 |
 Greatest
Opening Film Lines and Quotes  Part 4 |
(chronological, by film title) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Return to Entire Quotes Index |
| Famous Opening Line | Film Title |
| "Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!" |
Conan the Barbarian (1982) |
| "1954. You don't get years like that anymore. It was my favorite year..." | My Favorite Year (1982) |
| "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind..." | The Outsiders (1983) |
| (voice-over) "The dream is always the same. Instead of going home, I go to the neighbors'. I ring, but nobody answers. The door is open, so I go inside. I'm looking around for the people, but nobody seems to be there. And then I hear the shower running, so I go upstairs to see what's what. Then I see her. This girl! This incredible girl! I mean, what she's doing there, I don't know, because she doesn't live there. But it's a dream, so I go with it. 'Who's there?' she says. 'Joel,' I say. 'What are you doing here?' 'I don't know what I'm doing here. What are you doing here?' 'I'm taking a shower,' she says. Then I give her: 'Do you want me to go?' 'No,' she says. 'I want you to wash my back.' So now I'm getting enthusiastic about this dream. So, I go to her, but she's hard to find through all the steam and stuff. I keep losing her. Finally, I get to the door and I find myself in a room full of kids taking their College Boards. I'm over three hours late! I've got two minutes to take the whole test. I've just made a terrible mistake. I'll never get to college. My life is ruined." | Risky Business (1983) |
| "He even took the gramophone on safari." | Out of Africa (1985) |
| - "Aw, you don't know where it's gonna come from
anymore. Total strangers are killin' each other. Everybody's got a piece." - "You know, the murder rate used to be around a thousand a year, three a day in the whole county and that was high. Now it's about five a day. Higher in the summer. Fourteen of 'em two Fridays ago. We get the death penalty six, seven times a day, only it's not for murderers, it's for ordinary citizens." - "Yeah, there are 8 million stories in the naked city. Isn't that an old TV show?...What we got in this town, we've got eight million ways to die." |
8 Million Ways to Die (1986) |
| "What am I working on? Uh, I'm working on something that'll change the world and human life as we know it." | The Fly (1986) |
| "God, she's beautiful. She's got the prettiest eyes. She looks so sexy in that sweater. I just want to be alone with her and hold her and kiss her, tell her how much I lover her, take care of her. Stop it, you idiot. She's your wife's sister." | Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) |
| "On the 23rd Day of the Month of September in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence, and this terrifying enemy surfaced, as such enemies often do, in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places..." | Little Shop of Horrors (1986) |
| (dictating): "Your Holiness, the little matter that brought me here to the furthest edge of your light on Earth is now settled. The Indians are once more free to be enslaved by the Spanish and Portuguese settlers. I don't think that's hitting the right note. Begin again...." | The Mission (1986) |
| (voice-over) "I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being." | Stand By Me (1986) |
| "I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on, you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be 'Sir!' Do you maggots understand this?" | Full Metal Jacket (1987) |
| "Once upon a time, many years ago, two burglars broke into our neighbor's house in Rockaway. Mr. and Mrs. Needleman had gone to a movie, and the following events occurred..." | Radio Days (1987) |
| "September 21, 1945... that was the night I died." | Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Jp.) |
| "Take off your clothes." | The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) |
| "Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up, up you wake, up you wake, up you wake, up you wake! This is Mr. Senor Love Daddy, your voice of choice, the world's only twelve-hour strongman on the air, here on We Love Radio, 108 FM, the last on your dial but first in your hearts and that's the truth, Ruth." | Do the Right Thing (1989) |
| "Garbage. All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it." |
sex, lies and videotape (1989) |
| "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States." | GoodFellas (1990) |
| (voice-over) "My reminiscence. I always thought that for such a lovely river, the name is mystifying: Cape Fear. When the only thing to fear on those enchanted summer nights was that the magic would end and real life would come crashing in." | Cape Fear (1991) |
| (voice-over) "In deep Dixieland, the month of October
is almost summery. I had come south to visit my father. Mother had died
a few years before, and Daddy was living all alone. He wouldn't have
it otherwise. Looking at that old house, a painful nostalgia gripped
me for the south itself, the old south I had known, and the people in
it. When I was thirteen years old, a girl came to this house. I overheard
my father decide in a conference with my mother to hire this girl, a
good natured and highly unfortunate girl who was working for a farm family
down near Gadsden, Alabama. Thus she was hired, sight unseen, by a long
distance call. She was the first person I ever loved outside members
of my own family. But as my father said, she caused one hell of a damnable
commotion." |
Rambling Rose (1991) |
| (voice-over) "Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, a war against the machines..." | Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) |
| "In the name of Allah the merciful, all praises due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds. The one God to whom praise is due forever. The one who came to us in the person of Master Fard Muhammad and raised up the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Amen." | Malcolm X (1992) |
(voice-over) "The voice you hear is not my speaking voice, but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. Lord knows why, not even me. My father says it is a dark talent, and the day I take it into my head to stop breathing will be my last. Today, he married me to a man I have not yet met. Soon my daughter and I shall join him in his own country. My husband said my muteness does not bother him. He writes - and hark this! 'God loves dumb creatures, so why not he?' Were good he had God's patience, for silence affects everyone in the end. The strange thing is, I don't think myself silent, that is, because of my piano. I shall miss it on the journey." |
The Piano (1993) |
| "Oh... f--k! F--k!" | Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) |
| (voice-over) "When you love someone, you've gotta trust them. There's no other way. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point? And, for a while, I believed that's the kind of love I had." | Casino (1995) |
| (voice-over) "One time my cousin Walter got this cat stuck up his ass. True story. He bought it at our local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news. It was embarrasing for my relatives and all, but the next week, he did it again. Different cat, same results, complete with another trip to the emergency room. So, I run into him a week later in the mall and he's buying another cat. And I says to him: 'Jesus, Walt! What are you doing? You know you're just gonna get this cat stuck in your ass too. Why don't you knock it off?' And he said to me: 'Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?' My cousin was a weird guy." | Mallrats (1995) |
