles and Daphne, Frasier
Tag: "Pheobe. That's a great name."
Pheobe: "Oh, if you like that, you should hear my phone number!" - Friends
"I could appeal to you as a sensitive gay man, but ironically, that would be fruitless." - Will to Jack, Will and Grace
Mark: "There are no small patients, Carter."
Carter: "What about dwarves?" - ER (a throwaway line in the middle of a serious scene that had me ROTF)
"You know, in some countries they don't even *have* video tape. And here we just waste it." - David Letterman, after a skit gone horribly awry
"And isn't true that children are sweetest when they're imobolized?" - Sean Hayes during a skit on Saturday Night Live
"For once in your life can you skip over the showtunes and *listen* to what I'm saying?" - Grace, Will and Grace (she could have been talking to me!!!)
Caroline: "Mr. Trainor. It's such a pleasure for you."
Trainor: "Yes, I know. And unfortunately, it's a pleasure I shall forever be denied." - Caroline and the City
Hugh Grant on the Rosie O'Donnell show:
Rosie: "I hear you're a big fan of Millionaire."
Hugh: "I am."
Rosie: "And yet you've never seen the American version? Why is that?"
Hugh: *pause* "Because I live in England??"
"Please. Hold your applause until it's for me." - Steve Martin, hosting the Oscars
"I'm going to kick his ass. He's British - it'll only take a sec." - Scott Hamilton, about Steven Cousins
"Victor speaks 6 languages, he can explain the theory of relativity, but he can't grasp a a choreograher's 8-count." - Scott again, this time about Victor Kraatz
"Alexei, we'll just go from the top." - Sandra Bezic, preparing to reshoot Alexei Yagudin's Gladiator number, which he had made several mistakes in (after reshooting other numbers where they only had to do one jump or footwork sequence)
Sandra: "You flipped your pattern."
Alexei: blank look
Sandra: "Did you know you flipped your pattern?"
Alexei: blank look
Sandra: "Were you going to do the correct pattern this time?"
Alexei: shrug
Sandra: long pause ... "We'll just follow you." - the same conversation
"Kurt, take it from the top again."
*rubbing his head* "There's not a lot on top!" - Sandra Bezic and Kurt Browning
"I landed the first triple, and no one was more shocked than I. My rear was saying, 'Why am I not wet?'." - Scott Hamilton, explaining why he didn't have to reshoot his program
"Anyone who needs to go change costumes, do it now ... Oh, wait, that's me! Someone else needs to vamp here!" - Kurt Browning, a little slow on the uptake
Will: "Do you love him?"
Grace: "Do I what?"
Will: "Don't do Fiddler with me! Do you love him?" - Will and Grace, of course
Lara Croft: "You might try to kill me."
Bad guy: "I won't kill you."
Lara: "I said you'd try." - from the new Tomb Raider movie
"I'm trying to help."
"What you are doing is the opposite of help." - Shrek
"What happened was, I was threatened with the prospect of having to take my shirt off, which was a chilling thought. So I thought that rather change profession, I will get a trainer and try and do something about it. Actually, what was going to happen was that during the fight scene with Hugh [Grant], it was going to culminate with our shirts being ripped off from our rippling, sweaty backs and have our dynamic torsos unleashed upon the female population of the world and they would barely recover." - Colin Firth, on losing weight for Bridget Jones's Diary
"It was a delicious experience. Hugh will tell you that I fight like a girl, which he's been saying a lot lately. All I can say in response, is that it takes one to know one. He was the first one to pull my hair; I would never have dreamt of doing that. And he scratches as well. So that should give you an idea of HIS character." - Colin Firth, on filming the fight scene in BJD
"I'd been doing this job for quite a number of years and things had never gone potty like this before. I was delighted, but nervous. What could I say in response to it other than a rather limp 'gosh'? And how could I answer questions such as, what's it like to be a heart-throb? 'Well I wake up and have a full heart-throb breakfast. Then I walk down the street making hearts throb all over the place'." - Colin, again, on the reaction in Britain to his performance in Pride and Prejudice
"We're British. We can say anything we want and people think it's Shakespeare." - The Nanny
"Doing OK, aren't we?"
"What's the use of OK? Might as well be losing eight-nil."
"I don't think that's really true Paul, is it? I say, if you want to win a game two-nil you've got more chance if it's nil-nil at halftime than you have if you're eight goals down. Do you see where I'm coming from?"
"You're living in cukoo land! Join the real world!"
"In the real world it's nil-nil!"
*muttered* "Might as well be eight-nil." - Steve (Mark Strong) and Paul (Colin Firth) in Fever Pitch
For more musicals-specific quotes, check out "Everything I Need To Know in Life I Learned from Musicals" - an on-going project my bud Stacy and I are writing! :-)
Or, wander back to my wacky world ...
