Reality Bites (1994) quotes

Cast
Winona Ryder.
Ethan Hawke.
Ben Stiller.

A documentary filmmaker and her fellow Gen X graduates face life after college, looking for work and love in Houston.

I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
– Lelaina Pierce
Honey, all you have to be by the time you’re 23 is yourself.
– Troy Dyer
I don’t know who that is anymore.
– Lelaina Pierce
I do. And we all love her. I love her. She breaks my heart again and again, but I love her.
– Troy Dyer

Hello, you’ve reached the winter of our discontent.
– Troy Dyer

Have I stepped over some line in the sands of coolness with you? Because excuse me if somebody doesn’t know the secret handshake with you.
– Michael Grates
There’s no secret handshake. There’s an IQ prerequisite, but there’s no secret handshake.
– Troy Dyer

I’ve wanted you like this for all these years.
– Troy Dyer

There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a… a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know… a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle… and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.
– Troy Dyer

Can you define “irony”?
– Lelaina
It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning.
– Troy Dyer

I’d like to somehow make a difference in people’s lives.
– Lelaina Pierce
And I… I would like to buy them all a Coke.
– Troy Dyer
And you wonder why we never got involved?
– Lelaina Pierce

All right, fine. You wanna be in a band? Fine. Go ahead. Play every night. Play three times a night! Don’t just dick around the same coffee house for five years. Don’t dick around with her or with me. I mean, try at something for once in your life. Do something about it, but you know what? You better do it now, and you better do it fast, because the world doesn’t owe you any favors.
– Lelaina Pierce

At the beep, please leave your name, number, and a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man’s existential dilemma, and we’ll get back to you.
– Troy Dyer

Well fuck me for being nice!
– Troy Dyer

You can’t navigate me. I may do mean things, and I may hurt you, and I may run away without your permission, and you may hate me forever, and I know that scares the living shit outta you ’cause you know I’m the only real thing you got.
– Troy Dyer

I’m picking up some very strange vibes. They’re of the I-just-got-laid variety.
– Troy Dyer

I am not under any orders to make the world a better place.
– Troy Dyer

Laney, sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.
– Vickie

Would the two of you just do it and get it over with? I’m starving!
– Vickie

You guys better not be inhaling.
– Lelaina Pierce

Are you religious?
– Lelaina Pierce
Um, uh, I guess, uh, I guess I’m, uh, a non-practicing Jew.
– Michael Grates
Hey, I’m a non-practicing virgin.
– Lelaina Pierce

He’s so cheesy, I can’t watch him without crackers.
– Lelaina

I was told there’d be no math on this exam.
– Troy Dyer