Northern Exposure Quotes

Leonard: The path to our destination is not always a straight one, Ed. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Leonard: If you're going to be a healer, it's not enough to read books and learn allegorical stories. you need to get your feet wet, get some clinical experience under your belt.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: I think the saying is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all and if they didn't say it, they should have.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: Oh the snow the beautiful snow filling the sky and earth below. Over the house tops and over the streets, over the heads of people you meet. Dancing flirting skimming along. Oh the snow the beautiful snow how the flakes gather and laugh as they go. Whirling about in their maddening fun it plays in its glee with everyone. Chasing laughing hurrying by it lights on the face and sparkles the eye. And even the dogs with a bark and a bound snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive and its heart in a glow to welcome the coming of beautiful snow. Bon Hiver Cicely.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Ed: Like Woody Allen says 'It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls'.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Holling: I'm my mother. I'm my father. I'm chipped beef on toast?!

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Maggie: Life is everywhere. The earth is throbbing with it, it's like music. The plants, the creatures, the ones we see, the ones we don't see, it's like one, big, pulsating symphony.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Adam: You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lyme disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Joel: I know Adam is a walking pathology, but the guy's never hurt anybody, not that I know of. I mean, threats of imminent danger are just his way of saying "good morning."

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: It looks like a fine winter's morning out there at the 63rd latitude. Jack frost is tagging up those window panes, hot java, english muffins, locked and loaded. The word on the street is that the Tambo-Vincour addition is due to pop out and see it's shadow manana. From the safety of the womb to the bright unknown. Hey little one, you got 843 expectant aunts and uncles out here all queued up for a little koochie koochie koo.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Maggie: You haven't vacuumed, Fleischman? What's this, petrified corn chips?

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: Morning Cicely. 8: 00 A.M. muchachos. Time to finish those flapjacks, knock back that second cup of joe, get ready to greet the day. Temperature's creeping towards double digits as the solar drought continues--23 days, an average of an hour and a half of sunlight every day. No relief on the horizon. Which only makes sense cause there is no horizon. Our friends at the weather service are calling for another storm and as we know, they've been batting a thousand lately. Hey, let's check our social calendar. Nothing. Total blank. It's cabin fever season people, that time of year when four walls feel like they're going to come in here and choke the spirit right out of you. Time to lock away those firearms and hang tough. No way through it except to do it.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: "Time is but the stream I go a fishing in." Henry David Thoreau.
Ed: "Pass me a sandwich." Ed Chigliak.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Maurice: The orchid, the aristocrat of the flower family. The most sophisticated plant on earth. Clearly a cut above. But, it's got petals like everybody else. The lowly daisy, the cheap carnation, half-baked azelia. Like these, the orchid needs warmth. It needs care and kindness to get by. These flowers need you people. No, I need you.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Shelly: Do I get a real priest? No. I get this dud, some smoke-ring blowing, arm-wrestler with a rip in his pants.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Chris: Marriage. Why do we do it? Everybody knows the stats. One in two marriages end up in broken dishes and a trip to Tijuana. Is it loneliness? Partly. Is it teamwork? Definitely. Things just kind of go easier when there's two of you. One of you can wait in line at the movie theater while the other guy parks the car. Get better seats that way. Better room rate when it's a double. Are you ready to file jointly?...Above you is the sun and sky. Below you, the ground. Like the sun, your love should be constant, like the ground, solid. Are you both OK with that? In that case, I now pronounce you, married.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Little Green Man: Ed, you're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Joel: First I thought it was numbness, you know, shock. The inability to believe that a just God could allow someone to destroy a gold mine of prehistoric knowledge for a year's worth of Salisbury steak. I feel like I am floating. Like I'm watching myself leave my body. I think about what happened today and I just, I want to laugh. I should be foaming at the mouth like any other normal person. Maybe what I am experiencing is a euphoria you're supposed to feel just before you give up, you know, just let the lounges fill with water. Life is a mystery. One man's life-altering experience is another man's tenderloin. I'm one of you now. I'm a Cicelean.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Walt: Boy, you're some kind of firecracker, you know that Ruth-Anne Miller!?

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Holling: A man's hat is his pride, Maurice!

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Holling: A new hat... fun for awhile.. a little variety, change you know, something different. For a good fit, and a comfortable feeling there is nothing like an old hat. You know what I mean?
Maurice: I know that you mean.
Holling: Well then?
Maurice: Well.

TV Show: Northern Exposure
Maurice: Barbara, I owe you an apology. I've been trying to turn you into something you're not. You're no gentle lady. You're a warrior. That's what attracted me. That's what attracts me now.

TV Show: Northern Exposure