Hannah Green Quotes in Wonder Boys (2000)

Hannah Green: Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?

Grady Tripp: Yeah.

Hannah Green: And even though you're book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.

Grady Tripp: Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.

Hannah Green: James will know about George Sanders.

James Leer: George Sanders?

Hannah Green: Mr. Crabtree was saying how George Sanders killed himself, only he couldn't remember how.

James Leer: Pills. April 25, 1972, in a Costa Brava hotel room.

Terry Crabtree: How comprehensive of you.

Hannah Green: James is amazing. He knows all the movie suicides. Go ahead, James. Tell him.

James Leer: There are so many.

Hannah Green: Well, just a few. The big ones.

James Leer: Pier Angeli, 1971 or '72, also pills. Donald "Red" Barry, shot himself in 1980. Charles Boyer, 1978, pills again. Charles Butterworth, 1946, I think. In a car. Supposedly, it was an accident, but, you know, he was distraught. Dorothy Dandridge, pills, 1965. Albert Dekker, 1968. He hung himself. He wrote his suicide note in lipstick on his stomach. William Inge, carbon monoxide, 1973. Carole Landis, pills again. I forget when. George Reeves, "Superman" on TV, shot himself. Jean Seberg, pills, of course, 1979. Everett Sloane - he was good - pills. Margaret Sullavan, pills. Lupe Velez, a lot of pills. Gig Young, he shot himself and his wife in 1978. There are tons more.

Hannah Green: I haven't heard of half of them.

Terry Crabtree: You did them alphabetically.

James Leer: It's just how my brain works, I guess.

[Grady and Hannah are putting a stoned James Leer into the back of Hannah's car]

Grady Tripp: All right. Let him crash at my house.

Hannah Green: Where should I put him?

Grady Tripp: In the shape that he's in, you could stand him up in the garage next to the snow shovels and he'd be all right.

Hannah Green: I'm not the downy innocent you painted me as.

Grady Tripp: That's a shame, we need all the downy innocents we can get.

Student: All your stories make me want to kill myself.

Hannah Green: I think we need something more constructive, here. He lets you in.