Brenda: Here's my number.

Nate: Your number?

Brenda: Yeah.  In case you ever want to go on a date.  You know, the kind where you buy me dinner before I put out.

 

Aunt Sarah: I had a lover who was Russian.  He once told me that vodka is for Russians what therapy is for Americans.

Brenda: Yeah.  Something habit-forming and expensive that totally destroys your ability to lead an authentic life.  Sorry. Both my parents are shrinks.

 

"God, there is so much emotion to navigate where family's concerned. Vicodin, anyone?" (Aunt Sarah)

 

"You can drop the generic apathy crap.

That's just laziness.

You're more than that, and you know it."

(Sarah, to Claire)

 

"Well, isn't it comforting to know that being miserable is still better than being an idiot?" (Claire)

 

Mitzi: Been running? It's bad for the knees.

Nate: Everything's bad for something.

 

Ruth: David, are you bringing your special friend to dinner?

David: Why are my friends always special?

Ruth: Okay, then, is the man you're having sex with coming to dinner?

 

"To romantic love, both the inspiration and utter folly of it!" (Sarah, toasting)

 

Nate: This is my..uh, my girlfriend, Brenda.

Brenda: I prefer the term "fuck puppet."

 

David: Try her high school.  It's on the form. Everyone has friends from high school.

Claire: No, they don't. I mean, maybe they have people they talk to or even do things with.  But they're not really friends. They're just filler.

 

Tracy: Why do people have to die?
Nate: To make life important.

 

"Oh I'm great, great. My father's dead, my mother's a whore, my brother wants to kill me and my sister's smoking crack. I think I win. Four days ago I was a relatively happy guy.  Now, I don't even know who that guy was." (Nate)

 

"Do you know what I find

interesting? If you

lose a spouse, you're called a widow or a widower.

If you're a child and you lose your parents, then you're an orphan.

But what's the word to describe a parent who loses a child?

I guess that's just too fucking awful to even have  a name." (Brenda)

 

Nate: I think David's gay.

Brenda: I think David's lucky. Did you see that guy?

 

Teacher: Well, maybe if you paid attention in class instead of reading.

Claire: Well, maybe if you talked about something that was actually gonna be useful to me I would.

Teacher: Oh, algebra is useless? Mmm. Know a lot of physicists who'd beg to differ.

Claire: Well, I don't want to be a physicist.

 

"You're wrong! You don't revolt me! I don't chose which part of you I love, like some kind of chicken!" (Ruth, re: gay David)

 

Counselor: Dating anyone?

Claire: Dating? You mean, like, getting drunk and screwing?

Counselor: If that's what it is.

Claire: Yeah, that's what it is.  No, I'm not.

 

Nate: Who the fuck am I?  Who the fuck are you?
Brenda: You know who I am, Nate. I'm the woman that fucked you in the closet at an airport a couple of hours after I met you. That's who I was the day we met.

 

Claire: God, I hate my hair. I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna cut it all off like Felicity.

Ruth: Have I met her?

Claire: Yeah, she was here for dinner once.

 

Nate: Why do you treat me like shit all the time?

Brenda: Because I had a really fucked up life, and I use sarcasm to hide how ridiculously vulnerable I really am, okay? C'mon, Jesus, you know that.

 

Saleslady: Anything I can help you with?

Brenda: Yes, I'm looking for clothes so expensive only an idiot would buy them. Oh, there, there they are.

 

"Robbie, I have to tell you something now. I do believe I've learned everything I needed to learn from The Plan, and I no longer feel the urge to speak in building metaphors or talk about myself or my feelings in this wayany longer." (Ruth)

 

"Okay, I'll just file that under 'couldn't possible matter less.'" (Claire)

 

"All we have is this moment, right here, right now. the future is just a fucking excuse to avoid being alive today. so be here now."  (Brenda)

 

"What the fucking fuck?" (Rico)

 

"I'm just sort of like, sick and tired of everything.  Just like, all the lies we're fed and the bullshit we're supposed to care about. And like how everybody is so scared of anything that's different from like, everything else." (Claire)

 

Ruth: I read about a bike trip where you tour the countryside of Viet Nam. It's in 2003.

Nikolai: How in 2003 you know where we're going to be, huh? How you know this?

Ruth: That's right. We very well might be dead. We're all gonna die sooner than we like, and maybe we should try to do some nice things before we die, like bicycle through Vietnam.  We can save up for it. We could have something to look forward to.

 

Claire: Oh man, I am starving for a cheeseburger. I want something that walked the earth, with the works.

Nate: Oh man, I'm having a double.

 

"I dunnoI mean, L.A is such a godless place.  Besides, my life is really full here." (Lisa)

 

"I'm beginning to think you don't ever want to talk to me again. If that's the case, then, well, we really need to talk." (Ruth, to Sarah's answering machine)

 

Alma/"The Plan" guru: What do you really want to complain about, really?

Ruth: The fact that the blood stopped circulating to my rear end four hours ago.

You want me to complain. All right, then, fuck this.

Fuck you.

Fuck all of you with your sniveling self-pity.

And fuck all your lousy parents.

