C.J. Cregg quotes from The West Wing

CJ

I wanna do my job. I wanna suck every morsel of meat off this experience before it's over.

Danny

Just get something done, will ya?

C.J.

That'll come down to what it always comes down to.

Danny

What's that?

C.J.

How dirty do my feet have to get without disappearing into the mud in order to get an inch of what I really want done.

Danny

We're both about to fall off a cliff. And I don't know what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life, except I know what I don't wanna do. And on Inauguration Day, you're going to be released from that glorious prison on Pennsylvania Avenue, with...

C.J.

No human skills?

Danny

Seems to me...

C.J.

I should punch you in the face.

Danny

That's what I'm talking about.

C.J.

Keep going...

Danny

So, if I'm gonna jump off the cliff, and you're gonna get pushed off the cliff, why don't we hold hands on the way down?

C.J.

Men are like salmon. Swimming upstream, hosing down the riverbed with their indiscriminate seed...

Danny

Indiscriminate seed?

C.J.

Until...

Danny

Did you just say "indiscriminate seed"?

C.J.

Until they die, bloated and spent, belly-up in the sun.

Danny

Oh, quit sweet-talkin' me, baby.

C.J.

Unless they get taken out with a bear paw in the waterfall, as they deserve to be.

Will

What's wrong?

C.J.

Close the door.

Will

I didn't do it.

C.J.

Close the door.

Will

Toby did it.

C.J.

Shut up!

Will

[closes the door] Gonna talk now? [silence] Seriously. I don't react well to this... It's like staring at a dog.

C.J.

I think Doug Westin is having an affair with his nanny.

Will

Geez! I don't wanna know that! Why did you tell me that?

C.J.

Because you deal with the press and I don't want you to get blind sided.

Will

Exactly! I work with the press. I do my best work when I'm the least informed person in the room. You taught me that.

C.J.

Suck it up.

CJ

Are you ready?

Will

To fly into a massive cloud of radiation while the rest of the country is making hats out of tin foil?

CJ

It was a rhetorical question.

Josh

[looking at Donna] Oh, this must be what your first smack high feels like.

CJ

Here's hoping it's not followed by a huge crash and years of rehabilitation.

Josh

Nothing could kill my mood right now, but that was a good try.

Bartlet

The first time I met Leo, we argued.

CJ

About what?

Bartlet

Monetary... something, role of the Fed...

CJ

Who won?

Bartlet

I did. I'm sure if you could ask him, he'd say he did. [beat] We almost lost him fifteen years ago, did you know that? Abby and I used to talk about it. I was prepared then. Not today.

Bartlet

The first time I met Leo, we argued.

C.J.

About what?

Bartlet

Monetary... something, role of the Fed...

C.J.

Who won?

Bartlet

I did. I'm sure if you could ask him, he'd say he did. [beat] We almost lost him fifteen years ago, did you know that? Abbey and I used to talk about it. I was prepared then. Not today.

Bartlet

It's odd, really, watching yourself being replaced on national television. Planned obsolescence. Presidents and mid-sized family sedans.

C.J.

Yes, sir. Would you have run again if you could sir?

Bartlet

I think Mrs. Bartlet would have had something to say about that, don't you?

C.J.

Well the electorate can be very persuasive when they want something badly enough.

Bartlet

In the service of two mistresses these last eight years has been my fate. Thank God for the 22nd Amendment, I'm spared that particular conversation with Abbey.

C.J.

It's just, I know we have a lot to talk about and I don't want to leapfrog any of it, but it was kind of wonderful to just...

Danny

Not talk.

C.J.

Not even a little.

C.J.

No, but what I asked you before.

Danny

When you propositioned me for sex?

C.J.

Yeah. That's not going to happen. Donna Moss needs a place to stay, I told her she could stay with me.

Danny

Well, she can. You won't be there, she can have the place to herself.

C.J.

I can't do that.

Danny

Why not?

C.J.

Where will I tell her I'm sleeping?

Danny

Who cares what you tell her?

C.J.

She'll ask and I'll have to come up with some reason and my ears get red when I lie, I'll stammer, she'll figure it out.

Danny

Are you seriously telling me you're passing on a night in my bed because you don't know what you're gonna tell Donna Moss?

C.J.

It's not about Donna, it's about the fact that I'll spend the rest of the afternoon strategizing about how to explain it or not explain it or don't need to explain it or don't have an explanation for it or even for myself. I don't have a definition or an understanding of what it is or where it's going. I'll chew the question over in my brain quietly while other people are talking to me about death or affairs of state. We've put this off for seven years. This will keep another night.

C.J.

I missed the window. That's what's going on here. I... missed the window to figure out... how to do this.

Danny

How to...?

C.J.

Share my life with another person, how to be a partner or whatever condescending way you put it this afternoon.

Danny

Oh, I wasn't trying...

C.J.

I don't know how to do it. Maybe at one point I did, maybe I never did, but it's over now. It's too late. This and skiing. It's too late, it's not going to happen.

Danny

C.J...

C.J.

You said yourself, it's not an accident that this hasn't come together. This is who I am. I'm good at my job, Danny, I'm good at working, I'm not good at this.

Danny

You're right, you suck at it. You're going to need a tremendous amount of training. [pause] We're going to get good at new things.

C.J.

You don't know that.

Danny

I do.

C.J.

Don't make it sound like it's nothing.

Danny

You didn't miss it.

C.J.

What if I did?

Danny

You didn't miss it.

C.J.

What if we can't...

Danny

We'll figure it out. All of it. You can be scared. That's okay. But you're not going to walk away from me because you're scared. I'm not that scary.

C.J.

You make it sound like I'm trying to avoid you.

Danny

I didn't say that.

C.J.

I don't make booty calls.

Danny

You don't make any calls, kind of how it works out.

C.J.

What?

Danny

You're elusive, part of the draw.

Toby

[about the prospect of C.J. joining the Santos administration] Well, you'd be a get, too. Are you gonna do it?

C.J.

Mmm... Probably, I... I don't know, it's, um, complicated.

Toby

Why?

C.J.

[pause] Danny Concannon.

Toby

Yeah, I heard something about that.

C.J.

We've been spending time together, which is perfectly nice, but he's getting way ahead of himself. I mean, I'm not ready to shape my life around a guy I've been with for a month, that doesn't make sense.

Toby

You didn't pick him up in a bar last Thursday, you've been close for eight years.

C.J.

That doesn't mean it magically falls into place once we take the leap. What? I'm not resisting.

Toby

You're not?

C.J.

I'm not one of those women who can't handle a good thing when it's standing in front of them.

Josh

[looking at a note C.J. has given him] W.W.L.D?

CJ

"What would Leo do?"

Hey, you work there?

CJ

Pardon?

I said, do you work up there? In the White House.

CJ

No. I don't.

Oh, sorry.

CJ

No problem.

Must be something, huh?

CJ

Yeah. Yeah, it must be something.