Ever since its beginning in the early 20th century, Hollywood has been drawing movie goers with its range of films spanning across genres, and touching over a wide variety of human emotions. The dialogues of Hollywood, worth putting to record, start as soon as words came to Hollywood cinema.
The finesse of Hollywood cinema is brought out in the exquisitely woven scripts. To curate the best of the Hollywood experience, here are twenty of the best dialogues Hollywood has ever known.
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Gone With The Wind
Scarlett: Rhett, Rhett… Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?
Rhett Butler: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
2.The Godfather
Sonny Corleone: How’s Paulie?
Clemenza: Oh, Paulie…you won’t see him no more.
3.Fight Club
Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
4.Titanic
Rose: Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls. Wearing this…
Jack: All right.
Rose: Wearing “only” this.
5.Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Paul Varjak: You know what’s wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You’re chicken, you’ve got no guts. You’re afraid to stick out your chin and say, “Okay, life’s a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.” You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
6.Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Lorelei Lee: Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You might not marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but, my goodness, Doesn’t it help?
7.The Dark Knight
The Joker: You wanna know how I got these scars? My father, was a drinker, and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not. One. Bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me and says, “Why so serious?” Comes at me with the knife. “WHY SO SERIOUS?” He sticks the blade in my mouth… “Let’s put a smile on that face.” And…
8.500 Days Of Summer
Tom: It’s official. I’m in love with Summer. I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love how she licks her lips before she talks. I love her heart-shaped birthmark on her neck. I love it when she sleeps.
9.12 Years A Slave
Clemens: Survival is not about certain death. It’s about keeping your head down.
Solomon Northrup: Days ago I was with my family, in my home. Now you’re telling me all that’s lost? Tell no one who I am, that’s the way to survive? Well, I don’t want to survive. I want to live.
10.The Silence of The Lambs
Hannibal Lecter: I am having an old friend for dinner.
Aibileen Clark: You is smart. You is kind. You is important.
12.When Harry Met Sally
Harry Burns: I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
13.Dead Poets’ Society
John Keating: We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
14.The Social Network
Mark Zuckerberg: If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.
15.300
Messenger: This is madness!
King Leonidas: Madness? This is Sparta!
16.Dirty Dancing
Johnny: Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
17.Casablanca
Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.
18.The Karate Kid
Mr. Han: What happened to eye?
Dre Parker: I ran into a pole.
Mr. Han: Interesting pole.
19.Almost Famous
Penny Lane: You’re too sweet for rock and roll.
William Miller: Sweet? Where do you get off? Where do you get sweet? I am dark and mysterious, and *pissed off*! And I could be very dangerous to all of you! You should know that about me… I am *the enemy*!
20.Annie Hall
Alvy Singer: Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I – I do, don’t you think I do?
Many of these Hollywood dialogues are original to the movie scripts, some from movies based on books previously written. Some of these Hollywood dialogues are romantic, some sinister, some horrifying. These are dialogues distinguished by wit, or literary finesse, or by what they have to say. What these dialogues serve to bring out is the scope of Hollywood, the diversity it has to offer, and how much a medium like cinema can say that is really worth remembering.
