Five Easy Pieces Quotes

Bobby: I'd like a plain omelette, no potatoes, tomatoes instead, a cup of coffee and wheat toast.

Waitress: [points at his menu] No substitutions.

Bobby: What do you mean? You don't have any tomatoes?

Waitress: Only what's on the menu. You can have a number two, a plain omelette, it comes with cottage fries and rolls.

Bobby: Yeah, I know what it comes with, but it's not what I want.

Waitress: Well, I'll come back when you make up your mind

Bobby: Wait a minute, I have made up my mind. I'd like a plain omelette, no potatoes on the plate, a cup of coffee and a side order of wheat toast.

Waitress: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you an English muffin or a coffee roll.

Bobby: What do you mean you don't make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don't you?

Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?

Palm Apodaca: Hey, mac...

Bobby: Shut up.

[to the waitress]

Bobby: You've got bread and a toaster of some kind?

Waitress: I don't make the rules.

Bobby: OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelette, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce, and a cup of coffee.

Waitress: A number two, a chicken salad sand. Hold the butter, the lettuce, and the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?

Bobby: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a cheque for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.

Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?

Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees.

[Palm Apodaca sniggers]

Waitress: [points at a sign behind her] You see that sign, sir? Yes, you'll all have to leave! I'm not taking any more of your smartness and sarcasm!

Bobby: You see this sign?

[he sweeps all the glasses off the table onto the floor]

Palm Apodaca: Fantastic that you could figure that all out and lie that down on her so you could come up with a way to get your toast. Fantastic!

Bobby: Yeah, well, I didn't get it, did I?

Palm Apodaca: No, but it was very clever. I would have just punched her out.

Palm Apodaca: Hey, follow that truck. They know the best places to stop.

Rayette: That's an old maid's tale.

Palm Apodaca: Bullshit! Truck drivers are the only ones that know the best places to stop on the road.

Rayette: Salesmen and cops are the ones. If you'd ever waitressed, honey, you'd know that.

Palm Apodaca: Don't call me honey, mac.

Rayette: Don't call me mac, honey.

Palm Apodaca: You know, I read where they, uh, invented this car that runs on, ummm... that runs on, ummm... when you boil water?

Terry: Steam.

Palm Apodaca: Right, steam. A car that you could ride around in and not cause a stink. But do you know they will not even let us have it? Can you believe it? Why? Man! He likes to create a stink! I mean, I've seen filth that you wouldn't believe. Ugh! What a stink! I don't even want to talk about it.

Rayette: I'm not.

Bobby: You're just gonna sit here?

Rayette: Yes.

Bobby: Okay. I hope no one hits on you.

Rayette: I hope they do.

Bobby: [finally talking with his paralyzed father] I don't know if you'd be particularly interested in hearing anything about me. My life, I mean... Most of it doesn't add up to much that I could relate as a way of life that you'd approve of... I'd like to be able to tell you why, but I don't really... I mean, I move around a lot because things tend to get bad when I stay. And I'm looking... for auspicious beginnings, I guess... I'm trying to, you know, imagine your half of this conversation... My feeling is, that if you could talk, we probably wouldn't be talking. That's pretty much how it got to be before... I left... Are you all right? I don't know what to say

[begins sobbing]

Bobby: ... Tita suggested that we try to... I don't know. I think that she... seems to feel we've got... some understanding to reach... She totally denies the fact that we were never that comfortable with each other to begin with... The best that I can do, is apologize.

[regaining his composure]

Bobby: We both know that I was never really that good at it, anyway...

[after a long pause]

Bobby: I'm sorry it didn't work out.

Bobby: That's dangerous, you know.

Catherine: Riding?

Bobby: Mm-hmm. You play the piano all day and then jump on a horse, you could get cramps.

Bobby: What are you doing screwing around with all this crap?

Catherine: I do not find your language very charming.

Bobby: It isn't. It's direct.

Catherine: I'd like you to leave so that I can take a bath. Is that direct?

Bobby: What else do you do?

Catherine: Well, there's fishing, boating, and concerts on the mainland.

[Laughs]

Catherine: I feel funny telling you this. This is really your home. You probably know better than I what there is to do.

Bobby: Nothing.

Catherine: Nothing?

Bobby: Nothing.

Catherine: Well, it must be very boring for you here.

Bobby: That's right.

Catherine: I find that very hard to comprehend. I don't think I've ever been bored. Excuse me.

