I love movies featuring great dialogue. They’re the ones I remember the most and watch over and over and over. Movies with wicked good dialogue that I can on my shelf from my couch: Good Will Hunting (best dialogue ever), The Rock, Armageddon, Pulp Fiction, The Princess Bride, the 2 Pirates movies, Fargo, Con Air, As Good as it Gets, and Seasons 1 and 2 of Deadwood.

I’d love to explore all my favorite lines from all of those movies, but a 100-page blog entry would be a bit much. So here’s just a small sampling of my favorites:

I drive a Volvo. A beige one. — Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) in The Rock

That’s the best “characterization through dialogue” line ever. Everything you need to know about Stanley Goodspeed in seven words.

You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. — Rockhound (Steve Buscemi) in Armageddon

That one’s a double-whammy. There’s the immediate laugh, but then what he said sinks in and you think, Holy crap, he’s right. While that’s one of the best lines in the movie, the one I SAY most often is “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets shot in the leg”.

I see dead people. — (Haley Joel Osmet) in The Sixth Sense

There’s nothing particularly profound about this line, but what author wouldn’t like to write a line that practically overnight becomes a part of the world’s vocabulary? And it’s slightly less annoying than “I’ll never tell”.

Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City “Sailor wanna hump-hump” bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here — Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) in As Good As It Gets

That whole movie is chock-full of brilliant dialogue. I have extreme writer envy.

And…

I aim to misbehave. — Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) in Serenity

Just because. :cowboy: