Wonder Boys Quotes

Grady Tripp: She's a transvestite.

Terry Crabtree: You're stoned.

Grady Tripp: She's still a transvestite.

James Leer: It's just... for good luck. Some people carry rabbits' feet...

Grady Tripp: ...You carry firearms.

James Leer: You're not like my other teachers, Professor Tripp.

Grady Tripp: You're not like my other students, James.

James Leer: Professor Tripp? Can I ask you a question?

Grady Tripp: Yeah, James.

James Leer: What are we going to do with... it?

Grady Tripp: I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell the Chancellor I murdered her husband's dog.

James Leer: You?

Grady Tripp: Trust me, James, when the family pet's been assassinated, the owner doesn't want to hear one of her students was the trigger man.

James Leer: Does she want to hear it was one of her professors?

Grady Tripp: ...I've got tenure.

James Leer: Now, that is a big trunk. It holds a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly.

Grady Tripp: That's just what they used to say in the ads.

[Crabtree and a student drag James, hopped up on codeine, out of the auditorium]

James Leer: The doors made so much noise!

Grady Tripp: Is he all right?

James Leer: It was so embarrassing! He had to be carried out.

Terry Crabtree: He's fine. He's narrating.

James Leer: They were going to the restroom. But would they make it in time?

Vernon Hardapple: You drivin' this car?

Grady Tripp: Excuse me?

Vernon Hardapple: This 1966 maroon Ford Galaxie 500. You drivin' this car?

Grady Tripp: It's mine.

Vernon Hardapple: Bullshit! It's mine, motherfucka!

Grady Tripp: You must be mistaken.

Vernon Hardapple: Bullshit!

Terry Crabtree: Let me get this straight. Jerry Nathan owes you money, so as collateral he gives you his car.

Grady Tripp: Only I'm beginning to think that the car wasn't exactly Jerry's to give.

Terry Crabtree: Ah, so whose car was it?

Grady Tripp: My guess? Vernon Hardapple.

Terry Crabtree: The hood jumper?

Grady Tripp: He said a few things that lead me to believe that the car was his.

Terry Crabtree: Such as?

Grady Tripp: "That's my car, motherfucker."

James Leer: Whose tuba is that, anyway?

Grady Tripp: Miss Sloviak's.

James Leer: Can I ask you something about her?

Grady Tripp: Yes, she is.

James Leer: So is your friend Crabtree, is he... is he gay?

Grady Tripp: Most of the time he is, James. Some of the time he isn't.

James Leer: You want a bite?

Grady Tripp: No thanks.

James Leer: That's why you're having them. Your spells.

Grady Tripp: Spells? Jesus, James, you make it sound like we're in a Tennessee Williams play. I don't get spells.

Grady Tripp: Where's the cake?

Terry Crabtree: Right behind you.

Grady Tripp: That's not what I meant.

[Sara smells Antonia's perfume on Grady's clothes]

Sara Gaskell: Is that Cristalle?

Grady Tripp: Mm.

Sara Gaskell: My God, I wear the same scent as a transvestite.

Grady Tripp: Shit, James. You shot Dr. Gaskell's dog.

James Leer: I had to! Didn't I?

Grady Tripp: Couldn't you have just pulled him off me?

[Grady offers James some codiene pills]

James Leer: No thanks. I'm fine without them.

Grady Tripp: Right. That's why you were standing in the Chancellor's back yard twirling that little cap gun of yours tonight. You're fine, all right, you're fit as a fucking fiddle.

Grady Tripp: Fine, just fine.

James Leer: Yeah, fit as a fucking fiddle.

Grady Tripp: What do we have here? This looks like... that's our old friend Mr. Codeine. That should take the old pinch out of the ankle. Want one?

James Leer: No, thanks. I'm fine without them.

Grady Tripp: Right. That's why you were standing in the chancellor's backyard spinning that "cap gun" of yours. You're fine. Yeah, you're just as fit as a fuckin' fiddle.

