Netflix’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” Best Movie Quotes

Father: [as the young woman is showing them pictures of her paintings] I mean, they’re pretty, but I don’t see how it’s supposed to make me feel something if there’s not a person in them feeling something. If there’s not a person in them feeling sad, or joyous, or whatever other emotion you said.
Young Woman: Well, maybe think of yourself as the person looking out at the scene.
Father: I’d have to see me in them.
Young Woman: Well, if you were there, you wouldn’t see yourself, right?
Father: Well, I would if I looked down. I’m not a ghost. Yet.
Mother: I can attest to that. Especially in the bedroom.

Young Woman: I mean, but if you were there, looking out at it without looking down, you’d see the scene, and you’d feel something. Anything an environment makes you feel is about you, not the environment, right? None of the feeling is inherent to the place.
Father: That’s over my head, I guess.

Mother: Jake, you didn’t tell us your girlfriend was so talented.
Jake: I did, actually.

Mother: Jake tells me you’re studying quantum psychics at the university.
Young Woman: Yes.
Jake: Physics.
Mother: Really?

Mother: I am so glad Jake has found someone. Won’t you please tell us the story of how you met? Jake has refused. I love romantic meeting stories. Like in Forget Paris. Billy Crystal?
Father: I didn’t like that movie. Billy Crystal is a nancy.

Jake: [after his mother’s mispronunciation of the trivial pursuit game] Genus is not the same as genius. A genus is a category.
Mother: I always thought it was the Genius Edition. I told everyone he knew every answer in the Genius Edition. I was very proud of that. Why didn’t we get the Genius…
[slams his hands on the table and yells]
Jake: There is no Genius Edition.

Young Woman: [explaining how she met Jake at a bar during a trivia night] So I was trying to get up the nerve to talk to him, because even though he looked over at me more than once, it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything.
Father: I thought you said you were talking about Brezhnev?
Young Woman: Yes, that’s true. But we didn’t talk anymore after that, I guess is what I meant.

Young Woman: They love you a lot.
Jake: Yeah.
Young Woman: Prime importance in parents.
Jake: I suppose. We’ve had our issues.
Young Woman: Jesus, everyone’s had issues with their parents.

Young Woman: [referring to the kid in the photo] Hey, who is this?
Jake: You can’t tell?
Young Woman: No.
Jake: It’s me.
Young Woman: No, it was me. Wasn’t it me?

Young Woman: [as Jake’s mother is complaining about her ear] What is tinnitus?
Father: Not very much fun is what.
Mother: Not very much fun. But s**t happens, as they say.

Man’s Voice: [the young woman listens to a message] There’s only one question to resolve. I’m scared. I feel a little crazy. I’m not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

Mother: Friends are important. Jake never really had a lot of them growing up. Or even after. Remember your fiftieth birthday?
Jake: Twentieth.
Mother: What did I say?
Jake, Young Woman: Fiftieth.
Mother: [laughs] Oh. Goodness, where is my brain? Anyway. Friends can be helpful. That’s what I’ve always found. Because life can be difficult, on a farm.
Father: Doesn’t get any easier as it trudges along, I’ll say that.

Father: Your mother was always very funny. It’s what I loved about her. I think it’s the first thing that I fell in love with. Kind of faded as she got older.
Mother: Wears you down, I guess. It’s not so funny anymore.
Father: I miss her terribly.

Jake: So, Lucia is studying gerontology.
Mother: Oh, really? Oh, how fascinating.
Father: Oh, fascinating.

Young Woman: [referring to gerontology] I’ve always been interested in the problems associated with aging. I think our society has an almost repulsed relationship to the aged. Which is eminently foolish, seeing that it’s an inevitable and natural part of the life cycle of all living things. Not to mention it’s terribly unkind.
Mother: Oh. How interesting. And compassionate. Oh, we’ve got to keep her, Jake. Oh, how kind she is.

Young Woman: [referring to Jake’s father, who’s looking old with dementia] I’m sorry to hear that you’re…
Father: That’s okay. Truth is, I’m looking forward to when it gets very bad and I don’t have to remember that I can’t remember.

