Today, I’m curious: What’s something you love to quote? A song lyric, a meme, a single line of dialogue or a whole movie full of them — I want to know!
This question brought to you by my husband’s behaviour earlier this week.
Me first: in my pre-Stu immediate family, Dylan Moran’s stand-up is practically an alternate lexicon for our communication — we’ll often talk about something sounding like “a typewriter chewing tinfoil being kicked down the stairs” but something I return to more obscurely is the refrain from the Song of Deor: Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg. It sounds like “thass off-ray-oh-day, this iss swa mayg” — as that passed, so too shall this pass. As applicable to undergraduate finals as it is to global pandemics!
At risk of being /entirely/ redundant for an entire generation of moviegoers: The Princess Bride. There are so many quotes from it, on some level it feels like the movie isn’t actually a finite entity – instead, it’s some kind of generative mark on the universe that just keeps creating new quotable moments and injecting them into our memories.
some time ago i stumbled upon a trailer for a truly inexplicable musical adaptation of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by the yale rep theater. in it the actress playing merricat delivers the following with out-of-character but extraordinary relish:
this is our house. we own it. WE'RE RICH!!!!!
since then it has become shorthand for nearly everything: appreciation of great bounty (this is our house we own it we're RICH), fellowship (this is OUR house), ironic shared suffering (this is our house... :( we own it... :( we're rich), etc.
This is going to sound like sucking up, but it's true. With my best friend we sometimes say "Tell me something true, or tell me nothing at all," instead of something like "what are you up to?"
at home we quote a lot of the usual sources, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Babylon 5, DragonAge, Mass Effect, Serenity.
Eddie Izzard ALL the time -- we quote the Star Wars cantina bit probably way too much. In general, we quote things a lot. There's a compilation video of Hank Green playing Stanley's parable that we quote a good bit :) In moments of extreme solipsism, we quote silly things that we have said in the past, from a quotes doc Lorraine keeps :)
My partner and I are both very big on Muppet Treasure Island quotes...we probably cycle through the whole movie every couple of days. Favorites include:
"I hate my life!"
"I hate your life too"
"If I had a life, I'd hate it"
"He's got demons?? COOL!"
"Don't you get started with me on pirates! After you jilted me, I took up with this Captain Flint...the man was totally!! Codependent!!"
If it's just me, RENT and Hamilton are the most likely candidates. If X and/or J is involved, we're more likely to be quoting Ghostbusters or Big Trouble in Little China. And X and I frequently speak to each other in Tumblr memes, a language in which J is less fluent.
My favorite quotation: "[I]f I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children." Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet.
The hype around FFVII Remake has me quoting the English translation of the original game a lot lately. No getting off of this train and whatnot.
Because Spouse and I have started defaulting to Michael Schur TV shows because they tend to be relatively kind, we end up quoting Good Place (you booped me! that's fun) and Parks and Recreation (these [insert cute thing here] are so cute I want to throw up and kill myself) and Brooklyn 99 (coolcoolcoolcoolcool).
Also, how do you come UP with these neato questions??
Apart from the obvious for a guy born in the late 70s (Monty Python, The West Wing, The Princess Bride) I think the Swedish comedian/movie director/poet/radio channel controller Tage Danielsson and his partner in writing Hans Alfredsson has been a huge influence on my speech.
There was an ad on a Naya water bottle that said “Hydration is essential. So is recycling.” I quote that a lot when we’re drinking things.
There’s a quote from Teller (of Penn association) that says “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” Which is a good reminder that one can be magical without powers. Just dedication.
Particular memes; mostly the Miette and Mother one in various alterations, They’re Good Dogs Bront, old ones from the Mushroom Mushroom/Peanut butter jelly time era.
So when the child and the niblets were younger we all read The Hero's Guide trilogy. And for a while they would act out an entire scene from the first book with me, culminating in the line, "We wanted cheesecake!" which still gets said quite a lot, although the youngest nibling does not actually remember the books at all. I also have a number of quotes I do not know the origin of that I simply picked up from a lifelong friend who was much better exposed to movies and tv than I was as a kid.
There's this line from The Madness of King George III when he's constipated and squatting against the castle wall and he grunts, "Do it, England!"
I quote that but I shouldn't, I mean honestly who on earth recognizes that one? Still, it feels so appropriate whenever I'm running a test on some code that I've written and I'm waiting for output.
Me first: in my pre-Stu immediate family, Dylan Moran’s stand-up is practically an alternate lexicon for our communication — we’ll often talk about something sounding like “a typewriter chewing tinfoil being kicked down the stairs” but something I return to more obscurely is the refrain from the Song of Deor: Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg. It sounds like “thass off-ray-oh-day, this iss swa mayg” — as that passed, so too shall this pass. As applicable to undergraduate finals as it is to global pandemics!