| (voice-over) "When you die, your life flashes, and you disintegrate, radiating energy. When a thing turns into its opposite, when love becomes hate, there are always sparks. But when life turns into death, it's explosive. There are streaks of light, magical, and electrifying. Everyone senses something, some energy, some spirit, some sort of illumination. But I see it. I've seen bodies shining like stars. Some say there's no soul, no afterlife, that life and death is the straightest line on the compass, and nothing more. I say believe what you want, because no matter what you do, cut everything up, burn it all down, you're in the path of something beyond your control." | Kissed (1996) |
| (narrated) "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a f--king big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchased in a range of f--king fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f--k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sittin' on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f--king junk food into your mouth. Choose rottin' away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, f--ked-up brats that you've spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life...But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?" | Trainspotting (1996, UK) |
| (voice-over) "'Come to Los Angeles! The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty, and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house, a happy, all-American family. You can have all this, and who knows... you could even be discovered, become a movie star... or at least see one. Life is good in Los Angeles... it's paradise on Earth.' Ha ha ha ha. That's what they tell you, anyway." |
L.A. Confidential (1997) |
| "She was Lo --- plain Lo in the morning standing 4'10 in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. In my arms, she was always Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sins, my soul, Lolita." | Lolita (1997) |
| "Way out west there was this fella I wanna tell ya about. Goes by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least that was the handle his loving parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. See, this Lebowski, he called himself ‘The Dude.’" | The Big Lebowski (1998) |
| "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold." | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) |
| (voice-over) "Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker." | Rounders (1998) |
| "We've become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We're tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there's nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn't always Shakespeare, but it's genuine. It's a life." | The Truman Show (1998) |
(voice-over) "When I was young, I met this beautiful girl by a lake." |
What Dreams May Come (1998) |
- "I need a father who's a role model, not some horny geek boy who's gonna spray his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend home from school. What a lame-o. Someone really should just put him out of his misery." |
American Beauty (1999) |
| (voice-over) "People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden…" | Fight Club (1999) |
| "What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" | High Fidelity (2000) |
| "Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'?" | O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) |
| (narrated) "Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled
us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on
the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands
of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward." |
X-Men (2000) |
| - (on phone) "I want you to suck my big dick." - "Marty, honey, dinner." - (on phone) "I want you to lick my balls." - "His cock...his cock was beautiful. And he ate me out for like an hour. Goddamn it, you see now, it's all about attitude. I mean, if you want it, you can get it. You just got to get your f--kin' ass on the beach and work for it." |
Bully (2001) |
| (voice-over) - "You know what happens at that height? The brain dies from lack of oxygen cell by cell. It just shuts down and the body goes with it. I can't stop thinking about what it must have been like." - "Why don't you start at the beginning? It's always the easiest." - "OK, I'll start at the beginning." |
Killing Me Softly (2002) |
| (voice-over) "Who am I? You sure you wanna know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just your average guy, not a care in the world, somebody lied. But let me assure you, this, like any story worth telling, is all about a girl. That girl. The girl next door. Mary Jane Watson. The woman I've loved since before I even liked girls..." | Spider-Man (2002) |
| "Do you consider the book to be autobiographical?" | Before Sunset (2004) |
| "God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven. I can't live with that." | Dead Man's Shoes (2004) |
| (voice-over) "Random thoughts for Valentine's Day, 2004.
Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people
feel like crap. I ditched work today. Took a train home to Montauk. I don't
know why. I'm not an impulsive person. I guess I just woke up in a funk
this morning. I gotta get my car fixed." |
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) |
| "Who are you?" | The Machinist (2004) |
| "Heads, you win. Tails, you die." | Domino (2005) |
| "You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It's quiet; it's peaceful. And all of a sudden, it's a gear shift inside you. And it's like taking a deep breath and going... 'Oh yeah, I forgot about this'." |
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) |
| "I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a f--king job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That's what the n-----s don't realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it." | The Departed (2006) |
| "Are you watching closely?" | The Prestige (2006) |
| "According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible." |
Bee Movie (2007) |
| (voice-over) "I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was somethin' they'd accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those. I lived on this block my whole life; most of these people have. When your job is to find people who are missin', it helps to know where they started. I find the people who started in the cracks and then fell through. This city can be hard..." | Gone Baby Gone (2007) |
| "I was Sheriff of this county when I was 25 years old. Hard to believe." | No Country For Old Men (2007) |
| (voice-over, in part) "This is Harvey Milk speaking on Friday, November 18th. This is only to be played in the event of my death by assassination. During one of my early campaigns, I began to open speeches with a line and it became kind of a signature...'My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you'...." |
Milk (2008) |
(voice-over) "I'd never given much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go. So I can't bring myself to regret the decision to leave home. I would miss Phoenix. I'd miss the heat. I would miss my loving, erratic, harebrained mother. And her new husband...But they want to go on the road, so I'm gonna spend some time with my dad, and this will be a good thing. I think. In the state of Washington, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there's a small town named Forks. Population, 3,120 people. This is where I'm moving. My dad's Charlie. He's the chief of police...." |
Twilight (2008) |
| (title card) "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug" - Chris Hedges | The Hurt Locker (2009) |
| (voice-over) "We had such potential, such promise. But we squandered our gifts, our intelligence. Our blind pursuit of technology only sped us quicker to our doom. Our world is ending. But life must go on." | 9 (2009) |