Fuck my lousy parents, while we're at it. Fuck my selfish bohemian sister and her fucking bliss. Fuck my legless grandmother! Fuck my dead husband and my lousy children with their nasty little secrets!

And fuck you, Robbie, for dragging me to this terrible place and not letting me have a Snickers bar! I'm going to get something to eat!

 

"As fucked up as you are, you're the sanest thing in my life right now." (Brenda)

 

"Hope you like HERPES!" (Margaret re: to Bern's mistress)

 

Ruth: Claire, are you depressed?

Claire: I'm not even gonna answer that question.

Ruth: Well, whatever you're going through, I hope you don't blame me.

 

"I want you to know something, Brenda. I love you. I love you because you are so independent and spirited. And you make no apologies for yourself. And you know you can't smother someone or you'll lose them. You accept Nate as he is, and that is beautiful.  I don't know how to do that I--not at all.  Maybe that's why I resented you so much. But now I don't. Now I admire you." (Ruth, to Brenda)

 

"Whoa. You are so not on the list of people that get to touch my tits." (Claire)

 

"Look, I have no fuckin' idea. Maybe that's just what a relationship is. Constantly doing things you have absolutely no desire to do." (Nate)

 

Claire: You know, it's polite for the first person downstairs to make the coffee, even if that person has a penis.

Nate: Well, you know, it's also polite for the first person who uses the bathroom to spend less than 45 minutes in there, even if that person has a vulva.

Ruth: Oh, goodness, everyone's here.

David: With all their genitalia.

 

Nate: Maybe I felt safe with her, which frankly, is something I never felt with you!

Brenda: Oh, you felt safe with her.

Nate: Yeah!

Brenda: Yeah, because you were leaving the next day!

Nate: Oh, God.

Brenda: Nate, you created a human being! There's gonna be another person on this planet now, a person who might have a totally miserable fucking life and curse the fucking day she was born because you are walking out on her in the same way that you're gonna walk out on me!

Nate: Oh fuck you! Life doesn't have to be miserable just because you are. Oh yeah, I know--weird shit happened to you.  Yeah, but you know what? It happens to all of us, and I am sick to death of you using it as an excuse to act like some fucking cunt from hell.

Brenda: Wow.  How long have you hated me like this, Nate?

Nate: Oh, I don't need to hate you. You do a pretty damned good job of hating yourself.

Brenda: You picked me, you know!

Nate: Yeah, well, only because I had no idea how fucked up you really are.

Brenda; That's bullshit! You knew and you loved it, because it made you feel good about yourself.

Nate: Oh God, you are so full of shit!

Brenda: You just can't see it because you're so in love with the idea of Nate-the-good-guy, Nate-the-hero, Nate-the-fucking-saint with the fucking great haircut.  The truth is you would run from real love if it ever came at you.

Nate: Real love? What the fuck do you know about real love?

Brenda: Yeah, real love! With the shit and the responsibility and the neediness.  You would fucking run, and you know it. The only reason you stayed with me is because I was never really here.

Nate: You know what? Take your ugly fuckin' ring.

Brenda: Don't you throw that ring at me! That is such a fucking cliché I'll fucking barf.

Nate: (tosses ring) There. Barf.

 

Claire: The people in this school, they have the  mentality of teenagers.

Counselor: You are a teenager.

Claire: Yes, but I think of something besides trying to figure out how to puke after lunch without anyone noticing.

 

Ruth: Have you ever had any feelings of same-sex attraction?

Claire: What? No, Mom.

Ruth: It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Clarie: I know.

Ruth: When I was your age, I actually had a little crush on Jane Fonda.

Claire: Well, she's single again, so now's your chance!

 

"You can't ever really know a person and if you think you can, you're living in a dream world." (David)

 

"Life just wasn't the right environment for me." (Gabriel Dimas)

 

"If you get lonely, have sex.  But if you think you meet someone who really wants something from you?  you're doomed." (Olivier)

 

Nate: None of this turned out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to love you. I did love you. And I just felt like we were beginning toI know we were. I know it in my heart. I feel like I had this once-in-a-lifetime chance and I fucked it up.

Lisa: Nate, I'm not a chance. I'm a person.

 

"I miss her so much I feel like someone tore out my heart and fed it to dogs." (Vanessa, re:her mom dying)

 

"Why is it that I attract every screwed up guy in the state?" (Claire)

 

"You'll have to help yourselves, I'm out of control." (Ruth)

 

"I guess we all want to be loved. It's hard to say no to that, no mater who it's coming from." (Ruth)

 

"It wasn't a gay thing, it was a sex thing." (Billy, re: Olivier)

 

"I went from 'yay, I'm independent,' to 'Fuck, I'm going to die alone.'" (David)

 

David: Is that all life is? We just go through it replacing people?

Dead Dad: Pretty much.

Some just do it faster than others.

 

Arthur: I have some kerchiefs and some undershirtsI hear some people call them wife-beaters, which I think is kind of funny

Ruth: There's nothing funny about beating your wife.

 

"You know what Nate, this isn't the Matrix.  The rest of us who don't have babies--we're real." (Claire)

 

Brenda: Can I tell you something?

