MOVIE QUOTES

"Gee, I'm real sorry your mom blew up, Ricky."
-as Lane Myer in Better Off Dead

"The rain on my car is a baptism, the new me, Power Lloyd, my assault on the world begins now."
-as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything

"What the hell is wrong with being stupid once in awhile? Does everything you do always have to be sensible? Haven't you ever thrown water balloons off a roof? When you were a little kid didn't you ever sprinkle soap flakes on the living room floor cause you wanted to make it snow in July? Didn't you ever get really shitfaced and maybe make a complete fool of yourself and still have an excellent time?"
-as Walter Gibson in The Sure Thing

"Are you with me or do you need me to draw it in crayon, like usual?"
-as U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin in Con Air

"Yes, but that's because you're a genius! And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent. Means you're a genius!"
-as David Shayne in Bullets Over Broadway

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
-as Rob Gordon in High Fidelity

"You don't know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. And they don't allow it...because I raise issues."
-as Craig Schwartz in Being John Malkovich

"With friends like you, who needs enemas?"
-as Charles Ossining in The Road to Wellville

"If I didn't know any better, I'd be bursting with admiration. I thought I'd come here and find you on your knees, instead, you're ready to turn adversity into triumph."
-as Kevin Calhoun in City Hall

"This place is like Gone With the Wind on mescaline. They walk imaginary pets here, Garland - on a fucking leash. And they're all heavily armed and drunk. New York is boring!"
-as John Kelso in Midinight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"I know. I've been thinking too much. I had that thought, actually."
-as Nick Falzone in Pushing Tin

"Anybody else who'd save Pablo Casales - perhaps the greatest cellist in the world, with the exception of Yo-Yo Ma - from a fiery car wreck on Sunset Boulevard would be bragging about it, but not Josh. He didn't want to spoil the 11 o'clock news for you."
-as Ivan Alexeev in Tapeheads

"A church with no roof. Ya got the Almighty braggin' his head off."
-as Myrl Redding in The Jack Bull

"You never mentioned any boats! I hate boats! I'm not getting on any boat!"
-as Hoops McCain in One Crazy Summer

"Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."
-as Rob Gordon in High Fidelity

"I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. I'm my own entourage!"
-as Eddie Thomas in America's Sweethearts

"They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? 'I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?'"
-as Martin Blank in Grosse Pointe Blank

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."
-as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything...

"My little brother got his arm stuck in the microwave. So my mom had to take him to the hospital. My grandma dropped acid this morning, and she freaked out. She hijacked a busload of penguins. So it's sort of a family crisis. Bye!"
-as Lane Myer in Better Off Dead

"That's me, I'm the shit."
-as Jonathan Trager in Serendipity

"I flunk English, I'm outta here. I gotta get a job, and you know what that means. That's right, they start me at the drive-up window and I gradually work my way up from shakes to burgers, and then one day my lucky break comes: the french fry guy dies and they offer me the job. But the day I'm supposed to start some men come by in a black Lincoln Continental and tell me I can make a quick 300 just for driving a van back from Mexico. When I get out of jail I'm 36 years old. Living in a flop house. No job. No home. No upward mobility. Very few teeth. And then one day they find me, face down in the gutter, clutching a bottle of paint thinner and why? Because you wouldn't help me in English!"
-as Walter Gibson in The Sure Thing


QUOTES

"I was raised Catholic until I was old enough, you know, to say no. My father was great friends with Phil Berrigan, who just passed away. So obviously, I was informed by his kind of radical, left wing Jesuit mindset."

"We did celebrity looting there [points to a store]. ...They asked me to come over, patronize the store, pick up some stuff. So I took all of my friends over, and we went straight for the $8,000 rack of leather coats and took a bunch. The managers, they get all nervous and twitchy. They freak. But you just look at them really hard and walk out. That's celebrity looting."

"Bush means Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and all these fucking crypto-fascists are gonna get in and start carving up the pie and handing in all their markers Republican Party that's been itching to get back into power."

