NINE SWEET LINES FROM THE MOVIES
The story goes that a woman meeting Cary Grant said, “Gee, I wish I could be Cary Grant. Always so smooth, always knowing the right thing to say.” And Cary Grant said, “So do I.”
We all yearn for the perfect line to make the world — or just him or her — love us. Here are nine sweet lines from the movies.
1. Jerry McGuire comes back to make up with his girlfriend. He (Tom Cruise) says “Hello,” then goes into a long speech. And she (Renee Zellwegger) says. . .
“You had me at ‘hello.’”
2. Harry realizes his one-night stand with old friend Sally was the start of something. He hurries to her and says. .
“When you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the ‘rest of your life’ to start as soon as possible.”
3. Casablanca’s Rick (you know who) has nobly surrendered his flame (Ingrid Bergman OMG) to freedom fighter Victor Lazlo. Crushed but determined to make her depart, Rick says,
“We’ll always have Paris.”
4. In “Manhattan,” Woody Allen is in love with teenage Mariel Hemingway. Transcending age and creepiness, he tells her. . .
“You know what you are? You’re God’s answer to Job. You would have ended all argument between them. God would have pointed to you and said, ‘Yeah, I do a lot of terrible things. But I can also make one of these.’”
5. In “The Sting,” Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) wanders the gritty streets of Chicago, alone. He knocks on the door of a woman he’d spotted and asks to come in. “I don’t even know you,” she says. And he replies. . .
“You know me. I’m just like you. It’s two o’clock in the morning and I don’t know nobody.”
6. “Moonstruck” Ronnie (Nicolas Cage) tells Loretta (Cher) that he loves her, but not a perfect, storybook love.
“The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not US! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and DIE. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed.”
And then there’s. . .
7. Rhett to Scarlett — “You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
8. Jimmy Stewart to Donna Reed in “It’s a Wonderful Life”: “What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”
9. Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho) and Mrs. Claypool (Margaret DuMont) are boarding a ship.
Mrs. Claypool: “Are you sure you have everything, Otis?
Driftwood: “I’ve never had any complaints yet.”
