The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Quotes – ‘Our lives are defined by opportunities.’

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond, Taraji P. Henson, Jason Flemyng, Edith Ivey, Jared Harris, Mahershala Ali, Patrick Thomas O’Brien, Rampai Mohadi, Ted Manson

OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆

Story:

Fantasy romantic drama directed by David Fincher, loosely based on the short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story follows Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), who is born under unusual circumstances, who springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy (Cate Blanchett). Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.

Our Favorite Quotes:

Best Quotes    (Total Quotes: 56)

[first lines]
Daisy: What are you looking at, Caroline?
Caroline: The wind, mom. They say the hurricane is coming.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] My name is Benjamin Button, and I was born under unusual circumstances.

[Thomas runs upstairs to see Caroline and his newborn baby but sees a room full of people and Caroline bleeding. The pastor enters the room]
Thomas Button: What are you doing here?
Dr. Rose: Thomas. I’m afraid she’s going to die.
Thomas Button: That’s enough all of you. Get away from her!
[runs to Caroline and takes her hand]
Thomas Button: I came as quick as I could. The streets were filled with people.
Caroline Button: [whispers] Thomas, promise me he has a place.
Thomas Button: I.. [he nods his head]
[Caroline draws her last breath and dies]

Benjamin Button: [narrating] She gave her life for me. And for that I am forever grateful.

Queenie: You are as ugly as an old pot, but you still a child of God.

Doctor Rose: I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s nearly blind from cataracts, I’m not sure he can hear. His bones indicate severe arthritis. His skin has lost all elasticity. His hands and feet are ossified, shows all the deterioration, the infirmities, not of a newborn, but of a man well in his 80’s on the way to the grave.
Queenie: He’s dying?
Doctor Rose: His body is failing him before his life’s begun.

Dr. Rose: Where’d he come from?
Queenie: My sister’s child. From Lafayette. She had an unfortunate adventure. The poor child, he got the worst of it. Come out white.

[looking at new born Benjamin startled]
Old Woman: God in heaven, he looks just like my ex-husband.

Queenie: You never know what’s coming for you.

Benjamin Button: Momma? Momma? Some days, I feel different than the day before.
Queenie: Everybody feels different about themselves one way or another, but we all going the same way.

Benjamin Button: Some nights, I’d have to sleep alone. I didn’t mind, I would listen to the house breathing. All those people sleeping. I felt safe.

[Tizzy washing dishes with Benjamin working with him putting away cans, reading from one of the labels]
Benjamin Button: Mole Asses…
Tizzy: “Molasses”.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] And mortality was a common visitor to our house. People came and went. Death was so frequent, I was never afraid of it. You could hear when someone left us, there was a silence in the house.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] It was Thanksgiving 1930, I met the person who changed my life forever.

Daisy [Age 7]: Are you sick?
Benjamin Button: Well, I heard momma and Tizzy whisper, they said I was going to die soon but, maybe not.
Daisy [Age 7]: You’re odd. You’re different than anybody I’ve ever met.

Queenie: [to Benjamin] You are a different child, a man child. People aren’t going to understand how different you are.

Mr. Daws: Did I ever tell you I been struck by lightning seven times? Once when I was repairing a leak on the roof.
Mr. Daws: Once I was just crossing the road to get the mail.
Mr. Daws: Once, I was walking my dog down the road.
Mr. Daws: Blinded in one eye; can’t hardly hear. I get twitches and shakes out of nowhere; always losing my line of thought. But you know what? God keeps reminding me I’m lucky to be alive.
[sniffles]
Mr. Daws: Storm’s coming.

Ngunda Oti: [to Benjamin] Plenty of times you be alone. When you’re different like us, it’s going to be that way. But I tell you a little secret, fat people, skinny people, tall people, white people, they just as alone as us we are, but they scared shitless.

Caroline: This man. He loved you from the first time he saw you.
Daisy: Nobody has ever loved me that way.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] As hard as I try, I can’t remember her name. Mrs. Lawson, Mrs. Hartford, or maybe it was Maple? It’s funny how sometimes that people we remember the least make the greatest impression on us.

Benjamin Button: What if I told you that I wasn’t getting older, I was getting younger than everybody else?
Mrs. Maple: Well, I’d feel very sorry for you, to have to see everybody you love, die before you do. That’s an awful responsibility.
Benjamin Button: [narrating] I had never thought about life or death that way before.
Mrs. Maple: Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] I was as happy as I could be, I would do anything…
Captain Mike: I need a volunteer.
Benjamin Button: Yes, Captain!
Captain Mike: Scrape off this bird shit.
Benjamin Button: Right away, sir!

