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Home / Best Quotes / White Noise (2022) Best Movie Quotes

White Noise (2022) Best Movie Quotes

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Starring: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, André Benjamin, Alessandro Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, Don Cheadle, Lars Eidinger

OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆

Story:

Netflix comedy horror written and directed by Noah Baumbach. White Noise (2022) dramatizes a contemporary American family, which includes Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), a professor, alongside his wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), and their children, as they attempt to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life, while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.

 

Our Favorite Quotes:

'Out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope.' - Jack (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Best Quotes


 

Murray: Don’t think of a car crash in a movie as a violent act. No, these collisions are part of a long tradition of American optimism. A reaffirmation of traditional values and beliefs. A celebration.


 

Murray: You might say, “But what about all that blood and glass? The screeching rubber, the crushed bodies, the severed limbs? What kind of optimism is this?” Look past the violence, I say. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.


 

Jack: They’ve grown comfortable with their money. They genuinly believe that they’re entitled to it. They glow a little.
Babette: I have trouble imagining death at that income level.
Jack: Maybe there’s no death as we know it, just documents changing hands.


 

Steffie: How do astronauts float?
Denise: They’re lighter than air.
Heinrich: There is no air. They can’t be lighter than something that isn’t there.

 

'When people are helpless and scared, they're drawn to magical figures. Mythic figures. Epic men who intimidate and darkly loom.' - Jack (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Steffie: I thought Corolla was a car.
Heinrich: Everything’s a car.


 

Babette: I want whatever’s best for you.
Jack: What’s best for me is to please you.
Babette: But you please me by letting me please you.
Jack: Is it wrong for the man to be considerate to his partner?
Babette: I’m your partner when we’re playing tennis, which we ought to start doing again, by the way. Otherwise, I’m your wife.


 

Babette: We’re not lobbies or elevators. “I wanted him inside me.” As if he could crawl completely in, sign the register, sleep, eat, and so forth. I don’t care what these people do as long as they don’t enter or get entered.


 

Babette: Life is good, Jack.
Jack: What brings this on?
Babette: I just feel it has to be said.

 

'All plots move deathward. This is the nature of plots.' - Jack (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Babette: I want to die first.
Jack: You sound almost eager.
Babette: Life would feel unbearably sad and lonely without you. Especially if the children were grown up and living elsewhere. Right now we’re safe. As long as the children are here. They need us.


 

Jack: Your death would leave an abyss in my life. I’d be left talking to chairs and pillows.
Babette: Your death would be more than an abyss.
Jack: What’s more than an abyss?
Babette: A yawning gulf.


 

Babette: Your death would definitely leave a bigger hole in my life than mine would leave in yours.
Jack: You’ll be fine. You’ll travel, and live a new and exciting life. I’ll just sit in that chair in the suit that I wore to your funeral forever.
Babette: You’re wrong. And you don’t really want to die first.


 

Babette: You don’t want to be alone, but you don’t want to die more than you don’t want to be alone.
Jack: I hope we both live forever. Doddering, toothless, liver-spotted, hallucinating.

 

'Family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Jack: We edge nearer to death every time we plot. It’s like a contract all must sign. The plotters, as well as the targets of the plot.


 

Jack: It’s a great source of embarrassment for me that I don’t speak German. Maybe it explains the dark glasses, but best not to analyze it.


 

Murray: Nobody in any university in this country can so much as utter a word about Hitler without a nod in J.A.K’s direction, literally or metaphorically.
Babette: He’s Jack in real life.
Murray: Hitler is now Gladney’s Hitler. I marvel at what you’ve done with the man. I want to do the same with Elvis.


 

Murray: Who are all these children? Yours?
Babette: Well, there’s Denise, of course. We need more Glass Plus.
Jack: That’s Heinrich, and Steffie. Mine from wives one and three. And there’s Denise, Babette’s from husband two. Wilder is ours. We’re each other’s fourth.


 

Murray: Family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.
Jack: There must be something in family life that generates factual error.
Murray: That’s because facts threaten our happiness and security.
Babette: It’s the over-closeness, the noise, and the heat of being.

 

'Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is, “I know this feeling. I was here before.”' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Murray: Your wife’s hair is a living wonder.
Jack: Yes, it is.
Murray: She has important hair.
Jack: I think I know what you mean.


 

Babette: [to Denise] Either I chew gum with sugar and artificial coloring, or I chew sugarless gum that’s harmful to rats. It’s up to you.
Steffie: Don’t chew at all. You ever think of that?


