Assembled by Dave DeBord
A writer’s words come alive when an actor says them. Words should always move a story along but sometimes dialogue is so memorable it lives beyond the story. From “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” to “Here’s looking at you kid,” a memorable phrase can forever be identified with a specific movie. Here are a dozen quotes. Can you identify the movie (and actor) that immortalized these lines?
1. “Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine out
of a DeLorean?”
2. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. . . . It smells like .
. . victory”
3. “You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children
like the tube. It’s mass madness. You maniacs. You are the real thing—turn
them off. Right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking.”
4. “We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. . . I
don’t have to show you no stinkin’ badges.”
5. “The public doesn’t give a damn about integrity. A town that
won’t defend itself deserves no help. Get out, Will. It’s all for
nothing.”
6. “A toast, Jedediah—to live on my terms. These are the only terms
anybody ever knows—his own.”
7. “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.
. . . God help me, I do love it so.”
8. “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t
have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing.
Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You
just put your lips together and blow.”
9. “Now for the last time, Miss. Just try and listen, won’t you.
Try to understand. It’s sure death a dozen times over down this river.
I hate to disappoint you, Miss. But don’t blame me. Blame the river.”
10. “Prew, listen, Fatso done it, Prew. He liked to whack me in the gut.
He asks me if it hurts and I spit at him like always—only yesterday it
was bad. He hit me. He hit me.”
11. “I want to be proper. I want to meet the proper man with the proper
position and make a proper wife and raise proper children.”
12. “I always thought it was a ridiculous name for a prison—Sing
Sing. I mean, it sounds more like it should be an opera house or something.”