Olivia Carolyn Pope quotes from Scandal

Cyrus

What are you gonna do? You're on our side. You cannot let this out.

Olivia

I can't do this again. I want to walk into the light and feel the sun on my face, Cyrus. You're on your own. I'm sorry.

You keep everything from me.

Olivia

To protect you! And don't ask me to apologize for it or punish me when I tell you the truth. This is what we do! This is how it works! This is how it's always worked. There is no clean. Just like there is no Vermont. No. This isn't how I want it to be, how either of us want it to be. This is what it is. Let's stop pretending. Let's just be here.

Olivia

I want to know. Who? Who made you do this? You tell me. Who made you do this?

Jake

Who?! This was my call. I am protecting the Republic. I keep this country running. I do what needs to be done. I am Command.

Olivia

I don't know what the point is of this, of democracy and freedom and patriotism. If there are no white hats. If everyone is evil. If the deck is always stacked. If everyone I love is a monster. If no one is worth saving. What's the point?

Rowan

There is, incidentally, a point. If there are no more white hats, if the deck is always stacked, and if everyone you love is a monster, there is, in fact, someone worth saving.

Olivia

Who?

Rowan

Everyone is worth saving. Everyone. In the face of darkness, you drag everyone into the light. That is the point. At least I'd like to think that is the point of you.

Huck

It's suicide.

Olivia

What are you talking about?

Huck

Taking down B613. You don't take down B613. You run you hide. Or you die. And B613 survives. It always survives.

I know you think you're on the right side of this, but you're not. Believe me, you're not.

Olivia

What I know is that you are a terrorist, a traitor to your own country.

Maybe. But I'd rather be a traitor than what you are, Livvie. Cleaning up those people's messes. Fixing up their lives. You think you're family. But you're nothing but the help. And you don't even know it.

Cyrus

You know the job, Olivia. You know what we do.

Olivia

Don't you resent it?

Cyrus

Of course I resent it. But somewhere in this head of mine, behind the fog, behind the anger, is my faint recollection that what we do is important, that my husband died for a reason, that his death matters. So, instead of going home and crying about it like I'm going to do, I need you to get back in there, back in that little white building with all those miserable people inside of it and do the job for both of us. Because it's not just that family you're putting back together. It's the whole damn country.

You are being disgusting, petty and jealous.

Olivia

What else am I supposed to be? I lie in bed every night and I play our relationship over and over again in my head like a movie. We meet. We fall in love. We can't stop ourselves. We're meant to be. I give up everything inside me and then it stops. The movie just stops. I don't know how it ends. It's just me waiting for a house in Vermont that I can't live in and a man who makes me promises he can't keep.

Andrew

Tell me something. 'Cause I've always been curious. What's it like?

Olivia

What?

Andrew

Being you? Cutting people's throats and calling it politics? Appealing to the lowest, basest part of humanity, scraping the bottom of a person's soul, carrying out these little emotional assassinations?

Olivia

Governor...

Andrew

I'm in love with her! I love her.

Olivia

So choose Mellie. I wish you would. It would restore my faith in humanity. But, if there's one thing I know, it's that, given the choice between power and love, men like you will always, always choose power.

Olivia

B613 is your life. Helping me destroy it

Rowan

I'm helping you put down an animal, a dog that isn't mine anymore, a dog that is sick and malnourished because its new master doesn't know how to care for it. So rather than sit here and watch it starve to death, I've chosen to euthanize it, to show it mercy, not because I hate it, but because I love it.

Olivia

What would Olivia Pope say?

Abby

You don't get to run. You're a gladiator. Gladiators don't run. They fight. They slay dragons. The wipe off the blood. They stitch up their wounds, and they live to fight another day. You don't get to run. How was that?

Olivia

That was good.

Olivia

I didn't make sacrifices and endanger my people to end up right back where we started!

Jake

You mean the sacrifice of sleeping with me so you could hack into my phone? Crazy, right? All these years of thinking B613 is untouchable. And all it takes to kill us is a good, quick tug on a zipper.

Jake

He will reel you in with a trail of warmth and kindness. He will hold you in his arms and tell you that he loves you. And once you are comfortable, once you feel safe, he will take everything that matters from you, and he will leave you with nothing. He will break your bones and step over your body on his way out. Do you know how I know that? Because that's what he taught me to do.

Olivia

The one thing he wants more than anything is to bring my mother in to stop her. He'll do that.

Jake

Fine. I'm out. I'm free. You're on your own.

Olivia

Jake...

Jake

You think he's your dad, but that's just a part he's playing. A costume he puts on. A mask. Liv, once his mask comes off... Run.

Olivia

How did we get like this? When did we stop being people?

Cyrus

Were we ever people? Or did serving at the pleasure of the President just help us to shed our pesky skins and unmask us as the monsters we really are?

Olivia

It's me. Everything that's happened... None of it would be happening if it weren't for me. My mother, my father, the man I love, an innocent boy dying, churches being blown up, you being thrown in the hole. The only common denominator is me. I'm at the center. I'm the eye of the storm.

Jake

So you're the devil, is that it? And this is your pity party?

Olivia

This is me doing what I do best. I'm handling this. I'm fixing this. I have been over every option. I have looked at it from every angle, and I have hoped and prayed that I was wrong. I have tried to pretend that I didn't know what the answer is, but I do. So now it's time for me to stand in my truth. It's me. I'm the thing that needs to be fixed. I'm the thing that needs to be handled. I'm the scandal. And the best way to deal with a scandal is to shut it down.