Father: This is Jake’s old room. You two can stay in here tonight if you want. His mother and I aren’t old fashioned about that kind of thing. F***ing and whatnot.
Young Woman: Oh, I have to get home tonight. I have work in the morning.

Mother: [as the young woman finds Jake trying to feed his now old looking mother] Jake’s always been a good boy.
Jake: Mom.
Mother: Diligent. He won a pin. Maybe not as naturally talented as some of the other students, but he worked so hard. And that’s even more impressive. Being a genus…
Jake: Genius, mom.
Mother: Genius. The luck of the draw really. The genetic lottery, as they say. But to do as well as Jake did with no special talent or abilities. Oh. That’s much more impressive.

Young Woman: I’m impressed with your attentiveness to your mom. It’s rare. We tend to warehouse our elderly. It’s really special how devoted a son you are.
Jake: I’m glad to hear you say that. That makes me feel better. Sometimes it feels like no one sees the good things you do. Like you’re just alone.
Young Woman: I see it.

Young Woman: I should end this. Just end it. I just make a clean break. No lingering, no waiting for things to get better. You can only wait so long. I don’t even know who I am in this whole thing anymore, where I stop and Jake starts. I’m a pinball. My emotional state is bouncing all over the place.

Young Woman: Jake needs to see me as someone who sees him. He needs to be seen, and he needs to be seen with approval. Like that’s my purpose in all this, in life. To approve of Jake, to keep him going. And he needs to see me as someone whose approval of him is validated because I’m approved of by others. “Look at my girlfriend. Look at what I won. She’s smart, she’s talented, she’s sensitive. She can do this, she knows about that, she made this, she cares about that.”

Jake: [referring to his girlfriend] She’s a waitress.
Father: Oh
Jake: We met when she was serving me. It’s a sweet story. I asked her about the…
Young Woman, Jake: Santa Fe burger.
Father: I’m feeling confused.

Mother: [looking younger, to the young woman] I tell you, I would misplace my own head if it wasn’t screwed onto my own head.

Mother: Jake can be controlling. You can’t allow him to control you. I think it’s the other side of his type of personality. This diligence thing. He needs to control everything. There’s so many, many things that make him nervous. He keeps closing off more and more of the world. It’s a problem. And the few people he does have left in his life, need to follow all sorts of rules. It really is a problem. Yes, I’m probably to blame. And all this guilt causes me to feel obligated to bend over backwards to accommodate his every little whim. It’s a vicious cycle.
Young Woman: So what exactly are you saying to me?
Mother: I’m saying, take the darn nightgown to the basement. Live dangerously.

Young Woman: It’s tragic how few people possess their souls before they die. “Nothing is more rare in any man,” says Emerson, “than an act of his own.” And it’s quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation. That’s an Oscar Wilde quote.

Young Woman: [after they leave his parents house] I feel uncertain about a lot of what happened tonight.

Jake: It’s good when people you like, like each other.

Young Woman: People like to think of themselves as points moving through time. But I think it’s probably the opposite. We’re stationary, and time passes through us, blowing like cold wind, stealing our heat, leaving us chapped and frozen. I don’t know, dead. I feel like I was that wind tonight. Blowing through Jake’s parents. Seeing them as they were. Seeing them as they will be. Seeing them after they’re gone. When only I’m left. Only the wind.

Jake: [as they discuss the movie A Woman Under the Influence] I felt a kinship with Mabel, I guess. She’s such a powerful, horribly wronged character.
Young Woman: Is she? I think Mabel Longhetti is bombed out because she’s always trying to please everyone. So that she can be considered one more victim-heroine for the women’s liberation. But only by women liberationists who are willing to accept textbook spin-offs as art.

Jake: I feel like maybe our society lacks a certain kindness, a certain willingness to take in the struggles of others, struggling with issues caused by…
Young Woman: An alienating society?
Jake: I don’t know. I guess. Yeah.