Nate: Sure.

Brenda: I don't want to put you in an awkward position.

Nate: I've spent my life in an awkward position. I'm already in an awkward position.

Brenda: I've missed you through this.

Nate: I miss you too. It's not like I don't know how much you made me change.

Brenda: You changed me too.

Nate: Yeah, how so?

Brenda: You're the first person I lost that really cost me something.

 

"The world is ending out there and people are just getting cosmetic surgery and watching debutantes get screwed up the ass." (Claire)

 

"I just figure no one knows more about crazy people than I do.  I was raised by them.  I am one of them." (Brenda)

 

David: What about you, are you seeing anybody? Do you have a thing for anybody?

Claire: Ugh, everyone is an asshole who ultimately fucks you overI'm totally done with that. I'm thinking about becoming a crazy hermit recluse.

David: You won't always feel that way.

Claire: Yes, I will.

 

Brenda: I don't know. 

     Maybe it's just who I am.

I don't think I can change.

      I can't become this totally different person living this simple,

            happy little life.

Nate: Neither can I.

 

Claire: I'm not so much paranoid.  More like I'd rather chose to be this observer.  because for one I know that if I feel any vibe about any guy it just means 'red flag!" red flag!" Beyond that, basically I hate everyone.  I hate her.  And her!  And that guy with the fucking boy scout jacket, like, is that supposed to be ironic?

Edie: Yeah, I would say more misanthrope than paranoid.

 

"That didn't work so well, when I told you the truth." (Brenda)

 

Claire: What have you been up to?

Russel: Nothing much, making bad art, saying stupid things.  Continuing implementation of my master plan to be completely forgotten when I'm gone and totally forgettable while I'm here.

 

Vanessa: C'mon, we all smoked a little pot in high school.

Rico: I didn't!

Vanessa: I know, Rico, 'cause you were boring!

 

"So, is she hard core lesbian or is she just like, art-school bi-girl?" (Claire)

 

"The world's not your own private fucking chemistry set, Claire." (Edie)

 

"I'm crawling towards comfortable. I can't even think about being happy." (George)

 

Claire: I wish I was gay.

David: Ohhhh, no.

Claire: Well, then I wouldn't have to deal with unfamiliar sex organs!

David: They're all unfamiliar unless they're yours.

 

"You're in my will, Im in yours. We basically are married, even if the law refuses to recognize it. But then again, I refuse to recognize most of the Bush administration. I guess it all evens out." (Keith)

 

"No one has normal healthy relationships.  My theory, that I have yet to put into practice, is that you pick someone slightly less crazy than you." (Billy)

 

"If all you can say about a guy is 'he's someone to do things with,' that's worse than being alone." (Bettina)

 

 

 

 

"I'm tired of living every moment like I'm living inside a giant, Xeroxed cotton ball." (Billy)

 

"I thought it was passion, but it was just drama." (Nate)

 

"I know that if you think life's a vending machine where you put in virtue and take out happiness then you're going to be disappointed." "(Maggie)

 

"Go give yourself a hand job!" (Ruth)

 

"Oh right, you fucked her because of silence, because of God. 

Not because we're having a hard time, but because you need an illusion to put your dick in." (Brenda)

 

"It's just that I'm eating fruit salad in bed with a naked frat boy who voted for George Bush." (Claire)

 

"Why not make your life easier? I mean, life is so fucking hard, even when it's easy." (Margaret)

 

"Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do" (Nate, to Billy)

 

"One person's healthy is another person's sick. Some women have to make another person the focus of their lives or they drive themselves crazy." (Victoria)

 

Claire: Support our troops?  What a bunch of bullshit!

Grieving Mom: I don't know what you want me to do.

Claire: Why don't you try driving something that doesn't require so much gas, for starters, if you're so fucking concerned?

Ted: C'mon Claire, lets go inside.

Claire: Yeah, we wouldn't want to offend anybody while they are supporting OUR TROOPS!

David: Claire! Shut up!

Claire: Dozens of Iraqis are dying every day

while the whole world

hates us for going in there in the first place!

And terrorists are sill gonna be blowing up shit in this country for the next hundred years

and the best thing SHE can think to do about it is put a sticker on that enormous SHIT BOX.  

Ya know they still bring the wounded soldiers back at night so that the press can't even film it and nobody sees.

American soldiers are still being fucked up every day, and they don't even tell us, and it's

ALL SO YOU CAN PUT GAS IN THIS ENORMOUS FUCKING CAR OF YOURS TO KEEP EVERYBODY FEELING REALLY FUCKING AMERICAN!!!!!

Grieving Mom (to Rico): She seems like she is on drugs.

Rico: She usually is.

 

"What is this, some kind of Quaker thing, you fuck someone's husband to death and then you bring them a quiche?" (Brenda)

 

"All he ever wanted was somebody who could make him feel like a better man than he actually was.  You could have been anybody." (Brenda)

 

"God is an asshole." (Ruth to Father Jack)

 

David to Claire: You could have dressed.

Claire: I couldn't.

David: The rest of us managed.

Claire: well, the rest of you win.

 

"You can't take a picture of this. 

It's already gone." (Nate)