Captain Mike: Wait a minute now, you mean to say you’ve been on this earth, for however many years, and you’ve never had a woman?
[Benjamin shakes his head]
Captain Mike: Damn that’s the saddest thing I ever heard in my life. Never?
Benjamin Button: Nope.
Captain Mike: Then by Jesus, you are coming with me.

Daisy [Age 10]: Where are you going?
Benjamin Button: To sea. I’ll send you a postcard.
Daisy [Age 10]: From everywhere. Write me a postcard from everywhere…

Benjamin Button: [narrating] Her name was Elizabeth Abbott. She was not beautiful. She was plain as paper. But she was as pretty as any picture to me.

[after she has removed her shoes and left the elevator. Benjamin give her a quizzical look]
Elizabeth Abbott: I broke a heel! I don’t make it a point to walk about in my stocking feet!

Elizabeth Abbott: You haven’t been with many women, have you?
Benjamin Button: Not on Sundays.

Benjamin Button: I feel so much younger when I’m with you.
Elizabeth Abbott: That’s such a nice thing to say. You make me feel years younger, too. I wish I was. I would change so many things. I would undo all of my mistakes.
Benjamin Button: What mistakes?
Elizabeth Abbott: I kept waiting, thinking I would do something to change my circumstance. Do something. But I never did. It’s an awful waste, you can never get it back, wasted time.

Elizabeth Abbott: If we’re going to have an affair, you’re never to look at me during the day, we must always part by sunrise, and we can never say “I love you”.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] She was the first woman who ever loved me.

[Benjamin receives a note from Elizabeth Abbott]
Benjamin Button: [narrating] She had left a note. She wrote, it was nice to have met you.” That was it.

[after getting shot]
Captain Mike: You can be as mad as a dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.

The Girl: Who is that mama?
Queenie: Your brother, Benjamin
The Girl: I didn’t know he was my brother.
Queenie: [laughs] There’s a shit load of things you don’t know child.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] It’s a funny thing about coming home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.

Daisy: Benjamin I’ve been with older men.
Benjamin Button: You’re going back to New York in the morning, you should be with your friends, you’re only young once.
Daisy: I’m old enough.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] While everybody else was aging, I was getting younger, all alone…

Daisy: I did what you told me to, enjoy my life, I’m only going to be young once, I had no idea you were coming. What did you think I was going to do? You can’t expect me to just drop everything, Benjamin, this is my life…

Benjamin Button: [narrating] Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it.

Benjamin Button: [narrating] But life being what it is, a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control, that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed.

Daisy: We’re not little children playing under the table. Remember, when you came to New York. You didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to be with you then, I don’t want to be with you now! I want you to leave! I’m not going anywhere with you! I want you to stay out of my life!

Daisy: Sleep with me.
Benjamin Button: Absolutely.

Daisy: I’m so glad we didn’t find one another when I was 26.
Benjamin Button: Why do you say that?
Daisy: I was so young and you were so old. It happened when it was supposed to .

Daisy: What’s it like growing younger?
Benjamin Button: Can’t really say. I’m always looking out my own eyes.

Daisy: Will you still love me when my skin grows old and saggy?
Benjamin Button: Will you still love me when I have acne? When I wet the bed? When I’m afraid of what’s under the stairs?
Daisy: What are you thinking?
Benjamin Button: I was thinking how nothing lasts and what a shame that is.
Daisy: Some things last.

Benjamin Button: Goodnight Daisy.
Daisy: Goodnight Benjamin.

Daisy: I promise you, I’ll never lose myself to self-pity again.
Benjamin Button: [narrating] And I think, right there and then, she realized none of us is perfect forever.

Daisy: I figure you were born in 1918, 49 years ago, I’m 43, we are almost the same age. We’re meeting in the middle.
Benjamin Button: We finally caught up with each other. Wait I want to remember us just as we are now.

Daisy: We all end up in diapers.

[being interviewed on TV for being the oldest woman to swim the English channel]
Elizabeth Abbott: I suppose anything was possible.

Caroline: This Benjamin was my father? And this is how you tell me?!

[letter to his daughter]
Benjamin Button: [voice over] For what it’s worth, it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

Daisy: You are so much younger.
Benjamin Button: Only on the outside.

Daisy: Nothing lasts.
Benjamin Button: I never stopped loving you.
Daisy: Benjamin, I’m an old woman now.
Benjamin Button: Some things you never forget.

Daisy: And in the spring, 2003, he looked at me. And I knew, that he knew, who I was. And then he closed his eyes, as if to go to sleep.

[last lines]
Benjamin Button: [narrating] Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.

Total Quotes: 56