20th Century Women Quotes

Dorothea: Wondering if you're happy is a great shortcut to just being depressed.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: What is that?
Abbie: It's The Raincoats.
Dorothea: Can't things just be pretty?
Jamie: Pretty music is used to hide how unfair and corrupt society is.
Dorothea: Ah, okay so... they're not very good, and they know that, right?
Abbie: Yeah, it's like they've got this feeling, and they don't have any skill, and they don't want skill, because it's really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that's raw. Isn't it great?

Movie: 20th Century Women
Abbie: Whatever you think your life is going to be like, just know, it's not gonna be anything like that.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Abbie: I gave him beer, and then I taught him how to verbally seduce women. Then we drove drunk, but I stopped that, and then he kissed Trish, and then we walked home.
Dorothea: Ah.
Abbie: You're not mad? You're mad.
Dorothea: You get to see him out in the world, as a person. I never will.
Abbie: [pulls a photo of Jamie from a stack of Polaroids]Just... there.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: Men always feel that they have to fix things for women, but they're not doing anything. Some things just can't be fixed. Just be there, somehow that's hard for all of you.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: Half the time I regret it.
Jamie: Then why do you do it?
Julie: Because half the time I dont regret it.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: [Treats bruises on Jamie's face]So what was the fight about?
Jamie: Clitoral stimulation.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: Interested in others.And I think, intelligent.All I ask is to get to know people and to have them interested in knowing me.I doubt whether I would marry again and live that close to another individual,but I remain invisible.Don't pretend for a minute as you look at me,that I am not as alive as you are,and I do not suffer from the category to which you are forcing me.I think, stripped down, I look more attractive than my ex-husband but I am sexually and socially obsolete and he is not.I have a capacity now for taking people as they are,which I lacked at 20.I reach orgasm in half the time and I know how to please,yet I do not even dare show a man that I find him attractive.If I do, he may react as if I have insulted him.I'm supposed to fulfill my small functions and vanish. It Hurts To Be Alive And Obsolete: The Aging Woman by Zoe Moss 1970

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: I think being strong is the most important quality. It's not being vulnerable, it's not being sensitive. It's not even. Honestly, it's not even being happy. It's about strength and your durability against the other emotions.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Abbie: You *cannot* let her *sleep* here if she's not having *sex* with you. It's disempowering.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: Don't you need a man to raise a man?
Dorothea: No, I don't think so.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: [talking about the cigarettes]Can I have one?
Dorothea: No, they're really bad for you.
Julie: You smoke all the time.
Dorothea: You know when I started, they weren't bad for you, they were just stylish, sort of edgy, so... It's different for me.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: He could write with his left hand and scratch my back with his right.
William: And that's it?
Dorothea: I love that.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: Love is supposed to be a feeling that you feel.People say that they're falling in love, but they're not actually falling in love.It's a fake connection that you feel with someone and marriage should never happen.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: I think that I'm too close to you... to have sex with you.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: You got birds?
Abbie: They're a boy and a girl, and that they're monogamous for life, so if one of them dies, then the other one will die like a week later.
Dorothea: Wow. Well how 'bout Maximilian and Carlotta? You know, they deserve something grand if they're gonna be monogamous their whole lives.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: Why are you fine being sad and alone?
Dorothea: I, uh... I... you... you can't talk to me like that.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: What's it like? For girls.
Julie: What? Sex?
Jamie: Orgasms.
Julie: Do you really wanna know what it's like?
Jamie: Yeah.
Julie: I don't have them.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: Mom, I'm dealing with everything, right now. *You* are dealing with nothing.

Movie: 20th Century Women
[William and Abbie come to pay Dorothea's bail] Dorothea: These people have no sense of humor.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: Age is a bourgeois construct.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: Julie is... pretty complicated woman. It's a lot to take on. And I'm impressed in a way.
Jamie: Whatever.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Jamie: But people from her time never admit anything went wrong.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: I think history has been tough on men.I mean, they can't be what they were,and they can't figure out what's next.

Movie: 20th Century Women
William: And who knows what it means for a newborn to see wood walls and carpeted floor and to smell real human smells and to feel wool and cotton and flannel clothes instead of starchy, white, deodorized, dot, dot, dot.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: What he likes is making bowls. He doesn't smell like oil and grease. His hands don't look like dumb mechanics hands.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: I don't wanna just have sex with you.I want you.But it's your version of me.It's not me.It would be a lot better if you just wanted sex.You are exactly like the other guys.You just seem like you're all modern.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Dorothea: I know him less every day.He said it was just a game.You breathe real hard and another kid.He said you're supposed to come to a few seconds later. But it took Jamie almost a half an hour to wake up.

Movie: 20th Century Women
Julie: Home birth actually stunts the baby's growth personality.

Movie: 20th Century Women