Narrator Quotes
558 quotes
"...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church."
"For some, time passes slowly, an hour can seem an eternity. For others, there's never enough. For the Tucks, it didn't exist."
"Winnie Foster was to be sent 500 miles away to be educated, but what her parents didn't understand was that she only wanted to step outside her fence... so she did. What in these quiet woods should be so forbidden? Winnie had always sensed a mystery waiting for her there."
"For some, time passes slowly, an hour can seem an eternity. For others, there's never enough. For Jesse Tuck, it didn't exist."
"Tuck said it to Winnie the summer she turned 15: Do not fear death, but rather the unlived life. You don't have to live forever. You just have to live. And she did."
"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "something that happened." This cannot be "one of those things"... This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance. … These strange things happen all the time."
Unknown
"We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us."
Unknown
"In the apartment downstairs from Amélie lives Raymond Dufayel; they call him "The Glass Man." He was born with bones as brittle as crystal. All his furniture is padded. A handshake could crush his fingers. He's stayed inside for twenty years. Time has changed nothing."
"Nino is late. Amelie can only see two explanations. 1 - he didn't get the photo. 2 - before he could assemble it, a gang of bank robbers took him hostage. The cops gave chase. They got away... but he caused a crash. When he came to, he'd lost his memory. An ex-con picked him up, mistook him for a fugitive, and shipped him to Istanbul. There he met some Afghan raiders who took him to steal some Russian warheads. But their truck hit a mine in Tajikistan. He survived, took to the hills, and became a Mujaheddin. [Increasingly angry] Amelie refuses to get upset for a guy who'll eat borscht all his life in a hat like a tea cozy."
"In such a dead world, Amelie prefers to dream until she's old enough to leave home"
"[voiceover] There was a time, a time before cable, when the local anchorman reigned supreme, when people believed everything they heard on TV. This was an age when only men were allowed to read the news. And in San Diego, one anchorman was more man than the rest. His name was Ron Burgundy. He was like a god walking amongst mere mortals. He had a voice that could make a wolverine purr and suits so fine, they made Sinatra look like a hobo. In other words, Ron Burgundy was the balls."
Unknown
"[voiceover] When the clock struck six, it meant one thing for Ron Burgundy and his news team: go time."
Unknown
"By mid-October, The Howard Beale Show had settled in at a 42% share, more than equaling all the other network news shows combined. In the Nielsen ratings, The Howard Beale Show was listed as the fourth highest rated show of the month, surpassed only by The Six Million Dollar Man, All in the Family and Phyllis - a phenomenal state of affairs for a news show - and on October the 15th, Diana Christensen flew to Los Angeles for what the trade calls "powwows and confabs" with our west coast programming execs and to get production rolling on the shows for the coming season."
Unknown
"It was a perfectly admissible argument that Howard Beale advanced in the days that followed. It was, however, also a very depressing one. Nobody particularly cared to hear his life was utterly valueless. By the end of the first week in June, The Howard Beale Show had dropped one point in the ratings and its trend of shares dipped under 48% for the first time since last November."
Unknown
"The initial response to the new Howard Beale Show was not auspicatory. The press was, without exception, hostile and industry reaction, negative. The ratings for the Thursday and Friday shows were both 14%, but Monday's rating dropped a point, clearly suggesting the novelty was wearing off."
Unknown
"[Final line in the film] This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."
Unknown
"[opening narration] This old world is filled with wonders, but to me there's no place more wonderful than a farm in springtime, when the sun is just lifting on the skyline. The air is so sweet, and everywhere you look, little miracles are happening. Buds swell into blossoms, eggs hatch, young are born. Everything's off to a fresh start, and life is good and busy and brand-new. Around a barnyard, big families are a blessing. The more, the merrier. Root and grunt, push and shove, room for everybody. Well, everybody except the runt. John Arable had been up since daybreak. He'd seen the size of the pig, and he wasn't looking forward to what had to be done."
"[closing narration] Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It's not often that someone comes along who is a true friend, and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
"Way, way back, many centuries ago, not long after the Bible began, Jacob lived in the land of Canaan, a fine example of a family man."
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains... sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor's receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!"
"[first lines] No one would have believed, in the early years of the 21st century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cruel and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes...and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us."
"[last lines] From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this Earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain."
"In the end we had pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained. Oddly shaped emptiness mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name. What lingered after them was not life, but the most trivial list of mundane facts. A clock ticking on the wall, a room dim at noon, the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself."
Unknown
"We knew the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them."
Unknown
"We knew that they knew everything about us, and that we couldn't fathom them at all."
Unknown
"No one could understand how Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, our math teacher, could produce such beautiful creatures."
