Raising Arizona (1987) - Quotes

Balloons and Humor in Everyday Conversation

Evelle: Balloons. Hey. These blow up into funny shapes at all?

Cashier: Well naw, unless round is funny.

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Identity and Loneliness in Conversation

Nathan: Who the hell are you?

Leonard: Smalls. Leonard Smalls. My friends call me Lenny, but I got no friends.

Nathan: Stop. You're gonna make me bust out crying.

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A Tense Interaction Over Money and Diapers

H.I. McDunnough: I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash ya got.

Edwina Ed McDunnough: That sum'bitch. That son of a bitch! You son of a bitch!

H.I. McDunnough: And make it quick, I'm in dutch with the wife.

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Exploring Identity and Physical Discomfort

Doctor: Why do you say you feel trapped in a man's body?

Convict: Well, sometimes I get them menstrual cramps real hard.

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The Importance of a Name in Business

FBI Investigator: Is it true your name was originally Nathan Huffheinz?

Nathan: Yeah, what of it?

FBI Investigator: Why did you change it?

Nathan: Would you buy furniture from a place called "Unpainted Huffheinz"?

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Chaos in a Small-Town Encounter

Payroll Cashier: Government do take a bite, don't she?

Leonard Smalls: You want to find an outlaw, hire an outlaw. You want to find a Dunkin Donuts, call a cop.

Feisty Hayseed: Well, which is it young feller? You want I should freeze or get down on the ground? I mean to say, if'n I freeze I can't rightly drop, and if'n I drop I'm a gonna be in motion.

Hayseed in Pickup: Son, you got a panty on your head.

Dot: Riley!. ... You take that diaper off your head! You put it back onto your sister!

Dot: You gotta get em diptet boosters yearly or else they'll develop lockjaw and night vision.

Dot: That there's for his orthodonture and his university. You soak his thumb in iodine and you might get by without the orthodonture, but it won't knock a thing off the university.

Moses: And when they was no meat we ate fowl, and when they was no fowl we ate crawdad, and when they was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.

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Humorous Anecdote About an Unfortunate Encounter

Glen: Say, did you hear about the person of the Polish persuasion who walked into a bar with a big ol pile of shit in his hands and he says, "Look what I almost stepped in"?

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A Crazy World of Adoption Choices

Glen: I said, "Healthy white baby? Five years? What else you got?" Said they got two Koreans and a negra born with his heart on the outside. It's a crazy world.

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The Importance of Microbes in Tracking Crime

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Everyone leaves microbes and whatnot. Hell, that’s your forte ain’t it, tracking down them microbes left by criminals and commies n’ shit. That's your whole God-damn raison d'etre, ain't it?

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A Call to Action in Raising Arizona

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Are you boys gonna chase down your leads or are you gonna sit around drinking coffee in the one house in the state where I know my boy ain't at?

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The Importance of Complete Furniture Sets

Nathan Arizona Sr.: 800 leaf tables and no chairs. You can't sell leaf tables and no chairs. Chairs you got a dinette set, no chairs you got dick! I ask my wife she got more sense.

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Household Expectations on Attire

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Nobody sleeps naked in this house boy!

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Unexpected pajamas of a child revealed

Nathan Arizona Sr.: I don't know what his damn jammies looked like... they had Yodas and shit on them.

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Frog Wings and Hypothetical Situations

Nathan Arizona Sr.: And if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass a-hoppin'.

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Frustration Over Unfair Treatment

Nathan Arizona Sr.: Well, this is nothing but a goddamn shakedown and a screwjob, any way you look at it!

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Questioning the Need for Employment

Gale Snoats: H.I., you're young and you got your health. What you want with a job?

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Self-Release and Personal Accountability

Gale Snoats: We didn't escape, we released ourselves on our own recognizance.

A Demanding Plea for the Baby

Edwina Ed McDunnough: Give me that baby, you warthog from hell!

Dreams of a Better Future

H.I. McDunnough: That night I had a dream. I dreamt I was as light as the ether, a floating spirit visiting things to come. The shades and shadows of the people in my life wrestled their way into my slumber. I dreamt that Gale and Evelle had decided to return to prison. Probably that's just as well. I don't mean to sound superior, and they're a swell couple of guys, but maybe they weren't ready yet to come out into the world. And then I dreamed on, into the future, to a Christmas morn in the Arizona home where Nathan Junior was opening a present from a kindly couple who preferred to remain unknown. I saw Glen a few years later, still having no luck getting the cops to listen to his wild tales about me and Ed. Maybe he threw in one Polack joke too many. I don't know. And still I dreamed on, further into the future than I'd ever dreamed before, watching Nathan Junior's progress from afar, taking pride in his accomplishments, as if he were our own, wondering if he ever thought of us, and hoping that maybe we'd broadened his horizons a little, even if he couldn't remember just how they got broadened. But still I hadn't dreamt nothin about me and Ed, until the end. And this was cloudier, cause it was years, years away. But I saw an old couple being visited by their children, and all their grandchildren too. The old couple wasn't screwed up, and neither were their kids or their grandkids. And I don't know. You tell me. This whole dream, was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do? But me and Ed, we can be good, too. And it seemed real. It seemed like us, and it seemed like, well, our home. If not Arizona, then a land not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all children are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah.

A Bold Heist for Diapers and Cash

H.I. McDunnough: I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash you got.

H.I. McDunnough's Parenting Responsibilities

H.I. McDunnough: Nathan needs some Huggies, I'll be out directly. Mind you stay strapped in.

Conflicting Ideas of Right and Wrong

H.I. McDunnough: There's what's right, and there's what's right, and never the twain shall meet.

Visions of Happiness and Destruction

H.I. McDunnough: I drifted off thinking about happiness, birth, new life. But now I was haunted by a vision of — he was horrible! — a lone biker of the apocalypse; a man with all the powers of hell at his command. He turned day into night and laid to waste everything in his path. He was especially hard on the little things, the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake, befouling even the sweet desert breeze which crossed his brow. I didn't know where he came from or why. I didn't know if he was dream or vision, but I feared that I myself had unleashed him. He was the fury that would be as soon as Florence Arizona found her little Nathan gone!

Unexpected Fertility Challenges in Parenthood

H.I. McDunnough: At first I didn't believe it — that this woman, who looked as fertile as the Tennessee Valley, could not bear children. But the doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.

Struggles with Authority and Personal Integrity

H.I. McDunnough: I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I don't know. They say he's a decent man, so maybe his advisors are confused.