At risk of being /entirely/ redundant for an entire generation of moviegoers: The Princess Bride. There are so many quotes from it, on some level it feels like the movie isn’t actually a finite entity – instead, it’s some kind of generative mark on the universe that just keeps creating new quotable moments and injecting them into our memories.
some time ago i stumbled upon a trailer for a truly inexplicable musical adaptation of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by the yale rep theater. in it the actress playing merricat delivers the following with out-of-character but extraordinary relish:
this is our house. we own it. WE'RE RICH!!!!!
since then it has become shorthand for nearly everything: appreciation of great bounty (this is our house we own it we're RICH), fellowship (this is OUR house), ironic shared suffering (this is our house... :( we own it... :( we're rich), etc.
I've gotten more use out of the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear than any actual Catholic prayer I learned growing up.
I always end up quoting from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Be excellent to each other!
This is going to sound like sucking up, but it's true. With my best friend we sometimes say "Tell me something true, or tell me nothing at all," instead of something like "what are you up to?"
at home we quote a lot of the usual sources, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Babylon 5, DragonAge, Mass Effect, Serenity.
"two eyes, as often as I can spare them."
"Stay on target. Almost there."
"Sometimes I can feel my bones crumble under the weight of all the lives I'm not living".
Eddie Izzard ALL the time -- we quote the Star Wars cantina bit probably way too much. In general, we quote things a lot. There's a compilation video of Hank Green playing Stanley's parable that we quote a good bit :) In moments of extreme solipsism, we quote silly things that we have said in the past, from a quotes doc Lorraine keeps :)
I quote the Hogwarts Sorting Hat a lot when I'm alone and need to amuse myself. I also sing the Hogwarts school song.
My partner and I are both very big on Muppet Treasure Island quotes...we probably cycle through the whole movie every couple of days. Favorites include:
"I hate my life!"
"I hate your life too"
"If I had a life, I'd hate it"
"He's got demons?? COOL!"
"Don't you get started with me on pirates! After you jilted me, I took up with this Captain Flint...the man was totally!! Codependent!!"
I know it might seem obvious but Voltaire’s “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
I love books and I love dancing swing or Lindy Hop (I’m better at one of these things than the other.)
_Young Frankenstein_ seems to come up a lot in our house; particularly, in these days of frequent hand washing, "Taffeta, darling!"
THURSDAY!
What a concept!
If it's just me, RENT and Hamilton are the most likely candidates. If X and/or J is involved, we're more likely to be quoting Ghostbusters or Big Trouble in Little China. And X and I frequently speak to each other in Tumblr memes, a language in which J is less fluent.
Emperor’s New Groove is a favourite around here
My favorite quotation: "[I]f I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children." Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet.
The hype around FFVII Remake has me quoting the English translation of the original game a lot lately. No getting off of this train and whatnot.
Because Spouse and I have started defaulting to Michael Schur TV shows because they tend to be relatively kind, we end up quoting Good Place (you booped me! that's fun) and Parks and Recreation (these [insert cute thing here] are so cute I want to throw up and kill myself) and Brooklyn 99 (coolcoolcoolcoolcool).
Also, how do you come UP with these neato questions??
Apart from the obvious for a guy born in the late 70s (Monty Python, The West Wing, The Princess Bride) I think the Swedish comedian/movie director/poet/radio channel controller Tage Danielsson and his partner in writing Hans Alfredsson has been a huge influence on my speech.
There was an ad on a Naya water bottle that said “Hydration is essential. So is recycling.” I quote that a lot when we’re drinking things.
There’s a quote from Teller (of Penn association) that says “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” Which is a good reminder that one can be magical without powers. Just dedication.
My favourite thing to quote is from Robin Williams in ‘The Birdcage‘ - “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing near you.”
Particular memes; mostly the Miette and Mother one in various alterations, They’re Good Dogs Bront, old ones from the Mushroom Mushroom/Peanut butter jelly time era.
So when the child and the niblets were younger we all read The Hero's Guide trilogy. And for a while they would act out an entire scene from the first book with me, culminating in the line, "We wanted cheesecake!" which still gets said quite a lot, although the youngest nibling does not actually remember the books at all. I also have a number of quotes I do not know the origin of that I simply picked up from a lifelong friend who was much better exposed to movies and tv than I was as a kid.
There's this line from The Madness of King George III when he's constipated and squatting against the castle wall and he grunts, "Do it, England!"
I quote that but I shouldn't, I mean honestly who on earth recognizes that one? Still, it feels so appropriate whenever I'm running a test on some code that I've written and I'm waiting for output.