Grady Tripp: James like it or not those people out there are your parents.

James Leer: They're not my parents.

Grady Tripp: What?

James Leer: They're my grandparents... my parents are dead.

Grady Tripp: James the man is obviously your father... you look just like him.

James Leer: There's a reason for that.

Vernon Hardapple: Why did you keep writing this book if you didn't even know what it was about?

Grady Tripp: I couldn't stop.

Grady Tripp: I hope you don't find this forward Amanda, but I wonder if I might ask: Did you ever go to Catholic school?

Amanda Leer: Excuse me?

James Leer: You're mad at me, aren't you? You're mad because I shot your girlfriend's dog.

Grady Tripp: It wasn't her dog, it was her husband's...

[looking at James]

Grady Tripp: Who said anything about a girlfriend?

James Leer: [smiling back]

Grady Tripp: Okay, James, I wish you hadn't shot my girlfriends dog. Even though Poe and I were not exactly what you'd call simpatico that's no reason he should've taken two in the chest

Walter Gaskell: Are you drinking, Professor Tripp, right now?

Grady Tripp: [smoking weed] No.

Oola: I know you. Double Dickel on the rocks. I never forget a drink.

Grady Tripp: And I never forget an Oola.

[eating a box of white-powder donuts]

James Leer: These are incredible. Incredible!

Grady Tripp: Finish the rest of that joint, James, you can start chewing on the box.

Terry Crabtree: [Looking at James Leer's book] The Love Parade... I've got a feeling about this, Tripp. I feel this kid in my bones.

Grady Tripp: ONLY in your bones?

Hannah Green: Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?

Grady Tripp: Yeah.

Hannah Green: And even though you're book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.

Grady Tripp: Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.

Q: I... am a writer.

[applause]

Wordfest party guest: How did you feel about the adaptation?

Wordfest party guest: I thought it was more literary than cinematic...

Terry Crabtree: [after he lost Grady's manuscript] Naturally you have copies.

Grady Tripp: I have an alternate version of the first chapter.

Traxler: Say, Professor Tripp, is all that stuff true about Errol Flynn? How he used to put paprika... on his dick... to make it, you know, like... more stimulating... for the chick?

Grady Tripp: Christ, Traxler, how the hell should *I* know?

Traxler: [gesturing to James Leer's rucksack that Tripp is holding] You're reading his biography, aren't you?

Grady Tripp: Oh. No, it's true. He used to rub all sorts of things on it. Salad dressing... ground lamb...

Traxler: Sick!

James Leer: What are we doing?

Grady Tripp: I'm gonna get you a nice meal, a couple cups of coffee, then I'm taking you home.

James Leer: Take me now.

Grady Tripp: What?

James Leer: I'm not hungry.

Grady Tripp: James, you gotta eat.

James Leer: I'll get something out of the vending machine.

Grady Tripp: Vending machine? What are you talking about?

James Leer: At the bus station, they have these cheese sandwiches. They're pretty good. It's better if you take me now. That way, Carl won't get my spot.

Grady Tripp: Carl?

James Leer: Never mind.

Grady Tripp: James, go get us a table, will ya? I'm not letting the most talented writer in my class eat some week-old cheese sandwich, okay?

Hannah Green: James will know about George Sanders.

James Leer: George Sanders?

Hannah Green: Mr. Crabtree was saying how George Sanders killed himself, only he couldn't remember how.

James Leer: Pills. April 25, 1972, in a Costa Brava hotel room.

Terry Crabtree: How comprehensive of you.

Hannah Green: James is amazing. He knows all the movie suicides. Go ahead, James. Tell him.

James Leer: There are so many.

Hannah Green: Well, just a few. The big ones.

