George & Lucy Quotes
(from the novel and the 2002 film version)

George: "That's my Uncle George.  Honourable George Amberson.  I thought everybody knew him."
Lucy: "He looks as though everybody ought to know him.  It seems to run in your family."


[Lucy is filling up her dance card; George demands more waltzes with her]
George: "Give me the next and the one after that.  And give me every third one the rest of the evening."
Lucy:  (laughing)  "Are you asking?"
George: "What do you mean, 'asking'?"
Lucy: "It sounded as though you were just telling me to give you all those dances."
George: "Well, I want 'em!"
Lucy: "What about all the other girls it's your duty to dance with?"
George: "They'll have to go without.  Here!  I want to know: are you going to give me those --"
Lucy:  (laughing)  "Good gracious!  Yes!"


The stairway was draughty: the steps were narrow and uncomfortable; no older person would have remained in such a place.  Moreover, these two young people were strangers to each other; neither had said anything in which the other had discovered the slightest intrinsic interest; there had not arisen between them the beginnings of congeniality, or even of friendliness -- but stairways near ballrooms have more to answer for than have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. -- Chapter 5


Age, confused by its own long accumulation of follies, is everlastingly inquiring, “What does she see in him?” as if young love came about through thinking -- or through conduct.  Age wants to know: “What on earth can they talk about?” as if talking had anything to do with April rains!  At seventy, one gets up in the morning, finds the air sweet under a bright sun, feels lively; thinks, “I am hearty, to-day,” and plans to go for a drive.  At eighteen, one goes to a dance, sits with a stranger on a stairway, feels peculiar, thinks nothing, and becomes incapable of any plan whatever.  Miss Morgan and George stayed where they were. -- Chapter 5


George: "Well, I must say you don't seem to be much of a prattler.  They say it's a great way to get a reputation for being wise, never saying much.  Don't you ever talk any?"
Lucy: "When people can understand."


George: "The snow’s fine for sleighing: I’ll come for you in a cutter at ten minutes after two."
Lucy: "I can’t possibly go."
George: "If you don’t, I’m going to sit in the cutter in front of the gate, wherever you’re visiting, all afternoon, and if you try to go out with anybody else he’s got to whip me before he gets you.  If you think I’m not in earnest you’re at liberty to make quite a big experiment!"


George: "Just look at ’em!  That’s a fine career for a man, isn’t it!  Lawyers, bankers, politicians!  What do they get out of life, I’d like to know!  What do they ever know about real things?  Where do they ever get?"
Lucy: "What do you want to be?"
George: "A yachtsman."


Lucy: "How graceful your mother is!  She's the gracefulest woman in that ballroom.  She dances like a girl of sizteen."
George: "Most girls of sixteen are bum dancers.  Anyhow, I wouldn't dance with one unless I had to."


George: (to Lucy)  "Well, I'm not going to make myself silly any more, then; I don't want to take chances like that with you."


Lucy: "Mr. Pembroke is in the army.  He’s extraordinarily graceful."
George: "In the army?  Oh, I suppose he’s some old friend of your father’s."
Lucy: "They got on very well, after I introduced them."


George: "Girls really ought to go to a man's college, just for a month or two, anyhow.  It'd take some of the freshness out of 'em!"
Lucy: "I can't believe it.   It would only make them a little politer on the surface -- they'd be really just as awful as ever, after you got to know them a few minutes."


(while riding in George's cutter)
Lucy: "We're going pretty fast, Mr. Minafer!"
George: "Well you see, I'm only here for two weeks."
Lucy: "I mean the sleigh!"


George: "What are you laughing at now?"
Lucy: "Why?"
George: "You always seem to have some little secret of your own to get happy over!"
Lucy: "'Always!'  What a big word, when we only met last night!"


George: "One of the reasons I don’t like you -- much! -- is you’ve got that way of seeming quietly superior to everybody else."
Lucy: "I!  I have?"
George: "Oh, you think you keep it sort of confidential to yourself, but it's plain enough!"


George: "I think the world’s like this: there’s a few people that their birth and position, and so on, puts them at the top, and they ought to treat each other entirely as equals."  (lowering voice)  "I wouldn’t speak like this to everybody."
Lucy: "You mean you’re confiding your deepest creed -- or code, whatever it is -- to me?"
George: "Go on, make fun of it, then!  You do think you’re terribly clever!  It makes me tired!"


Lucy: "Well, as you don’t like my seeming ‘quietly superior,’ after this I’ll be noisily superior.  We aim to please!"
George: "I had a notion before I came for you to-day that we were going to quarrel."
Lucy: "No, we won’t; it takes two!"


Lucy: "It is pretty pleasant to be young, isn’t it?  I wonder if we really do enjoy it as much as we’ll look back and think we did! I don’t suppose so.  Anyhow, for my part I feel as if I must be missing something about it, somehow, because I don’t ever seem to be thinking about what’s happening at the present moment; I’m always looking forward to something -- thinking about things that will happen when I’m older."
George: (gently)  "You’re a funny girl.  But your voice sounds pretty nice when you think and talk along together like that!"


[after the sleigh accident]
Lucy: "You tried to swing underneath me and break the fall for me when we went over.  I knew you were doing that, and -- it was nice of you."
George: (brusquely)  "Wasn’t any fall to speak of.  Couldn’t have hurt either of us."
Lucy: "Still it was friendly of you -- and awfully quick, too.  I’ll not -- I’ll not forget it!"


George: "See here!  If you’re going to decline to dance that cotillion with me simply because you’ve promised a-a-a miserable red-headed outsider like Fred Kinney, why we might as well quit!"
Lucy: "Quit what?"
George: "You know perfectly well what I mean."


more quotes coming soon!

|| back to the fanlisting ||