Poor Things (2023) Best Movie Quotes

Starring: Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter

OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆

Story:

Sci-fi romance directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Poor Things (2023) centers on Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) who is brought back to life by scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with slick and debauched lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), and travels across continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

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Best Quotes

Dr. Godwin Baxter: Bella, this is Mr. McCandles.
Max McCandles: Hello, Bella.
Bella Baxter: [Bella punches McCandles in the face] Bud.
Dr. Godwin Baxter: Blood.
Bella Baxter: Bud.
Dr. Godwin Baxter: Blood!

Dr. Godwin Baxter: All my research had come to this moment. Fate had brought me a dead body, and a live infant. It was obvious.
Max McCandles: It was?
Dr. Godwin Baxter: Take the infant’s brain out and put it in the full-grown woman, reanimate her, and watch.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: My father took out my oxyntic and pyloric glands, so I must make my own gastric juices.
Max McCandles: Why in God’s name would he do that?
Dr. Godwin Baxter: To discover what no one knew. Turns out we need them. Ideally.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: I am a eunuch and can’t f*** her. To get a sexual response from my body would take the same amount of electricity as runs North London.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: Men’s, indeed all sexuality, is basically immoral.

Duncan Wedderburn: Do not care for polite society. It’s f***ing boring. Destroys one’s soul.
Bella Baxter: God not believe in soul.
Duncan Wedderburn: I think God’s the actual author of the soul idea.
Bella Baxter: Godwin Baxter?

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] You are a prisoner and I aim to free you. Something in you, some hungry being, hungry for experience, freedom, touch. To see the unknown and know it.

Bella Baxter: I must set forth into waters.

Bella Baxter: I will marry Max, as he seems right for that. But first, I shall adventure on Duncan Wedderburn, who I think, cares little of damage to me, but will be interesting as well.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: I can’t let you go.
Bella Baxter: Kiss me and set me forth. If you do not, Bella’s insides shall turn rotten with hate.

Max McCandles: [referring to Bella] Why did you not stop her?
Dr. Godwin Baxter: She is a being of free will.

'It is the goal of all to improve, advance, progress, grow.' - Bella Baxter (Poor Things) Share on X

Bella Baxter: Mrs. Prim said you were wolf with scent of hundred women on you.
Duncan Wedderburn: She undersells it.

Bella Baxter: [after having had sex with Duncan] Why do people not just do this all the time?

Duncan Wedderburn: [referring to sex] Men cannot keep coming back for more.
Bella Baxter: It is a physiological problem? A weakness in men?
Duncan Wedderburn: Well, Perhaps so.

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] You’d be advised, if it’s not too late, not to fall in love with me. I have very little to offer in the way of constancy. Just adventure.

Bella Baxter: Explorer bloods in me.
Duncan Wedderburn: Bella, it’s dangerous to go out without me.
Bella Baxter: I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence. It is most charming.

Bella Baxter: [to Duncan] Now, I must lie down and you must lie down on top of me and do more furious jumping.

Duncan Wedderburn: [after she spits out her food] Bella!
Bella Baxter: What? Why keep it in my mouth if it is revolting?

Bella Baxter: [as a baby cries] I must go punch that baby.

Duncan Wedderburn: Bella. Your behavior is unconscionable. Will you behave?
Bella Baxter: The food was cacking my throat, the baby annoying, and the woman boring with words.

'Don't accept the lie of religion, socialism, capitalism. We are a f***ed species. Know it. Hope is smashable. Realism is not. Protect yourself with the truth.' - Harry Astle (Poor Things) Share on X

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] You will confine yourself to the following three phrases. “How marvelous! Delighted. And how do they make the pastry so crisp.” Yes?

Bella Baxter: Your sad face makes me discover angry feelings for you.
Duncan Wedderburn: Right. I have become the very thing I hate, a grasping succubus of a lover. I’ve pried many of them off me and now I’m it. F***!

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] You, like me, are a creature of freedom in the moments.

Duncan Wedderburn: [as Bella keeps winking] What do you keep doing that for?
Bella Baxter: A man over there repeated blinks at me. I blink back. For polites, I think.

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] What the f*** are you talking about? Who are you? You don’t know what bananas are, you’ve never heard of chess, and yet you know what “empirically” means.

Martha von Kurtzroc: As years have passed, what’s in between my ears is my big concern. What’s in between my legs much less so.
Harry Astley: A desperate rationalization, Martha.

Bella Baxter: This is Martha. She is my new friend who has not been f***ed in twenty years. Is that not astonishment? I hope you use your hand between your legs to keep yourself happy.

Bella Baxter: My hand has taken by another. It is a saying I heard, but did not understand. You do not take just the hand, but all, do you not?

Duncan Wedderburn: I’ll f***ing throw you overboard!
Bella Baxter: So you wish to marry me or kill me? Is that the proposal?

Duncan Wedderburn: You’re always reading now, Bella. You’re losing some of your adorable way of speaking.
Bella Baxter: I am a changingable feast, as are all of we.

'Money is its own form of sickness, and all the scarcity of it.' - Bella Baxter (Poor Things) Share on X

Duncan Wedderburn: She’s going over the side.
Martha von Kurtzroc: Oh, marvelous! I never imagined being murdered. How dramatic.
Harry Astley: Well, she seems happy to die. I’m sorry for getting in your way.