Unknown
"Collecting everything we could of theirs, the Lisbon girls wouldn't leave our minds but they were slipping away. The color of their eyes was fading along with the exact locations... of moles and dimples. From five, they had become four, and they were all the living and the dead, becoming shadows. We would have lost them completely if the girls hadn't contacted us."
Unknown
"Almost every day, and even when she wasn't keeping an eye on Cecilia, Lux would suntan wearing a swimsuit that caused the knife sharpener to give her a 15-minute demonstration for free."
Unknown
"We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy. And how you ended up knowing what colors went together."
Unknown
"Given Lux's failure to make curfew everyone expected a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be so drastic. The girls were taken out of school, and Mrs. Lisbon shut the house in maximum-security isolation."
Unknown
"So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls... but only that we had loved them... and that they hadn't heard us calling... still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms... where they went to be alone for all time... and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."
Unknown
"His name was Jeremiah Johnson, and they say he wanted to be a mountain man. The story goes that he was a man of proper wit and adventurous spirit, suited to the mountains. Nobody knows where abouts he come from and don't seem to matter much. He was a young man and ghosty stories about the tall hills didn't scare him none. He was looking for a Hawken gun, .50 caliber or better. He settled for a .30, but damn, it was a genuine Hawken, and you couldn't go no better. Bought him a good horse, and traps, and other truck that went with being a mountain man, and said good-bye to whatever life was down there below."
"This is a story of tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, when men have built a station in space, constructed in the form of a great wheel, and set a thousand miles out from the Earth, fixed by gravity, and turning about the world every two hours, serving a double purpose: an observation post in the heavens, and a place where a spaceship can be assembled, and then launched to explore other planets, and the vast universe itself, in the last and greatest adventure of mankind — the plunge toward the… conquest of space!"
"The wicked go to hells, the good go to heavens and the pure neither live nor even die... but those hit on the head tend to fall unconscious."
"When what is indestructible meets what is irresistible, the female all too often wins."
"All this has happened before, and it will all happen again. But this time, it happened in London. It happened on a quiet street in Bloomsbury. That corner house over there is the home of the Darling family. And Peter Pan chose this particular house, because there were people here who believed in him. There was Mrs. Darling. Mrs. Darling believed that Peter Pan was the spirit of youth. But Mr. Darling... Well, Mr. Darling was a practical man. The boys, however, John and Michael, believed Peter Pan was a real person, and made him the hero of all their nursery games. Wendy, the eldest, not only believed. She was the supreme authority on Peter Pan and all his marvelous adventures. Nana, the nursemaid, being a dog, kept her opinions to herself, and viewed the whole affair with a certain tolerance."
"This nation jealously guards its highest award for valor - the Congressional Medal of Honor. In the Korean War, with five million, seven hundred and twenty thousand personnel engaged, only seventy-seven men were so honored. One of these seventy-seven men was Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw. Raymond Shaw was returned from combat and flown directly to Washington to be decorated personally by the President of the United States. This is why his presence, or the presence of any Medal of Honor winner is sufficient to bring generals to their feet saluting."
"On the afternoon of his arrival in Washington, Raymond Shaw was decorated at the White House by the President of the United States. His citation attested to by his commanding officer, Captain Bennett Marco, and the nine surviving members of his patrol, read in part: 'Displaying valor above and beyond the call of duty did single-handedly save the lives of nine members of his patrol, capturing an enemy machine gun nest and taking out in the process a full company of enemy infantry. He then proceeded to lead his patrol which had been listed as missing in action for three days back through the enemy lines to safety.'"
"The war in Korea was over. Captain, now Major Bennett Marco had been reassigned to Army Intelligence in Washington. It was, by and large, a pleasant assignment, except for one thing. Night after night, the Major was plagued by the same re-occurring nightmare."
"That Zelig could be responsible for the behavior of each of the personalities he assumed means dozens of lawsuits. He is sued for bigamy, adultery, automobile accidents, plagiarism, household damages, negligence, property damages, and performing unnecessary dental extractions."
"The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew, that could turn himself into a Negro and a Chinaman, saw him as a triple threat."
