Nashville Quotes
Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that's one. And to confuse - that's the other. He does whichever is to his client's advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn't he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones' house in the country? You got lost, didn't you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what's wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don't know the time of day.
Hal Philip Walker
Bill: You're supposed to wear the blue dress when I wear this.
Mary: I don't want to dress like twins anymore.
Bill: We're not twins. We're a trio.
Barbara Jean: [she finishes singing a song at her concert] Thank you. I wanna tell you all a little secret which you might not know, and that is that last night I thanked my lucky stars that I could be here at all to sing for ya. I heard on the radio this little boy, nine years old. Sometimes a deejay'll play a tune and ask everybody to phone in and say how they like it. I was listenin', and this little nine-year-old called in. The song had voices in the background, like the way they use backup voices these days, soundin' like little munchkins. He called up, the deejay said, "How old are you, son?" The boy said, "I'm nine, and I think it's gonna be a hit. " The deejay said, "Why?" "Because it had those chipmunks in it. " And I thought that was so cute, because, well, I can sing like a munchkin myself. I'm real fond of The Wizard of Oz. Plus, I live out, you know, just a ways off of Interstate on the road to Chattanooga. So you can see why I kinda related to that. I think me and the boys are gonna strike up another tune for you now. Let's go, boys. I think there's a storm... seems like it's a-brewin'. That's what my grandaddy used to say before he lost his hearin'. Once he got deaf, he never talked much no more. 'Cept sometimes he'd say "Oh, gosh" or "Durn it" or "My word!" My granny'd go around clickin' her teeth to the radio all day. Boy, was she a lot of fun, and cooked my favorite, roast beef. She was a sweetheart. She raised chickens too. She, um... Did you ever hear a chicken sound? You know how chickens go? Here, chick, chick, chick. Here, chick, chick, chick. Anyway, I guess we'd better strike up this tune before it's too late. Okay, boys. The first job I ever really got... Grandma... She's the one who clacked her false teeth to the radio. She taught my mama how to sing, and my mama taught me. One time she took me, 'cause we was gonna get a new Frigidaire. She took me to the Frigidaire store where the man was advertisin'. This record was goin' 'round, and Mama told him I knew how to sing. He said, "If she learns this tune, I'll give y'all a quarter. " So Mama and I went home... And then what happened? Let's see, I think... Uh, yeah. We went home and I learned both sides of the record in half an hour. We went back and told him that I'd learned 'em, and he said, "Let me hear," so I sang both sides of the record instead of just one. So he gave us cents, and we went across the street and had us a soda. Ever since then I been workin'. I don't... I think ever since then I been workin' and doin' my... - Come on, come on. - Supportin'myself. Anyway...
Barnett: [comes up on stage and starts to pull her from the microphone] Hey, hey. Hey, hey.
Barbara Jean: Am I all right? Am I all right?
Barnett: Oh, you're fine, darlin'.
[he guides her offstage]
You look like a guy I was in the navy with. He wouldn't bathe, so we had to pee in his bed to get him discharged.
Star
Connie White: You're English, aren't you?
Julie Christie: Yes.
Connie White: [proudly] I could tell.
I'm Opal, from the BBC!
Opal
[speaking into a micro recorder as she walks through a school bus parking lot] The buses! The buses are empty and look almost menacing, threatening, as so many yellow dragons watching me with their hollow, vacant eyes. I wonder how many little black and white children have yellow nightmares, their own special brand of fear for the yellow peril... Damn it, it's got to be more... positive. No, more negative! Start again. Yellow is the color of caution. No. Yellow is the color of cowardice. Yellow is the color of sunshine. And yet I see very little sunshine in the lives of all the little black and white children. I see their lives, rather, as a study in grayness, a mixture of black and... Oh, Christ, no. That's fascist. Yellow! Yellow, yellow, yellow. Yellow fever...
Opal
Y'all take it easy now. This isn't Dallas, it's Nashville! They can't do this to us here in Nashville! Let's show them what we're made of. Come on everybody, sing! Somebody, sing!
Haven Hamilton
[on a television news broadcast] Little more than a year ago, a man named Hal Phillip Walker excited a group of college students with some questions. "Have you stood on a high and windy hill and heard the acorns drop and roll? Have you walked in the valley beside the brook, walked alone and remembered? Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?" Within a commencement speech, such questions were fitting, perhaps, but hardly the material with which to launch a presidential campaign. Even those who pay close attention to politics probably saw Hal Phillip Walker and his Replacement Party as a bit of frost on the hillside. Summer, if not late spring, would surely do away with all that. Well, now that summer, along with presidential primaries, is heavy upon us and the frost is still there, perhaps we should take a closer look. Hal Phillip Walker is, in a way, a mystery man. Out of nowhere with a handful of students and scarcely any pros, he's managed to win three presidential primaries and is given a fighting chance to take a fourth - Tennessee. A win in that state would take on added significance, for only once in the last fifty years has Tennessee failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate. No doubt many Americans, especially party-liners, wish that Hal Phillip Walker would go away, disappear like the natural frost and come again at some more convenient season. But wherever he may be going, it seems sure that Hal Phillip Walker is not going away. For there is genuine appeal, and it must be related to the raw courage of this man. Running for President, willing to battle vast oil companies, eliminate subsidies to farmers, tax churches, abolish the Electoral College, change the National Anthem, and remove lawyers from government - especially from Congress. Well at this point, it would be wise to say most of us don't know the answer to Hal Phillip Walker. But to answer one of his questions, as a matter of fact, Christmas has always smelled like oranges to me.
Howard K. Smith
Marthe aka "L. A. Joan": Hi, Tom, could you sign my record?
Tom Frank: You better get off that diet before you ruin yourself.
Now, if we don't -- we don't live peaceful, there's gonna be nothin' left in our graves except Clorox bottles and plastic fly swatters with red dots on 'em.
Albuquerque
I need something like this for my documentary. I need it. It's... It's America. Those cars smashing into each other... and all those mangled corpses...
Opal
