“You’re no general. You’re not even a good painter.”

“You give out hope like it was candy in your pocket.”

“There’s 50 more houses to tear down after yours.”

“I’m a zit. Get it?”

“Thank you, sir! May I have another?”

“I got dragged into this gig kicking and screaming, and now it’s the only thing I want to do.”

“I feel like I’m babysitting, except I’m not getting paid.”

“A cool breeze, a softball game, and two women falling in love.”

“Seven years of college down the drain.”

“Why not? I’d be too frightened. God knows what parts of me you’d steal. I’d wake up with all sorts of things missing.”

“You always want to invest in things people can’t do without. Water and cemeteries… pretty safe bets.”

“How ’bout me, cookie? You better than me?”

“Well, you can’t know. Not until you look at a dumpster. But when you climb into that thing for the first time and you pull those newspapers over you, that’s when you know you’ve messed your life up. Somebody comes along like your son, and gives me a leg up, I’ll take it. Even from a kid, I’ll take it.”

“Almost got hung once myself. Didn’t care for it much.”

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

“Goonies never say die!”

“We don’t have to leave the Goondocks!”

“Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

“Because they might have daddy longlegs and um … dead things, Mikey. DEAD THINGS!”

“How about electric guitar? Well, this is a marching band. The extension cord will kill us.”

“Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothin’.”

“You thought that was fast? I thought it was fast.”

“Listen, I’m not joking. This is my job!”

“The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me.”

“You’re nothing but a drifter who found a bag of mail.”

“I know you. You’re… famous.”

“It’s wet, ain’t it? Drink it!”

“You guys playing cards?”

“May I have ten thousand marbles, please?”

“Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!”

“You idiot you glued it on upside down.”

“What did you ever do to change the world?”

“Lord… whatever I’ve done to p— you off… if you could just get me out of this and somehow let me know what it was I promise to rectify the situation.”

“I don’t want to spend my life making a living, Neale. I want to spend my life making a life … A life that makes a difference … A life that is built on love and compassion.”

“If he tries to shake us down, we kill him. Period. We make it fun, but we kill him! End of story.”

“Trust your dear old mother boys. Throw ‘er into four-wheel drive and hold on to your hats.”

“They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn’t steal!”

“First you gotta do the truffle shuffle.”

“We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life.”

“Yeah, I know. You know the next time you people come and drive us off our land I’m gonna find a nice piece of swamp that’s so God-awful, maybe then you’ll leave us the hell alone.”

“Hey, you guys!”

“Down here, it’s our time. It’s our time down here.”

“Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here. This was my dream, my wish. And it didn’t come true. So I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back.”

“Who dropped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.”

“I smell ice cream.”

“I don’t enjoy killing, Mr. Smith. I do it because I’m addicted to it.”