Big Eyes Quotes

Ruben: Why are their eyes so big?
Walter Keane: Eyes are the windows to the soul!

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: Would you rather sell a $500 painting, or a million cheaply reproduced posters?
Walter Keane: See, folks don't care if it's a copy.

Movie: Big Eyes
Ruben: Sweep the gutters before the taste police arrive.

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: Get out of my house! My big house!

Movie: Big Eyes
Judge: That's not testifying, that's filibustering.

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: For God's sake, you've seen me paint!
Margaret Keane: No, I haven't. I always thought that I had, but it's like a mirage. It's like a mirage. From a distance, you look like a painter. But up close, there's not much there.

Movie: Big Eyes
Margaret Keane: Espresso? Is that like reefer?

Movie: Big Eyes
Margaret Keane: I think people buy art because it touches them.
Walter Keane: Yeah, you're living in fairyland. People don't get to discover anything. They buy art because it's in the right place at the right time.

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: What are you afraid of! Just because people like my work, that means automatically it's bad?
John Canaday: No, but it doesn't make it art either. Art should elevate, not pander. Particularly in a Hall of Education.
Walter Keane: You have no idea! Why does someone become a critic? Because he cannot create!
John Canaday: Oh, dear. That moldy chestnut.
Walter Keane: Don't interrupt! You don't know what it's like to put your emotions out there, naked for the whole world to see!
John Canaday: What emotions? It's synthetic hack work. Your masterpiece has an infinity of Keanes, which makes it an infinity of kitsch.

Movie: Big Eyes
Narrator: Walter never accepted defeat, insisting he was the true artist for the rest of his life. He died in 2000, bitter and penniless. He never produced another painting.
Narrator: Margaret found personal happiness and remarried. After many years in Hawaii, she moved back to San Francisco and opened a new gallery. She still paints every day.

Movie: Big Eyes
[first lines] Dick Nolan: [narrating]The '50s were a grand time, if you were a man. I'm Dick Nolan. I make things up for a living - I'm a reporter. [Margaret frantically packing things]
Dick Nolan: It's the strangest goddamn story that I ever covered. It started the day that Margaret Ulbrich walked out on her suffocating husband, long before it became the fashionable thing to do.
Margaret Keane: Come on, Janie. [they get into the car]

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: You have an amazing talent. You can look at someone and capture them on canvas. You can paint people. I can only paint things. Yeah, my street scenes are... charming, but at the end of the day, they're just a collection of buildings and sidewalks.

Movie: Big Eyes
Hipster Lady: I think it's creepy, maudlin and amateurish.
Hipster Man: Exactly. I love it.

Movie: Big Eyes
Jehovah's Witness
1: We have something to share with you about the wonderful things that God's kingdom will do for mankind.
Margaret Keane: Well, from where I'm standing, I don't see much good anywhere. Just a lot of pride and thievery and people treating each other poorly.
Jehovah's Witness
1: Do you know what it says in Timothy 3: 1-5? In the last days, critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves.
Margaret Keane: Sounds like my ex-husband.

Movie: Big Eyes
Dick Nolan: [narrating]Two things mattered to Margaret: Her daughter and her paintings. And after all the crazy turns the story took, she came out at the end with both of them.

Movie: Big Eyes
Title Card: I think that what Keane has done is just terrific. Is has to be good. It if were bad, so many people wouldn't like it. - Andy Warhol

Movie: Big Eyes
Walter Keane: What is wrong with the lowest common denominator? Huh? That's what this country was built on! I'm gonna sue everybody.

Movie: Big Eyes
Dee-Ann: Oh, stop that. You're better off. Between us, I never liked Frank.
Margaret Keane: You were a bridesmaid!
Dee-Ann: Exactly. That's why I couldn't speak up. But if I ever see you wrong off again, I will tell you.

Movie: Big Eyes