 

Babette: Either I chew gum, or I smoke.
Denise: Why not do both? That’s what you want, isn’t it? We all get to do what we want, don’t we?
Steffie: Unless we’re not allowed to because of our age and height.


 

Jack: What does Denise, through Steffie, say that I’m taking?
Babette: I wanted to ask you before I asked her. We always tell each other everything.

 

'We're all aware there's no escape from death. And how do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress. We disguise.' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Babette: My life is either, or. Either I chew regular gum, or I chew sugarless gum. Either I chew gum, or I smoke. Either I smoke, or I gain weight. Either I gain weight, or I run up the stadium steps.
Jack: Sounds like a boring life.
Babette: I hope it lasts forever.


 

Heinrich: Whatever relaxes you is dangerous.


 

Jack: We have to allow each other to have our secrets, don’t you think?


 

Alfonse: It’s natural. It’s normal that decent, well-meaning people would find themselves intrigued by catastrophe when they see it on television.
Lasher: We’re suffering from brain fade.
Alfonse: We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information.


 

Murray: Jack, I need your help establishing an Elvis Presley power base in the department.

 

'There are two kinds of people in the world, killers and diers. Most of us are diers.' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Murray: To Cotsakis, Elvis is just Elvis. But for me, Elvis is my Hitler.


 

Murray: These are the things we don’t teach. Bowls with no seats. Pi**ing in sinks. The culture of public toilets. I’ve pi**ed in sinks all through the American West.
Lasher: I’ve slipped across the border to pi** in sinks in Manitoba and Alberta.


 

Jack: Let me whisper the terrible word from the Old English, from the Old German, from the Old Norse. Death. Death. These crowds were assembled in the name of death. They were there to attend tributes to the dead. But not the already dead. The future dead. The living dead amongst us.

 

'Everything is fine, and will continue to be fine, as long as the supermarket doesn't slip.' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Jack: Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone! Crowds came for this reason above all others. They were there to be a crowd.


 

Jack: May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.

 

'Maybe once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. We simply walk toward the sliding doors.' - Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Heinrich: [referring to the toxic event] The radio calls it a feathery plume, but it’s not.
Steffie: That’s what Dad says.
Denise: What is it?
Heinrich: It’s like a shapeless, growing thing. A dark, black breathing thing of smoke.


 

Heinrich: We saw it in a movie in school on toxic waste.
Jack: What does it cause?
Denise: Those videotaped rats?
Heinrich: It wasn’t sure what it does to humans. Mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps.
Jack: But that’s what the movie said. What does the radio say?
Heinrich: Skin irritation and sweaty palms.
Steffie: Sweaty palms in rats?

 

'What if death is nothing but sound? You hear it forever. Sound, all around. Uniform. White.' - Jack, Murray (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Babette: They’re not calling it a feathery plume anymore.
Steffie: Well, what are they calling it?
Babette: A black billowing cloud.
Jack: That’s more accurate. Which means they’re coming to grips with the thing. It’s good.


 

Jack: Nothing is going to happen.
Babette: I know nothing’s going to happen, you know nothing’s going to happen, but at some level, we ought to think about it, just in case.

 

'The power of suggestion makes some people sick and other people well.' - Jack (White Noise) Click To Tweet

 

Jack: Society is set up, I mean sadly, in such a way that it’s the poor and uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.
Babette: It is sad.
Jack: Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods?

See more White Noise Quotes


 

Jack: We don’t die. Not from this. All we have to do is stay out of the way.


 

Heinrich: They’re not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore.
Jack: What are they calling it?
Heinrich: The airborne toxic event.
Jack: Names are not important. The important thing is location. It’s there. We’re here.


 

Denise: [referring to other people in their cars in the traffic] They look devastated.
Jack: What does it matter what they’re doing in other cars?
Steffie: I want to know how scared I should be.


 

Babette: Are you telling me a rat is not only a vermin and a rodent, but a mammal too?


 

Evacuee: I heard we’ll be able to go home first thing in the morning. I don’t know if I want to go home. My mother-in-law’s been staying with us. This has been a respite.


 

Jack: [referring to Heinrich and the other evacuees] He’s telling them what he knows about the toxic event.
Babette: What does he know?
Jack: Quite a lot, it turns out.
Babette: Why didn’t he tell us?
Jack: He probably doesn’t think it’s worth his while to be funny and charming in front of his family. We present the wrong kind of challenge.