"[opening lines] No one would have believed, in the middle of the 20th century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, slowly and surely drawing their plans against us. Mars is more than 140 million miles from the sun, and for centuries it has been in the last stages of exhaustion. At night, temperatures drop far below zero even at its equator. The inhabitants of this dying planet looked across space with instruments and intelligences of which we have scarcely dreamed, searching for another world to which they could migrate. They could not go to Pluto, outermost of all the planets, so cold that its atmosphere lies frozen on its surface. They couldn't go to Neptune or Uranus, twin worlds in eternal night and perpetual cold, both surrounded by an unbreathable atmosphere of methane gas and ammonia vapor. The Martians considered Saturn, an attractive world with its many moons and beautiful rings of cosmic dust, but its temperature is close to 270 degrees below zero, and ice lies 15,000 miles deep on its surface. Their nearest world was giant Jupiter, where there are titanic cliffs of lava and ice with hydrogen flaming at the tops, where the atmospheric pressure is terrible - thousands of pounds to the square inch. They couldn't go there. Nor could they go to Mercury, nearest planet to the sun; it has no air, and the temperature at its equator is that of molten lead. Of all the worlds that the intelligences on Mars could see and study, only our own warm Earth was green with vegetation, bright with water, and possessed a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility. It did not occur to mankind that a swift fate might be hanging over us, or that from the blackness of outer space we were being scrutinized and studied – until the time of our nearest approach to the orbit of Mars during a pleasant summer season."
"The Martians had calculated their descent upon our Earth with amazing perfection and subtlety. As more of their cylinders came from the mysterious depths of space, their war machines, awesome in their power and complexity, created a wave of fear which swept into all corners of the world. In every country, government officials met in desperate conclave, seeking ways to coordinate their defenses with those of other nations. The government of India, driven from New Delhi, met in a railroad coach, while massive Hindu populations streamed for the imagined safety of the faraway Himalayas. The redoubtable Finnish and Turkish armies, Chinese battalions and Bolivians worked and fought furiously. Every effort against the tremendous power of their other-world antagonists ended in the same frantic rout. As the Martians burned fields and forests, and great cities fell before them, huge populations were driven from their homes. The stream of flight rose swiftly to a torrent. It became a giant stampede without order and without goal. It was the beginning of the rout of civilization, of the massacre of humanity. A great silence fell over half of Europe, as all communication was disrupted. When the last wire photo out of Paris reached the French Cabinet, exiled in Strausberg, they hit upon the idea of using super-speed jets as couriers. Stripped of armament and loaded with extra fuel, these planes maintained connections with the Scandinavian countries, North Africa, the United States and especially with England. It was plain the Martians appreciated the strategic significance of the British Isles. The people of Britain met the invaders magnificently, but it was unavailing. As the Martians swept northward toward London, the British Cabinet stayed in session, coordinating every item of information that could be gathered, passing it on to the United Nations in New York. From there, the news was forwarded to Washington. Because here was the only remaining unassailed strategic point."
"[last lines] The Martians had no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. Once they had breathed our air, germs which no longer affect us began to kill them. The end came swiftly. All over the world, their machines began to stop and fall. After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth."
"[Opening narration] Castle Duckula, home for many centuries to a dreadful dynasty of vicious vampire ducks: The Counts of Duckula! Legend has it that these foul beings can be destroyed by a stake through the heart or exposure to sunlight. This does not suffice, however, for they may be brought back to life—by means of a secret rite that can be performed once a century when the moon is in the Eighth House of Aquarius! The latest reincarnation did not run according to plan..."
"(on the opening of the Bronze Sphere) The sphere wrinkles in your hands, the skin of the sphere peeling away into tears and turning into a rain of bronze that encircles you. Each droplet, each fragment that enters you, you feel a new memory stirring, a lost love, a forgotten pain, an ache of loss - and with it, comes the great pressure of regret, regret of careless actions, the regret of suffering, regret of war, regret of death, and you feel your mind begin buckling from the pressure - so MUCH, all at once, so much damage done to others... so much so an entire FORTRESS may be built from such pain. And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, you feel the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, is upon your shoulder, steadying you. He doesn't speak, but with his touch, you suddenly remember your name. ...and it is such a simple thing, not at all what you thought it might be, and you feel yourself suddenly comforted. In knowing your name, your true name, you know that you have gained back perhaps the most important part of yourself. In knowing your name, you know yourself, and you know, now, there is very little you cannot do."
Unknown
"[last lines of film] Thomas More's head stood on Traitor's Gate for a month until his daughter Meg claimed it in order to give her father a proper funeral. Thomas Cromwell was beheaded five years after More was. Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake. The Duke of Norfolk was slated for execution but the King died of syphilis the night before the order was scheduled to be signed. Richard Rich became Lord Chancellor of England and died in his bed."
"The lives lost were precious lives- to their county, to their loved ones, and to the men themselves."
"Children are able to forget quickly. Yesterday, they wept. Today there are smiles and even laughter. Tomorrow it will be as though the bad things have never happened."
"Our prime military aim being to engage and defeat the enemy, the capture of the town itself and the liberation of its people is of an incidental nature. But the people, in their military innocence, look upon us solely as their deliverers. (Beat) It was to free them and their farmlands that we came."
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