Bella Baxter: You have made me think, cogitate, perambulate on ideas that are wrong, erroneous, and nonsensically annoying that lead me not to sleep. You say all are cruel. And I disagree, disavow, and say no not. But when with Duncan, the cruel just bubbles up in me.
Harry Astley: That shows good judgment. He is a pretty moron.

Bella Baxter: I’m so tired. Or maybe just my spirit is. My soul has been buckled, crumpled, flattened, Duncan Wedderburn, by the sights I have seen.

See more Poor Things Quotes

Bella Baxter: I realize what you are now, Harry. Just a broken little boy who cannot bear the pain of the world.

Bella Baxter: I’m not thoughtless, Duncan. And while it is true my ability to think things through to the logical conclusions is not strong, I did help those suffering people. I have ruined us, as you pointed out, but I do believe my actions come from a good place.

Duncan Wedderburn: [to Bella] You are a monster. A w**re and a monster. A demon sent from hell to rip my spirit to shreds. To punish my tiny sins with a tsunami of destruction. To take my heart and pull it like taffy to ruin me. I look at you, and I see nothing but ugliness.

Bella Baxter: [to Duncan] We should definitely never marry. I am a flawed, experimenting person, and I will need a husband with a more forgiving disposition.

Bella Baxter: Madam Swiney, I have examined my situation. I need sex and money. I could take a lover, another Wedderburn who would keep me, but may require an awful lot of attention. Or else it’s twenty minutes at a time, and the rest of my day is free to study on the world and the improvement of it. Hence, I seek employment at your musty-smelling establishment of good-time fornication.
Swiney: A woman plotting her course to freedom. How delightful.

Bella Baxter: As God, my father, says, it is only the way it is until we discover the new way it is, and then that is the way it is until we discover the new way it is. And so it goes until the world is no longer flat, electricity lights the night, and shoes are no longer tied with ribbons.

Bella Baxter: I still believe everyone would be happier if we could choose.
Swiney: An idealist. Like me. How delightful you are. But we must give in to the demands of the world sometimes. Grapple with it, try to defeat it.

Swiney: We must work. We must make money. But more than that, we must experience everything, not just the good. But degradation, horror, sadness. This makes us whole, Bella. Makes us people of substance, not flighty, untouched children. Then we can know the world. And when we know the world, the world is ours.

Bella Baxter: Go home, Duncan. Our time has ended. I look at you and feel nothing, but the lingering question of how did I ever want you?

Bella Baxter: Something terrible has happened, Swiney. I feel almost nothing. My empathy is creeping toward what I would describe as contemptuous rage.

Swiney: [to Bella] You’re in the dark period. Before light and wisdom come to you. You must forge through it, and once on the other side, you will be grateful to this moment. But you must keep going.

Duncan Wedderburn: He has sent a demon at large into the world. The devil’s wrapped in an alluring body that cannot be satiated, and a mind that picks people apart stitch by stitch like a bloodied and burned rag doll s**t out of an elephant’s a**.

Duncan Wedderburn: I have no insides. She hollowed me out. My soul. My bank account! I am a bug! A shell! Shall we sing?

Bella Baxter: You are ill?
Dr. Godwin Baxter: I am not. I am dying. A subtle difference, but one I take seriously as a physician.

Bella Baxter: Did I have a baby in me? And if so, where is it?
Dr. Godwin Baxter: I see. Well, technically, you are your baby. And also, I suppose you are your mother. And also neither. No memory survives. No experiences survive.

Bella Baxter: It is hard to be in the position where one wants to hit someone who is already in obvious pain.
Dr. Godwin Baxter: It is a conundrum for sure.

Bella Baxter: So, I am your creation, as is the other one.
Dr. Godwin Baxter: Neither of you are that.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: I read your cards, and letters home, and watched you fearlessly create Bella Baxter with wonder.
Bella Baxter: I am finding being alive fascinating, so I’ll forgive you the act. But always hate the lies and trapping that followed.

Bella Baxter: Anger, confusion, and brain dissonance aside, I missed you. I arrived home, and I smelled the formaldehyde, and I knew what is next. I will be a doctor.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: My father once told me, always carve with compassion. He was a f***ing idiot. But it’s not bad advice.

Bella Baxter: Wedderburn became much weepy and swearing when he discovered my w**ring.
Max McCandles: I find myself merely jealous of the men’s time with you rather than any moral aspersions against you. It is your body Bella Baxter. Yours to give freely.
Bella Baxter: I generally charge thirty francs.
Max McCandles: Well, that seems low.

Bella Baxter: [after she kisses McCandles] We will need less of your tongue in the future. But overall, most agreeable.

Bella Baxter: [after discovering she was married before] I was not a kind person, it seems.
Alfie Blessington: Kind? You would never be so dull, Victoria. Appalling idea.

Alfie Blessington: Marriage is a constant challenge. Some, we bend to, some we bend to us.

Bella Baxter: So, I’m a prisoner?
Alfie Blessington: This conversation has gone down an unfortunate route. I am sure you will be as happy as you were before.
Bella Baxter: As I was before when I threw myself from a bridge?

Bella Baxter: Why would you want to keep me here if I do not wish to stay?
Alfie Blessington: If one must drown, let it be in the river of love.

Dr. Godwin Baxter: [to Bella] All my life, people’s eyes looked at me, horror, pity, but you.
[after Godwin passea away, Bella decides to carry on his work and becomes a surgeon]