Characters who say "I love you" without saying "I love you"

From Serenity:

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Ready to get off this heap, back to civilized life?

Inara Serra: I, uh… I don’t know.

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Good answer.

And a really fine example of a father and son trying to express their love for one another without actually saying the words comes from Breaking Away:

Dad: I cut the stone for this building.

Dave: You did?

Dad: Yeah. I was one fine stonecutter. Mike’s dad, Moocher’s, Cyril’s…all of us. Well, Cyril’s dad…never mind. Thing of it was, I loved it. I was young and slim and strong. I was damn proud of my work. And the buildings went up. When they were finished, the damnedest thing happened. It was like…the buildings was too good for us. Nobody told us that. Just… Just felt uncomfortable, that’s all. Even now, I…I’d like to be able to stroll through the campus and look at the limestone, but I just feel out of place.

You guys still go swimming in the quarries?

Dave: Sure.

Dad: So all you got to show for my 20 years of work is the holes we left behind.

Dave: I don’t mind.

Dad: I do.

Star Trek IV–

Sarek (to Spock): Is there anything you would like me to tell your mother?

Spock: Yes. Tell her…I feel fine.

‘I am glad that you are here with me,’ said Frodo. ‘Here at the end of all things, Sam.’

I see friends shaking hands,
Saying “How do you do?”…

–“What a Wonderful World”

Now, you listen to me! I don’t want any plastics, and I don’t want any ground floors, and I don’t want to get married - ever - to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do. And you’re…and you’re…

Just how much of a troglodyte is one, if one cannot place the movie/book for that last quote, BubbaDog?
I’ve since figured it out, but it took Google helping me. On my own I was lost.

“I am incomplete without you.”

Worf to K’Ehleyr in Star Trek the Next Generation

Some more from Joss Whedon’s Serenity. They’re both about the love Mal has for River. Well, actually, it isn’t love, but he is as protective of her and as loyal to her as he is to all his crew members.

Mal: “Cut her down.”
Crazy backward villager, ready to light a fire underneath the tied-up River: “The girl is a witch.”
Mal: “Yeah, but she’s our witch.” (cocks gun) “So cut her the hell down.”

Mal: Know what the first rule of flying is? Of course you do, since you already know what I’m going to say.
River: Yes. But I like to hear you say it.
Mal: Love. You can know all the math in the 'verse, but take a boat in the air you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she’s hurting before she keens. Makes her a home.
River: Storm’s getting worse.
Mal: We’ll pass through it soon enough.

The love between the married couple Zoe and pilot Wash:
ZOE: “Sir? I’d like you to take the helm, please. (re: Wash) I need this man to tear all my clothes off.”

*Kaylee and Simon are waiting for enemy to break down the door and start a fight they probably won’t survive. Simon finally admits he would have liked to have started something with Kaylee, but he didn’t because he wanted to take care of his siter River first. *
Kaylee: You mean to say as in… sex?
Simon: I mean to say.
Kaylee: Well, hell with this. I’m gonna live!

Morant and Handcock wordlessly clasp hands as they walk in front of the firing squad in Breaker Morant.

“Let me help,” which James T. Kirk tells Edith Keeler is an even more highly-valued sentiment than “I love you,” according to one alien poet.

Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) offers to resign from the Secret Service if it means he can be with fellow agent Lily (Rene Russo), in the outstanding thriller In the Line of Fire. (I don’t think their characters say “I love you” in the entire movie).

Hellboy whispers to the gods of the afterlife, kisses his dead girlfriend and she bursts into flame (fortunately unhurt, as that’s her paranormal power) and comes back to life in Hellboy.

Nevermind.

Homer (to Marge): There’s the dirty girl I married!


SNL prison sketch

Kevin Nealon: Sometimes I worry that you’ll leave me for another man.

Martin Lawrence: You my bitch! I’ll never leave you! Unless I kill you.

Somehow I doubt that’s what the OP had in mind.

I retract my accusation of thread-shitting.

Both “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” and “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady are great examples of this.

Rita Hayworth to Glenn Ford in Gilda:

“I hate you too, Johnny. I hate you so much I think I’m going to die from it.”

Still hot over 60 years later.

The last scene in Lost in Translation, where he whispers to her.

But maybe he did say “I love you”… :wink:

Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. Everything he did for Marianne Dashwood spoke of his love, from handing her his pocketknife so she could cut flowers easily to begging Eleanor to give him some errand to do, lest he go mad with worry over Marianne when she was dangerously ill. At that point, I think I hoped her character would die so that I could have Colonel Brandon’s children! sigh

Heh, true. :smiley:

Han Solo wins. Thread over.