 

Simuvac Technician: I’m getting bracketed numbers with pulsing stars.
Jack: What does that mean? I mean, am I going to die?
Simuvac Technician: Not as such.
Jack: What do you mean?
Simuvac Technician: Not in so many words.
Jack: How many words does it take?


 

Simuvac Technician: We’ll know more in fifteen years. In the meantime, we definitely have a situation.
Jack: What will we know in fifteen years?
Simuvac Technician: If you’re still alive at that time, we’ll know much more than we know now.


 

Simuvac Technician: I wouldn’t worry about what I can’t see or feel. Now, I’d go ahead and live my life. Get married, settle down, have kids. There’s no reason you can’t do these things, knowing what we know.
Jack: But you said we have a situation.
Simuvac Technician: I didn’t. The computer did.


 

Murray: I don’t think this is the kind of disaster that leads to sexual abandon. We might get one or two fellows skulking out eventually, but there won’t be an orgiastic horde, not tonight anyway.


 

Murray: We’re all aware there’s no escape from death. And how do we deal with this crushing knowledge? We repress. We disguise. But you don’t know how to repress.
Jack: I wish there was something I could do. I wish I could out-think the problem.


 

Murray: The overwhelming horror would leave no room for your own death. It’s a daring thing you did, a daring thrust. Daring but dumb.
Jack: If I could just lose interest in myself.


 

Murray: I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don’t have the dispositions, the rage, whatever it takes to be a killer. But think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. Who knows? Maybe violence is a form of rebirth. And maybe you can kill death.


 

Steffie: We’re going the wrong way!
Babette: What are you doing?
Jack: I have a feeling this Land Rover knows how to stay alive.


 

Steffie: [after their car crashes into the river] Do sheep have lashes?
Babette: Ask your father.
Heinrich: We’re going sideways.
Steffie: Dad, do sheep have lashes?
Jack: Doesn’t anyone want to pay attention to what’s actually happening?


 

Babette: It’s like the greater the scientific advance, the more scared I get.


 

Man With TV: We are quarantined. We are like lepers in medieval times. Everything we loved and worked for is under serious threat. Even if there hasn’t been great loss of life, don’t we deserve attention for our suffering? Our terror? Isn’t fear news?


 

Man With TV: I saw this before.
Jack: Saw what before?
Man With TV: You were standing there, I was standing here. Your features incredibly sharp and clear. It all happened before. Hissing in the pipes. Tiny little hairs standing out in your pores, that identical look in your face.
Jack: What look?
Man With TV: Haunted. Ashen. Lost.


 

Jack: I’ve got another doctor’s appointment tomorrow.
Murray: What does he say about your status as a doomed man?
Jack: I haven’t told him. Since he hasn’t found anything wrong, I’m not going to bring it up.
Murray: I lie to doctors all the time.
Jack: So do I.


 

Jack: What if death is nothing but sound? You hear it forever. Sound, all around.
Murray: Uniform. White.


 

Murray: It’s strange in a way, isn’t it? That we can picture the dead.


 

Dr. Lu: Once people leave the doctor’s office, they tend to forget that they are patients. But a doctor doesn’t cease being a doctor at close of day. Neither should patients.


 

Dr. Lu: Together, as doctor and patient, we can do things that neither of us could do separately.


 

Babette: They gave me a new class at the church.
Jack: In what?
Babette: Eating and drinking.
Steffie: Isn’t that kind of obvious?
Denise: What’s there to teach?


 

Jack: [referring to Dr. Hookstratten] I’ll call him at home. Wake him up. Trick him into telling us what we want to know.


 

Dr. Hookstratten: [to Jack, over phone] You would call a doctor at home to talk about memory lapse? If everyone with memory lapse called a doctor at home, what would we have? The ripple effect would be tremendous.


 

Babette: I think everything is correctable. Given the right attitude, a person can change a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts.


 

Babette: [explaining why she took the Dyler tablets] If I’m going to tell you this story at all, I have to include this aspect of it, this grubby little corner of the human heart. You say Babette reveals and confides?
Jack: This is the point of Babette.
Babette: Good. I will reveal and confide. But you don’t want to know what happened. You think you do, but you don’t.


 

Babette: It was the only way I could get Mr. Gray to let me use the drug. It was my last resort, my last hope. First, I’d offered him my mind. Now I offered my body.
Jack: How do you offer your body to a composite of three or more people? This is a compound person. Let’s concentrate on the genitals. How many sets are we talking about?
Babette: Just one person, Jack.


