Happy Texas: Harry and Wayne have stolen an RV and have been mistaken for the owners. They are searching through the RV for clues as to who they might be. Wayne opens a closet and finds a bunch of very small, elaborate costumes.
"WAYNE: Midget clothes. We’re midgets.
HARRY: We’re not midgets. No. Maybe whoever owned this had kids.
WAYNE: Circus kids.
HARRY: Hey, what about this?
WAYNE: Hey, maybe we are tailors. We travel from town to town tailoring dresses for circus midgets."
Maybe you had to be there, but I was laughing like an insane person at this point.
Arrested Development: “Now, the blue part is land.” (From Buster, who supposedly studied geography, as he looks at a nautical chart).
Buffy. I first saw it in the 4th season (we had no cable until then). Willow has cast a couple of spells and this demon wants him to join him. She refuses. He asks if she means it. She says, yes. The demon shrugs, gives her a coin, then said, “Well, if you change your mind, here’s my token. Give me a summons.”
Stephen Sondheim: “Can you see me as a poet writing poetry? All my verse will be – free!”
and about sixteen bars later, “It’s the necessary essence of democracy.”
I recall throwing my pen onto the floor of the theater in amazement, delight, and a slight tinge of self-disgust that I hadn’t thought of it. And so my relationship with The Master began.
Scrubs: “Wherever you go in life, watch out for Johnny the tackling Alzheimer’s patient.”
“Who’s Johnny the–”
“WHO AM I?” [fwoomph.]
Good Omens (and by extension both Gaiman and Pratchett, really): “I said, that one went down like a lead balloon,” said the serpent.
Patrick O’Brian: “‘Is it poisonous?’
‘Extremely so. I dare say it will attack you, directly. I have very little doubt of it. Was I to put the silk stockings over my worsted stockings, surely the hole would not show: but then, I should stifle with heat. Do you not find it uncommonly hot?’”
That was my Firefly moment, too. Before that happened, I still knew that I was gonna like the show, no matter what, but that one moment just made Mal.
During the first season of House, I didn’t really watch TV, but my sister did, specifically American Idol. And then she’d be too lazy to switch, so she watched House after by default. And got hooked. I’d wander in and out while she was watching it on TV–and later on DVD–and the line that got me to sit down and watch (during the interviews to replace Cameron) was “You want to be a rebel; stop being cool. Wear a pocket protector like he does, and get a hair cut.” (The later interview with the woman just clinched the deal.)
My Firefly moment was from the first episode I watched, way back when it was actually on TV. Simon, in Jaynestown: “No, this must be what going mad feels like.”
It’s from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”. Pseudolus, a slave, is singing a song about what it will be like to be free, and every line ends with the word “free”. “Free verse,” of course, is a specific type of poetry.
“It’s the necessary essence of democracy” is just silly wordplay, but it completely embodies the Sondheim aesthetic for me.
Back in college when I first saw “Monty Python & The Holy Grail” I was hooked when I heard this:
Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
“The penis will be obsolete within 5 years.” - Opening sentence in John Varley’s Steel Beach
“Now strip naked and get on the Probulator.” - From the first episode of Futurama.
From the first broadcast ep of Firefly, as a bar fight is about to ensue:
Mal straightens coat “OK, let’s do this.”
cut to outside the bar, where Mal is seen flying through the window
And from the first episode of Buffy that I caught on TV, “Nightmares” where everyone’s nightmares were coming true:
Xander: Remember my sixth birthday party?
Willow: (laughs) Oh, yeah! When the clown chased you and you got so scared that you had…
(stops smiling, looks frightened) Oh!
Kate Bush:
Delicate piano tinkle…ghostly bells…otherworldly voice… “Out on the wiley, windy moors, we’d roll and fall in green…” from Wuthering Heights
Happy Rhodes:
Strange electronic tapping…odd guitar strumming…“I knew a man who was very odd. He’d always thought that someone was following him. He’d talk of entities that didn’t exist. Or so I thought.” From “Off From Out From Under Me”
That’s my favorite line, too! I sat there and marveled at the invention of it (and so many, many others). I’ve quoted it often to let people see the flavor of Adams’ writing.
As far as I know, there is only one other writer who had much the same gift: P.G. Wodehouse, of whom I’m a huge fan (even though he almost always employed the exact same pretense to structure his stories).
These lines are from John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the first le Carré novel I had ever read. He remains among my top ten favorite novelists, in large part because of dialogue like the following…
In this scene (which I’m repeating from my lousy memory), the extraordinarily wise and contemplative British espionage agent George Smiley (who is as far from James Bond as it is possible to get) is trying to persuade a captured Soviet agent (who will one day (unbeknownst to Smiley) become the extremely important Soviet spymaster named “Karla”) to recant his allegiances and defect to England. (In the exceptionally good mini-series made from the novel, Sir Alec Guinness plays Smiley and a completely silent Patrick Stewart plays Karla, the first time I’d ever seen him).
It would be too complicated to set up the background for the following, so I’ll just quote them.
“You were a lousy clown, anyway! Your balloon animals sucked. Anyone can do a giraffe!”
-Xander, Nightmares
“Today I ruined a perfectly good salad”
-Nigel Slater, Kitchen Diaries
The bit in one of the Discworld books about the Patrician’s view of crime: if there is crime, there ought to be punishment, although the specific criminal and the specific punishment don’t have to coincide. I just looked for it, but i can’t find the exact quote.
“I’m workin’ on an idea- why don’t we shoot them first?”
-Jayne, Firefly
