Northern Exposure · Season 1
There's an old saying that if you go back to the place where you first became a man, you remember all those things you need to be happy.
I don't remember anything.
That saying never made sense to me, but I thought it was worth a try.
They say dreams are the windows of the soul--take a peek and you can see the inner workings; the nuts and bolts.
After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly, my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart, as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone.
You know, sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Perhaps, it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.
You don't know your own patients?
He wasn't my patient, yet. And I have an assistant, here, who thinks it's unnecessary to take names. She'd rather run my office like a delicatessen.
He's number nine.
[to Joel] What kind of boyfriend are you? You wouldn't think we had a close, caring relationship; that we've been intimately involved for the past six months. What kind of impression is that going to make on my dad? My dad! Who's come all this way to meet you, my boyfriend, the doctor, who I've written so many wonderful letters about.
A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre-flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift-off?
Be careful, there's some ice over there.
You could offer to help, Fleischman.
You, our own Calamity Jane? Our torch-bearer of the pioneer spirit? I wouldn't presume to insult you.
Why were you born, Fleischman? A mosquito has more utilitarian value!
You've been listening to The Adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.
I feel really bad about Elaine breaking up with him. I can't help but think had she known about the plane wreck, she might have gone ahead and waited until he was dead. I think that would have been the tactful way to handle it.
Wildness, Ed. We're running out of it, even up here in Alaska. People need to be reminded that the world is unsafe and unpredictable, and at a moment's notice, they could lose everything, like that. I do it to remind them that chaos is always out there, lurking beyond the horizon. That, plus, sometimes, Ed, sometimes you have to do something bad, just to know you're alive.
You have to talk to her sometime, Ed.
Why?
Well, because that's what married people do. They communicate.
I remember my first foray into the realm of the sensual. I was seven years old, back in the trailer park, but I knew as much about life at that moment as I do today.
[Joel stops the duel between Maurice and Nikolai]
Hold it, hold it, hold it! This is ridiculous! Hey, we play to a very sophisticated television audience. They know Maurice is not going to kill Nikolai, and they definitely know that Nikolai is not going to kill Maurice.
Wait a minute, Fleischman. You can't just take it upon yourself to step out of character. Nobody yelled 'cut'.
Joel's right. The duel is stupid.
Can we just stick to the matter at hand?
How about the fifth revision? Where Nikolai's abscessed tooth starts acting up, and, well, he just cancels.
Glib and textually unwarranted.
What if Maurice trips and kills someone else by mistake?
Oh, great, so I'm a klutz now, huh?
Look, if there's not a duel, then what is the point of this whole story?
What's the point? The point is - man's tendency to war, but Joel here is asking us to step outside of certain events and say enough. Am I right?
Listen, whatever, it's getting cold out here.
Why don't we go on to the next scene? It's a pretty good one.
Are you flirting with me?
No! I'm just merely saying that beneath that whiny, abrasive exterior of yours I sometimes get a glimpse of the teensiest, eensy bit of something
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Northern Exposure pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