"This dude who has control over the White House now, he's gonna do a lot of damage. I think people are gonna respond to all the hypocrisy of the Bush administration. He's sort of like this great sort of symbol of inversion to me - the inverse of the truth. It doesn't matter if it's based on any core principal; it doesn't matter if it's based on any facts. The most important thing is the aesthetic. If you have a compassionate aesthetic, that's all we need to do. All you have to do is say, 'I'm Muslim.' But you don't actually have to go to a Mosque. You don't have to give up pork. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to believe in Allah. You just say it. And maybe wear a turban. That's the level of hypocrisy and stupidity that's going on now."

"There are maybe two or three filmmakers alive right now who have the level of control over their work that Clint [Eastwood] does. There's Clint, Woody Allen, and Stanley Kubrick - there's only a few who can really say, 'This is my movie. This is how long I'm gonna shoot it, and this is who I want.' It's really an honor to be able to work that way."

"Making my sister [Joan Cusack] laugh is still one of the best things I can do. There's a scene [in Grosse Pointe Blank] where she's wearing this jacket with epaulets and I say, 'Hey Sergeant Pepper, back off.' That line wasn't scripted, and when I said it for the first time, this smile started in Joan's eyes and then just spread to the rest of her face before she burst into laughter."

"You'd have to be terribly cynical or naive to be a real Republican. What can you say about people who want to repeal the ban on assault weapons? I might respect a right-winger who said, 'I got mine and fuck all of you!' but I don't find any. I'd like Newt Gingrich to watch Hoop Dreams with his eyelids pinned open, and then ask him about the trickle-down theory."

"In the end, the films you don't do, the money you turn down, is what defines your taste."

"I don't want to be involved in anything that's jingnoistic or sensationalistic. People in Hollywood don't think about the moral ramifications of what they do. They're trying to make a buck, and they continually whitewash history. A movie like Top Gun drives up army enlistments because people think they're going to get to fly jets and meet Kelly McGillis, when in reality, they're going to be chipping paint off an aircraft carrier."

"If I'm having an intelligent conversation, with an intelligent person, that's one thing. So long as I don't have to tell you what I had for breakfast."

"I've had epiphanies about the nature of friendship, about who you love, the way you interact with the world. You can't take people for granted. A good friendship requires work, you have to stay present."

"What's your angle? You must have an angle. Don't lie. All reporters come with an angle, and then they fish until they find the thing that reinforces their theories."

"No, but I will for The Thin Red Line. It's a Congressional Medal of Honor doll, and when you pull my Purple Heart, it says, 'Kill! Kill!' Perfect for children."
-When asked if he's going to be made into a doll for his role in Anastasia

"I feel very blessed, very fortunate, very happy. I love my work, I love my friends, I love my family. There was a period when I didn't work for about two years when I was about 25, 26, and I couldn't imagine what I would do with my life, and that was scary. But now I have other things I love. I'm a pretty good kick boxer, I'm a pretty good writer, there are things that I could fall back on. And you know how it is - the minute you realize that your options are unlimited, things just start falling into place all around you."

"I've been watching you guys for years. I kept all that in mind. Plus, I am a writer, so I drew on that, too."
-on preparing for his role as John Kelso in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"Lloyd Dobler was simply the best part of who I could ever be." So, who is John Cusack, really? "You know in The Grifters, how my character, the con man Roy Dillon, had such a dark heart? I'd have to say I'm right smack in the middle of Lloyd and Roy."
-On the real John Cusack

"That is my brand of heaven. The feeling is totally different. I almost can't describe it."
-On being on a hot streak with dice

"There's a certain amount of cynicism to the film. No one's gotten out with their ego intact."
-On America's Sweethearts

"There are some good people. But a good chunk of them will lie for no reason at all - it'll be ten o'clock and they'll tell you it's nine. You're looking at the clock and you can't even fathom why they're lying. They just lie because that's what they do."
-On Hollywood

"I was a teen star. That's disgusting enough."