Ben Cafferty quotes from Veep

Ben Cafferty

[regarding Kent Davison] He's got ice in his semen.

Ben

[briefing Selina] Some U.S. backpackers tried to smoke a doobie with the wrong dudes and they have been kidnapped in Uzbekistan. Uzebekistan is between Turkmenistan and I-could-give-a-fuck-istan. There's a map on page 376.

Ben

Oh, no, that's a fucking wire brush to my hemorrhoids.

Ben

Yeah, of course you do, Jonah. You don't get the complexity. You're the world's biggest single-cell organism.

Ben

I hate confessions, unless they've been beaten out of someone.

Ben

I'm so tired, I could sleep a horse. Or whatever that word thing is.

Ben

The three Ss, ma'am, strength, stability and bullshit.

Ben

I need a drink. It's gotta be 8 a.m. somewhere.

Ben

[to Selina on her first day as VP] Ma'am, you need to understand that the president doesn't actually want you to do anything other than continue to be a woman - which you're doing a pretty okay job at.

Ben

Ma’am, you’re gonna be drowning in money so dark it could get shot entering its own apartment.

Ben

There are two things Americans don't like to see get hurt: animals, and white girls on spring break.

Ben

You know what's gonna happen to me tomorrow?

Selina

No.

Ben

Yeah. My good friend POTUS? My Gamma Chi brother? He's gonna summon me to his office, he's gonna show me a sword, and he's gonna tell me to take the sword and slide it down my throat until it comes out my ass!

Kent

All I do is provide POTUS with the polls. Cold numbers.

Ben

God, I hate numbers. I mean there's cultures that don't even have any numbers, and they do just fine!

Kent

I cook these noodles every day.

Jonah

Oh, the noodle analogy. You guys are gonna love this. [Kent glares] I will leave.

Kent

They need to be heated at 800 watts for 3:35. Any more and they'll dry out, any less and they will be flaccid and damp like...a lady's hair in the rain.

Amy

Why are we talking about noodles?

Ben

No, let me rephrase that. Why the fuck are we talking about noodles?

Kent

I'll tell you why. Hostage crisis, noodles, same principle. Both require precision timing, neither should be rushed. Inaction only becomes untenable when more than 65% of Americans support intervention even with casualties.

Amy

So you'd like me to tell the Vice President we do nothing until then?

Kent

Waiting is not doing nothing. I choose to wait for my noodles even though my salivary glands are crying out to me like newly hatched birds. But they will thank me because I waited until... [snaps his fingers at the exact same moment as the microwave dings]

Ben

...You just timed out that whole shit analogy for your little ding? That is fucking pathetic.

Ben

[to Selina] Remind me, you said what? Your response needs to be what?

Selina

"Robust."

Ben

"Robust." [to SecDef Maddox] And you said?

"Aggressive."

Ben

You see the problem?

Selina

No, I don't.

Ben

They're different words! Yeah, and saying different words means what? It means, we're not on the same...

Selina

...diet?

Ben

Page!

Selina

Oh! I thought you were gonna say "diet," Ben! I don't like your tone.

And I don't have to answer to you, Ben. Or to Lara Croft here for that matter.

Ben

Yeah, perhaps not. But we all work for the President.

Selina

Oh, where is the Great and Powerful Oz, by the way??

Ben

Listen, we all know the White House would work so much better if there wasn't a President but there is. So, we work around that. And we do that by sticking to the same fucking words.

And it's your job to coordinate that, maestro!

Ben

That's right. So from now on the words are "calculated response."

Selina

"Calculated?" That sounds so...

...calculated?

Selina

Pussy-ass! That's what I was gonna say.