Betty: That's a wig you wear, isn't it?

Bobby: Me?

Betty: Yeah, I told her it was you but that you were wearin' a wig because on the TV you're mostly all, uh -

[pats him on the head]

Betty: bald up there!

[laughs]

Bobby: [laughs] Your, your little friend's real, real sharp. Uh, I don't, uh, I don't wear the wig on TV because if you're gonna be out there in front of two and a half million people, you've got to be sincere. I mean, I like to wear it when I'm in bowling alleys and slipping around, stuff like that. I think it gives me a little class. What do you think?

Betty: When I was four, just four years old, I went to my mother and I said, "What's this hole in my chin?" - I saw this dimple in my chin in the mirror, and didn't know what it was. And my mother said - get what my mother says - she says, "When you're born, you go on a assembly line past God, and if He likes you, He says,

[grabs her cheeks with both her hands]

Betty: "You cute little thing!" and you get dimples there. And if He doesn't like you, He goes,

[presses one finger on her chin]

Betty: "Go away." So about six months later, my mother found me saying my prayers, and I was going,

[holds one hand over her chin]

Betty: "Now I lay me down to sleep..." My mother says, "What are you covering up your chin for?" And I said, "Because if I cover up the hole, maybe He'll listen to me."

Rayette: That was real good, wasn't it? I finally did it!

Bobby: Great. You throw the big Z's for 19 frames, and then you throw a strike on the last ball of a losing game. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

[Turns around to bowlers at next lane]

Bobby: Isn't that wonderful, ladies?

Twinky: Are you talking to us?

Bobby: Wonderful.

Rayette: You love me, Bobby?

Bobby: What do you think?

[they kiss]

[first lines]

Rayette: I'm gonna play it again.

Bobby: You play that thing one more time, I'm gonna melt it down into hairspray.

Rayette: Let me play the other side then.

Bobby: No, Rayette, it's not a question of sides. It's a question of musical integrity.

Samia Glavia: ...It was just what I was trying to point out...

Bobby: [interrupting] Don't sit there pointing at her.

Samia Glavia: I beg your pardon.

Bobby: I said don't point at her, you creep.

Samia Glavia: But I was just telling about...

Bobby: Where do you get the ass to tell anybody anything about class, or who the hell's got it, or what she typifies? You shouldn't even be in the same room with her, you pompous celibate... You're totally full of shit! You're all full of shit.

Catherine: It's useless.

Bobby: Look, give me a chance.

Catherine: I'm trying to be delicate with you, but you just won't understand. I couldn't go with you. Not just because of Carl and my music, but because of you.

Catherine: You're a strange person, Robert. I mean, what would it come to? If a person has no love for himself, no respect for himself, no love of his friends, family, work, something... How can he ask for love in return? I mean, why should he ask for it?

Bobby: Living here in this rest home/asylum - that's what you want?

Catherine: Yes.

Bobby: That will make you happy?

Catherine: I hope it will. Yes.

Catherine: I'm sorry.

Bobby: Where are *you* goin'?

Palm Apodaca: Alaska.

Bobby: Alaska. What are you: on vacation?

Terry: She wants to live there 'cause it's cleaner.

Bobby: Cleaner. Cleaner than what?

Palm Apodaca: You don't have to tell everybody about it. Pretty soon they'll all go there and it won't be so clean.

Bobby: What makes you think it's cleaner?

Palm Apodaca: I saw a picture of it. Alaska's very clean. It appeared to look very white to me. Don't you think?

Bobby: Yep. That was before the big thaw.

Palm Apodaca: Before the what?

Palm Apodaca: I had to leave this place because I got depressed seeing all the crap. And the thing is, they're making more crap, you know? They got so many stores and stuff and junk full of crap I can't believe it.

Bobby: Who?

Palm Apodaca: Who? Man, that's who. Pretty soon there won't be any room for man. They're selling more crap that people go and buy than you can imagine. Crap.

Palm Apodaca: I mean then it wouldn't be filthy with uh Coke bottles and whisky and uh -

[takes a puff on her cigarette]

Palm Apodaca: - those signs everywhere. They should be *erased*! All those signs selling you crap and more crap and more crap. And I - I don't know. I don't know. I don't even want to talk about it.