 

Jack: [referring to Gray] He effected what is called entry. In other words, he inserted himself inside you!
Babette: No one was inside anyone. I did what I had to do. I was remote. I was outside of myself. It was a capitalist transaction. You cherish your wife who tells you everything. I am doing my best to be that person!


 

Babette: [referring to Gray] How do I know you won’t kill him?
Jack: Because I’m not a killer.
Babette: You’re a man, Jack. We all know about men and their insane jealous rage. This is something men are very good at.
Jack: I’m not good at that. I twirl garbage bags and twist-tie them.


 

Babette: I just can’t believe that we’re all marching towards nonexistence. All of us. It haunts me, Jack. It won’t go away.
Jack: Baba, everyone fears death.


 

Jack: Baba, I’m the one in this family who is obsessed by death. I have always been the one.
Babette: I love you. I just fear death more than I love you. And I really, really love you.


 

Jack: [to Babette] There’s something I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you. I’m tentatively scheduled to die. It won’t happen tomorrow, or the next day. But it’s in the works. So we are no longer talking about fear and floating terror. This is the hard and heavy thing, the fact itself.


 

Alfonse: Imagining yourself dead is one of the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying forms of childish self-pity.


 

Winnie: Children are very good at self-pity, which must mean it’s natural and important.
Alfonse: Yes. But there’s something even more childish and satisfying than self-pity, something that explains why I try to see myself dead on a regular basis.


 

Murray: A person spends their life saying goodbye to other people.
Alfonse: Yes. But how does he say goodbye to himself?


 

Mr. Gray: To enter a room is to agree on a certain kind of behavior. It isn’t a street, or a parking lot, for instance. The point of rooms is that they are inside.
Jack: Good point.


 

Mr. Gray: Death without fear is an everyday thing. You can live with it.
Jack: Are you saying there’s no death as we know it without the element of fear?
Mr. Gray: People would adjust to it?


 

Mr. Gray: Why are you here, white man?
Jack: To buy.
Mr. Gray: You’re very white, you know that?
Jack: It’s because I’m dying.


 

Jack: [to Gray] My name is Jack Gladney and I’m here to kill you. I’m a former dier who is now a killer.


 

Jack: [after he shoots Gray] How did you know I’d be here?
Babette: Men are killers.


 

Babette: [referring to Gray] Why did you give him a loaded gun?
Jack: Well, I was thinking I shot him three times, but it was only twice. And my plan was… I don’t know. I clearly f***ed that up.


 

Mr. Gray: Who shot me?
Babette: You did. You shot you.
Mr. Gray: And who shot you?
Babette: You did.


 

Babette: You were out of control. You weren’t responsible.
Jack: We forgive you.
Mr. Gray: Who are you, literally?
Jack: We’re passersby. Friends. It doesn’t matter.
Mr. Gray: Some millipedes have eyes, some don’t.
Jack: Okay.
Babette: Sure.


 

Jack: [as they’re getting treated for their shot wounds] You don’t believe in Heaven? A nun?
Sister Hermann Marie: If you don’t, why should I?
Jack: If you did, maybe we would.
Sister Hermann Marie: If I did, maybe you would not have to. Someone must appear to believe.


 

Babette: Is death the end then? Does anything survive?
Sister Hermann Marie: Do you want to know what I believe, or what I pretend to believe?
Jack: I don’t want to hear this. This is terrible.
Babette: You’re a nun!
Jack: Act like one!


 

Sister Hermann Marie: [to Jack and Babette] You come in from the street, married, dragging a body by the foot, and talk about angels that live in the sky. Get out from here!


 

Sister Hermann Marie: [in German] Anyone who comes in here talking about Angels is a numbskull. Show me an Angel! Please! I want to see one. Show me a saint. Give me one hair from the body of a saint! It is our task in the world to believe in things no one else believes. If we abandon such beliefs, the human race would die out. That is why we are here. A tiny minority.


 

Sister Hermann Marie: [to Jack and Babette, in German] If we didn’t pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse! Hell is when no one believes. We pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health and long life. But not for long. You will lose your believers. So maybe you should try to believe in each other.


 

Babette: [to Jack] The two things I want most in the world are for you to not die first, and for Wilder to stay the way he is forever.


 

Jack: [as they’re about to enter the supermarket] There is just no end to surprise. I feel sad for us and the queer part we play in our own disasters. But out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we keep inventing hope. And this is where we wait together.

 


 

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