Jake: It seems hopeless.
Young Woman: What does?
Jake: All of it. Everything. Like feeling old, like your body is going, your hearing, your sight. You can’t see. You’re invisible. And you’ve made so many wrong turns. The lie of it all.

Young Woman: What is the lie of it all?
Jake: I don’t know! That it’s going to get better. That it’s never too late. That God has a plan for you. That age is just a number.
Young Woman: Shut up!
Jake: That it’s always darkest before the dawn. That every cloud has a f***ing silver lining! That there’s someone for everyone.
Young Woman: Platitudes all.

Jake: And God never gives us more than we can bear.
Young Woman: God’s a good egg that way.

Young Woman: What do you suppose Tulsey Town is?
Jake: Based on the clown. I’d say it’s a circus town. Maybe like that place, where the sideshow folks go during off season.
Young Woman: Ruled by the clown lady?
Jake: Well, yes. She wears a crown.
Young Woman: She has a clown crown?
Jake: A benevolent and tolerant ice cream clown queen. Made entirely of lactose.
Young Woman: She is lactose tolerant!
Jake: She’s sweet but cold.
Young Woman: Like your mom.

Jake: Did you think of my mother as cold?
Young Woman: No. She was lovely. She really was.
Jake: Because I don’t subscribe to that the mother is the cause of all psychological problems crap.
Young Woman: That’s misogynistic claptrap. Freudian bulls**t.

Jake: It is tempting to have someone to pin it on though.
Young Woman: Pin what on?
Jake: All of it. Why you feel a certain way. Why you are a certain way.
Young Woman: That’s misogynistic claptrap. Freudian bulls**t. A person, an adult, has to, at one point or another, take responsibility for who they are. Don’t you think?

Jake: It’s despicable how we label people, and categorize them, and dismiss them. I look at the kids I see at school every day. I see the ones who are ostracized. They’re different. They’re out of step. And I see the lives they’ll have because of that. Sometimes I see them years later, in town, at the supermarket. I see. I can tell that they still carry that stuff around with them. Like a black aura. Like a millstone. Like an oozing wound.

Young Woman: [referring to the employee at the Tulsey Town] I know this girl. I’ve seen her somewhere. I’ve seen her before, her face. Her rash, I know her. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Tip of my brain, as Jake says. She’s someone. She’s from somewhere. I’m certain of it.

Tulsey Town Employee: You’re kind. You’re not like them. Vapid, and mean, and pretty.
Young Woman: Thanks a lot.
Tulsey Town Employee: I didn’t mean it like that. I love the way you look. You have a kindness, and of course you’re very attractive. I didn’t mean it like that.
Young Woman: It’s okay. I understand.
Tulsey Town Employee: It’s just, there seems to be a certain hardness that comes with a certain kind of pretty. You don’t have that. Maybe they suffer too, the pretty ones. I don’t know. Maybe their prettiness causes them suffering. I’m not a psychiatrist.
Young Woman: What an odd thing to say. Of course she’s not a psychiatrist. She can’t be more than fifteen.

Tulsey Town Employee: You don’t have to go.
Young Woman: I don’t have to go where?
Tulsey Town Employee: Forward, in time. You can stay here. I’m very scared.
Young Woman: About what? What are you scared about?
Tulsey Town Employee: I’m scared for you.

Young Woman: How odd. This is probably the last time I’ll ever be in a car with Jake. Soon this will all be a distant memory. We’ll both be in different places, remembering this moment. This shared laugh. And maybe there will be regret.

Young Woman: Maybe time will soften the harder edges, and we’ll both think that was sort of nice. Why did it have to end? And there’s no way back at that point. There’s never a way back.

Young Woman: If you can’t even tell the other person what you’re thinking, that doesn’t bode well.

Jake: [referring to David Foster Wallace’s essay] Pretty people tend to be more pleasing to look at than non-pretty people. But when we’re talking about television, the combination of sheer audience size, and quiet psychic intercourse, between images and oglers, starts a cycle that both enhances pretty images appeal, and erodes us viewers own sense of security, in the face of gazes.

