The Best Movie Lines

Casablanca... The best of the best movie lines are compiled often and by many.  So though I am by no means a movie aficionado (though I watch more than the average person),

I present the 2006 best of the best movie lines as I deem them.  Here they are, in no particular order, though I have numbered them for the purposes of listing:

1. "If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day."

Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff says this to Catherine in Wuthering Heights.

2. “I am not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love. That is all. But I love strongly, exclusively and steadfastly.”

Judy Davis’s character, writer George Sand says this to Hugh Grant’s Chopin in one of the best movies ever made, Impromptu.

3.  “Uh.  Oh.  V-E-R-N!  V-E-R-N!”  “Course, ten minutes to Wapner.”  “Course, Dad lets me drive on the driveway….”  Course, I get my underwear at K-Mart.”  “She’s [the casino prostitute’s] very sparkly.”  In response to his first kiss and being asked how it was: “Wet.” 

All of the above delivered by the master, Dustin Hoffmann, as the greatest character of all time, Rainman—Raymond Babbit.

4. “I'm no friggin' monument to justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!”

Said by the genius Nic Cage, playing wooden-handed Johnny Cammareri in Moonstruck.

5.  [After Johnny (who has just made love to his brother’s fiancé) says “I love you” to her, she slaps his face] “Snap out of it!”

The wonderful Cher, as Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck.

6. [As Lynnard Skynnard’s “Sweet Home Alabama” plays while cons take over plane]: “Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing around on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.”

Spoken by Steve Buscemi’s character, Garland Greene, in Con Air.

7. “Y'know, I could eat a peach for hours.”

Cage’s smarmy Castor Troy says this in Face/Off.

8.  [To girlfriend, Lula, played by Laura Dern] “The way your head works is God's own private mystery.”

Cage’s Sailor Ripley, in Wild at Heart.

9.  And from the second greatest movie of all time (in my lofty opinion), Mad Max: Road Warrior, come two best of the best movie lines (or snippets of dialogue):

“I got it!” [The Gyro Captain, jumping to catch a deadly incoming boomerang, a murder weapon used by the grunty little Feral Kid]

“My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called "Max".

To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.

Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled.

The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice.

And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max. The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again....” [Narrator of Mad Max: Road Warrior]

My nods of course go to AFI (American Film Institute), as they have their own list of best of the best movie lines; and I acknowledge the critics and true film experts and professionals who also have their lists of the best of the best movie lines, the top ten movie lines, or the top 100 movie quotes. 

But these organizations have already established that on the lists-- living forever, in perpetuity--are such lines as Clark Gable/Rhett Butler’s Gone with the Wind “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” or Mae West’s “It’s not the life in my men, it’s the men in my life,” or Robert Deniro/Travis Bickle’s “You talkin’ to me?” soliloquy. 

So I thought it fun to give a heads up to the marginalized lines that have just as much power, make just as great an impact on us movie fanatics.