Penny Escher Quotes in Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Penny Escher: And I suppose you smoked all these cigarettes?

Kay Eiffel: No, they came pre-smoked.

Penny Escher: Yeah, they said you were funny.

Penny Escher: [They are in a hospital ward surround by lots of sick and injured people] What are we doing here? I don't even think we're supposed to *be* in here.

Kay Eiffel: You told me I needed visual stimulation.

Penny Escher: Yeah, I meant a museum or something.

Kay Eiffel: I don't *need* a museum. I need the infirm.

Penny Escher: [slightly under her breath] You *are* the infirm.

Kay Eiffel: What's this?

Penny Escher: It's literature on the nicotine patch.

Kay Eiffel: I don't need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes.

Penny Escher: Well, it may help.

Kay Eiffel: May help? Help what? Help what, Penny? Help write a novel?

Penny Escher: May help save your life.

Kay Eiffel: I'm not in the business of saving lives.

[spits into tissue to Penny's disgust, and puts cigarette in tissue]

Kay Eiffel: In fact, just the opposite.

[wipes water out of eye]

Penny Escher: Man in tweed?

Kay Eiffel: There's nothing wrong with him, he just likes looking at sick people.

Penny Escher: Oddly spoken with disdain.

Kay Eiffel: [Penny goes to answer phone] Don't answer that!

Penny Escher: Didn't you say this phone never r - ?

Kay Eiffel: Shh!

[types another sentence; the phone rings and she runs to answer it]

Kay Eiffel: Hello?

Harold Crick: Is this Karen Eiffel?

Kay Eiffel: Yes.

Harold Crick: My name is Harold Crick. I believe you're writing a story about me.

Kay Eiffel: I'm sorry?

Harold Crick: My name is Harold Crick.

Kay Eiffel: Is this a joke?

Harold Crick: No. No, I work for the IRS. My name, Miss Eiffel, is Harold Crick. When I go through the files at work I hear a deep and endless ocean.

Kay Eiffel: [gasps; drops phone in terror] Oh, G - !

Harold Crick: Miss Eiffel?

Penny Escher: I'm Penny Escher. I'm the assistant your publishers hired.

Kay Eiffel: The spy.

Penny Escher: The assistant. I provide the same services as a secretary.

Kay Eiffel: I don't need a secretary.

Penny Escher: Then I will have to find some other way of occupying my time.

Kay Eiffel: Like watching me like a vulture in case I get distracted, because they, the publishers, think I have writer's block, isn't that right?

Penny Escher: Do you have writer's block?

[Kay doesn't answer]

Kay Eiffel: ...It came to me.

Penny Escher: How?

Kay Eiffel: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing it came inexplicably and without method.

Penny Escher: [sitting on bench under an umbrella] May I ask what we're doing out here?

Kay Eiffel: [sitting next to Penny without an umbrella] We're imagining car wrecks.

Penny Escher: I see. And we can't imagine car wrecks inside?

Kay Eiffel: No. Did you know that 41 percent of accidents occur in times of inclement weather?

Penny Escher: So do 90 percent of pneumonia cases.

Kay Eiffel: Really? Pneumonia. That's an interesting way to die. But how would Harold catch pneumonia?

Penny Escher: Have you written anything new today?

Kay Eiffel: No.

Penny Escher: Did you read the poems I suggested, or make a list of words, buy new typing paper, anything?

Kay Eiffel: No, none of it.

Penny Escher: Sitting in the rain won't write books.