In this regular feature series on some of the most talked-about films, we examine the legacy of classics, re-evaluate modern blockbusters, and revisit some of the most memorable lines in film. We continue this week with the best quotes from 1997’s Good Will Hunting .
1. Will (Matt Damon): [To an arrogant student] “See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don’t do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a f*****g education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!”
2. Sean (Robin Williams): “You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally, I don’t give a s**t about all that, because you know what? I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some f*****g book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.”
3. Will: “Do you like apples?”
Clark (Scott William Winters): “Yeah.”
Will: “Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?”
4. Sean: “No, I’m not kiddin’ you, Will. That’s why I’m not talkin’ right now about some girl I saw at a bar 20 years ago and how I always regretted not going over and talking to her. I don’t regret the 18 years I was married to Nancy. I don’t regret the six years I had to give up counselling when she got sick. And I don’t regret the last years when she got really sick. And I sure as hell don’t regret missin’ the damn game. That’s regret.”
5. Sean: “My father was an alcoholic. Mean f*****g drunk. He’d come home hammered, looking to whale on somebody. So I’d provoke him, so he wouldn’t go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings.”
Will: “He used to just put a belt, a stick and a wrench on the table. Just say, ‘Choose.’”
Sean: “Well I gotta go with the belt there.”
Will: “I used to go with the wrench.”
Sean: “Why the wrench?”
Will: “Cause f**k him, that’s why.”
6. Chuckie (Ben Affleck): “You don’t owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cause tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be 50, and I’ll still be doin’ this s**t. And that’s all right. That’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winnin’ lottery ticket. And you’re too much of a p***y to cash it in, and that’s b******t.”
7. Sean: “My wife’s been dead two years, Will. And when I think about her, those are the things I think about most. Little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. Those made her my wife. And she had the goods on me too. Little things I do out of habit. People call these things imperfections, Will. It’s just who we are.”
8. Will: “Beethoven, OK. He looked at a piano, and it just made sense to him. He could just play.”
Skylar (Minnie Driver): “So what are you saying? You play the piano?”
Will: “No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can’t play the piano.”
Skylar: “But you can do my o-chem paper in under an hour.”
Will: “Right. Well, I mean when it came to stuff like that... I could always just play.”
‘Great Scott!’: best quotes from sci-fi classic Back to the Future
9. Sean: “It’s not your fault.”
10. [Sean reads a note from Will: “Sean, if the Professor calls about that job, just tell him, sorry, I have to go see about a girl.”]
Sean: “Son of a bitch... He stole my line.”
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