Jake: I don’t think we know how to be human anymore.
Young Woman: Who doesn’t?
Jake: Our society, our culture, people. Whatever all this is. Any of us.

Young Woman: [referring to Jake calling her Ames] Ames? Is that short for Amy? That doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t seem like my name. Or my nickname.

Jake: Everything is tinged. Okay? That’s the thing you have to realize.
Young Woman: It’s tinged?
Jake: Colored by mood, by emotion, by past experience. There is no objective reality. You know, there’s no color in the universe, right? Only in the brain. Just electromagnetic frequencies, the brain tinges them.
Young Woman: Yes. I am a physicist. I know what color is.
Jake: Yes, yes. Yes, you are. You do.

Young Woman: Color is the deeds of light. It’s the deeds and suffering.
Jake: That’s beautiful. It’s not physicist talk, but eminently poetic.
Young Woman: Yeah, well, I am a poet after all.
Jake: You are. It’s beautiful.

Jake: Time is another thing that exists only in the brain.
Young Woman: And yet we get older.
Jake: Older, and older, older, and older. Or so it seems. Sometimes I feel I’m much younger than I actually. Like I’m still a kid inside, until I pass a mirror.
Young Woman: Is younger better?
Jake: Yes. I think so. It’s admirable.

Young Woman: Youth is admirable? How can you admire a person for their age? It’s like admiring a certain point in a stream.
Jake: It’s healthier. It’s brighter. It’s more fun. More attractive, hopeful.
Young Woman: Like a Coca-Cola commercial.
Jake: Almost all groundbreaking work in science and the arts is done by young people. Old people are the ash heap of youth.

Young Woman: [after Jake leaves the car to go speak to the janitor about spying on them] It’s hard to say no. I was never taught that. It’s easier just to say yes. Anyway, sometimes you’re just caught off guard. And the request comes, “Can I have your number?” And the easiest way out of it is just to say yes. And then, that yes turns into more yes. And then it’s yes, yes, yes.

Young Woman: [as she’s waiting, sat in the car for Jake to return] How long does it take to get hypothermia? Maybe it’s not a bad way to go if I have to go.

Janitor: [after she enters the school to find Jake] What does your boyfriend look like?
Young Woman: It’s hard to describe people. It was so long ago, I barely remember. I mean, we never even talked, is the truth. I’m not even sure I registered him.

Young Woman: [continuing to try and explain what Jake looks like] And I remember thinking, I wish my boyfriend was here. Which is, that’s sort of sad, that being a woman, the only way a guy leaves you alone is that if you’re with another guy. Like you’ve been claimed. Like you’re property, even then. Anyway, I can’t remember what he looks like. Why would I? Nothing happened. Maybe it was just, I think it was just one of thousands of such non-interactions in my life. It’s like asking me to describe a mosquito that bit me on an evening forty years ago. Well, you haven’t seen anyone fitting that description, have you?
Janitor: I haven’t seen anyone.

The Voice: [the janitor hallucinates a maggot-infested pig talking to him] Come. Join me. It’s not bad once you stop feeling sorry for yourself because you’re just a pig. Or, even worse, a pig infested with maggots. Someone has to be a pig infested with maggots, right? It might as well be you. It’s the luck of the draw. You play the hand you’re dealt. You make lemonade. You move on. You don’t worry about a thing.

The Voice: There is kindness in the world, you know? You have to search for it, but it’s there.
Janitor: You’re kind.
The Voice: Eh, I’m just evolving. Even now. Even as a ghost, as a memory. As dust, as you will.
Janitor: We’re the same.
The Voice: Everything is the same when you look close enough. As a physicist, you know that. You, me, ideas. We’re all one thing. Let’s get you dressed.

Jake: [we see him looking old on an auditorium stage, accepting a Nobel Prize] I accept. I accept it all. Accept your acknowledgment, this award. I accept all that it entails. That this award comes near the end of a long, fruitful life, in acknowledgment for the work I did decades ago. My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career. The most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found. I am only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.
[the audience includes his parents and the young woman, all looking old, as he starts singing “Lonely Room” from Oklahoma!]