Elton: Well, what if she was, Bob? I can't see nothin' so bad in that. Well, what if I were to let you in on a little secret that she is? That's right. She told me. She's all torn up about it, too, which I hate to see. Well hell, isn't it somethin' you just have to face up to? I tell ya, somewhere along the line, you even get to likin' the whole idea. When Stoney first give me the news, I coulda shit!

[Bobby spits out his food and throws down his food in disgust]

Elton: Well isn't that nice?

Bobby: It's ridiculous. I'm sittin' here listening to some cracker *asshole* lives in a trailer park compare his life to mine. Keep on tellin' me about the good life, Elton, because it makes me puke.

Catherine: [after hearing Robert play the piano] That was beautiful, Robert, I'm surprised.

Bobby: Thank you.

Catherine: I was really very moved by... What's wrong?

Bobby: Nothing. It's just... I picked the easiest piece that I could think of. I first played it when I was 8-years-old, and I played it better then.

Betty: My name's Shirley, but they call me Betty. And her name's Twinky.

Bobby: Twinky?

Betty: Yeah, 'cause she's so twinky!

Elton: I still ain't figured out how you got me workin' back out here.

Bobby: I got you to come and work out here? I ain't figured out how you let me get you to come out here and work on these rigs. I've never worked on these damn things before, Elton. You've worked on 'em before. I can't figure out how you let me get *us* out here.

Elton: Somebody had to look out for you.

Bobby, Elton, Betty, Twinky: [singing in their underwear] Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross, To Banbury Cross we go.

Betty: Tra-la.

Twinky: La-la!

Bobby: What's goin' on, Elton?

Elton: I got accused of robbing a filling station down in the Indian Nation. Didn't I tell ya? I just got wild and jumped my bail.

Palm Apodaca: Mass production is what does it.

Terry: What do you mean, mass?

Palm Apodaca: I have to come out and tell you the truth. You're not that clean either.

Terry: Wait a minute. I'm not that neat maybe, but I am clean.

Palm Apodaca: Well, you're not that bad.

Rayette: You depressed about your daddy, hon?

Bobby: No.

Rayette: I imagine it's me then, isn't it?

Bobby: Is what you?

Rayette: Are you depressed I come along?

Bobby: Who says I'm depressed?

Rayette: Is that a happy face I see?

Carl Fidelio Dupea: [to Bobby] Just before the accident, just after I'd come off tour with the Betanthaller Quartet, Father and Herbert and I had a summit conference concerning you, mm-hmm.

Partita Dupea: Oh, my. A summit conference. Where was I, I wonder? Polishing silver behind the coal bin?

Carl Fidelio Dupea: Well, I don't know where you were, penis envy.

[laughs]

Partita Dupea: I hope I didn't hear that.

Catherine: One thing I find very difficult to imagine is how one could have this incredible background in music and then just walk away from it without giving it a second thought at all.

Bobby: I gave it a second thought.

Bobby: What does it have to be with you? Grim and serious?

Catherine: Look, you played, I honestly responded - and you made me feel embarrassed for having responded to you. It wasn't necessary.

Bobby: Yeah, it was. I faked a little Chopin, you faked a big response.

Bobby: Up till now, all I've been getting from you is meaningful looks at the dinner table and a lot of vague suggestions about the day after tomorrow.

Catherine: I am not conscious of having given you any particular looks. And as for the day after tomorrow, this is the day after tomorrow. And I am, unfortunately, seeing you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to take a bath.

Bobby: Serious? Is that what's important to you? Serious?

Catherine: Yes, that's what's important to me.

Bobby: Okay, let's be serious.

Samia Glavia: But, you see, man is born into the world with his existent adversary from the first. It is his historic, mythic inheritance. So, is this startling? Aggression is prehistoric. An organism behaves according to its nature. And its nature derives from the circumstances of its inheritance. The fact remains that primitive man took absolute delight in tearing his adversary apart. And there is where I think the core of the problem resides.

Party Guest: Doesn't that seem unnecessarily apocalyptic?

Samia Glavia: I do not make poetry.

Rayette: Is there a TV in the house?

Samia Glavia: [to Carl and Catherine] I remarked to John that rationality is not a device to alter facts. But moreover, I think of it as an extraneous tool, a gadget. Somewhat like, uh, the television. To look at it any other way is ridiculous.

Rayette: There's some good things on it though.

Samia Glavia: I beg your pardon?

Rayette: The TV. There's some good things on it sometimes.

Samia Glavia: I have strong doubts.

[last lines]

Bobby: That's okay. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.