James Leer: Pier Angeli, 1971 or '72, also pills. Donald "Red" Barry, shot himself in 1980. Charles Boyer, 1978, pills again. Charles Butterworth, 1946, I think. In a car. Supposedly, it was an accident, but, you know, he was distraught. Dorothy Dandridge, pills, 1965. Albert Dekker, 1968. He hung himself. He wrote his suicide note in lipstick on his stomach. William Inge, carbon monoxide, 1973. Carole Landis, pills again. I forget when. George Reeves, "Superman" on TV, shot himself. Jean Seberg, pills, of course, 1979. Everett Sloane - he was good - pills. Margaret Sullavan, pills. Lupe Velez, a lot of pills. Gig Young, he shot himself and his wife in 1978. There are tons more.

Hannah Green: I haven't heard of half of them.

Terry Crabtree: You did them alphabetically.

James Leer: It's just how my brain works, I guess.

[Grady and Hannah are putting a stoned James Leer into the back of Hannah's car]

Grady Tripp: All right. Let him crash at my house.

Hannah Green: Where should I put him?

Grady Tripp: In the shape that he's in, you could stand him up in the garage next to the snow shovels and he'd be all right.

Sara Gaskell: You didn't happen to call our house last night, did you?

Grady Tripp: I think I might have, yes.

Sara Gaskell: What do you think you might have said?

Grady Tripp: I think I might have said I was in love with you.

[pause]

Grady Tripp: He told you?

Sara Gaskell: He told me.

Grady Tripp: And what did you say?

Sara Gaskell: I said it didn't sound like you.

[first lines]

Grady Tripp: "The young girl sat perfectly still in the confessional listening to her father's boots scrape like chalk on the ancient steps of the church, then grow faint, then disappear altogether. She could sense the priest beyond the grate..." On that particular Friday afternoon, last February, I was reading a story to my Advanced Writers' Workshop by one James Leer, Junior Lit major and sole inhabitant of his own gloomy gulag.

[last lines]

Grady Tripp: As for me, I lost everything: my wife, my book, my job, everything that I thought was important. But I finally knew where I wanted to go. And now I have someone to help me get there.

Grady Tripp: I have to go over to my wife's parents house today, to gather a few things.

James Leer: The one that left you?

Grady Tripp: Yes James, that one.

Antonia "Tony" Sloviak: Oh, that's such a beautiful Greenhouse.

Grady Tripp: It's Mrs. Gaskells, it's her hobby.

Terry Crabtree: I thought YOU were Mrs. Gaskell's hobby.

Grady Tripp: Piss off, will ya Crabs? I lost a wife today.

Terry Crabtree: You'll find another one, you always do. She'll be younger,prettier, they always are.

Terry Crabtree: There must be two dozen windows, how do we find his?

Grady Tripp: I told you, they keep him "chained" in the basement.

Terry Crabtree: - Music Coming From Within The Windows Of The Basement - Rodgers & Hart?

Grady Tripp: James Leer.

Terry Crabtree: So is he any good?

Grady Tripp: No, not yet.

Terry Crabtree: Well, I'm going to read it, anyway.

Grady Tripp: Aw Crabs, C'mon will you? He's one of my students for Christsakes. Besides, I'm not even sure if he's...

Terry Crabtree: He IS. I'm sure, take my word for it, I see myself in him.

Grady Tripp: Oh, I'm sure you do.

Hannah Green: I'm not the downy innocent you painted me as.

Grady Tripp: That's a shame, we need all the downy innocents we can get.

Student: All your stories make me want to kill myself.

Hannah Green: I think we need something more constructive, here. He lets you in.

James Leer: "Arsonist's Daughter" wasn't a fraud. It made me want to be a writer.

Grady Tripp: And for that, James, you have my eternal apologies.

James Leer: I just want to go home.

Terry Crabtree: Don't be ridiculous, no one your age just wants to go home. Besides, Faculty will be there, just call it a Field Trip.

Grady Tripp: I gotta go. I have to rescue James Leer.

Antonia "Tony" Sloviak: Maybe you should go home. You look like you need some rescuing yourself.

Grady Tripp: Yo, Traxler

Traxler: Hey, Professor Tripp.

Grady Tripp: You get high, Sam?

Traxler: Only when I'm working.