Best Line Readings From When Harry Met Sally -The Toast

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Carrie Fisher: “I want you to know…I will never want that wagon wheel coffee table.” It’s an okay table, too. I would totally own that table.

Bruno Kirby: “[disgusted laugh] NO” immediately at the end of Billy Crystal’s “Ted Kennedy was shot?” line.

Carrie Fisher: “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right,” every fucking time.

That redheaded friend of Sally and Marie’s: “At least you could say you were married,” during the riverside lunch scene.

Screen Shot 2013-09-05 at 10.39.08 AMWhen Billy Crystal is trying to initiate his flirtation with Meg Ryan on the first meeting, and they’re talking about Casablanca, and he says “than stay with the man you’ve had the greatest SEX of your life with…” in a way you would never emphasize that word unless you wanted to be the first person to mention sex in the conversation.

Meg Ryan, still on their ill-fated first drive, after Billy Crystal says they can never be friends: “It’s too bad. (beat) You were the only person I knew in New York.” And she’s so wistful and mildly regretful, but also stonily resigned.

The way Billy Crystal pronounces ‘balsamic’ (‘bal-sam-ic,’ not ‘bal-sahm-ic’) in “You don’t see that? Waiter, I’ll begin with a house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing. I’ll have the balsamic vinegar and oil, but on the side.”

Carrie Fisher‘s breathy, shocked, “Mar-ried!” upon learning that Alex Anderson is off the market and folding the edge over on his Rolodex card.

Meg Ryan‘s increasingly incredulous “I am? I am the dog? I am the dog?”

Ben Small‘s deadpan “I’m Ben Small, of the Coney Island Smalls.”

Mrs. Small (or maybe she kept her name, like Helen Hillson!): “I thought he was coming over to talk to my friend Maxine. People were always crossing rooms to come talk to Maxine.” Eyes downcast. Smile of triumph. “But he was coming to talk to me.”

Billy Crystal‘s “I’ll roll the window down” after Meg Ryan glares at him for splattering grape seeds onto the glass. Note that seedless grapes were rarer then.

Woman: “He looked the same, he looked EXACTLY the same to me.”

Bruno Kirby‘s delightfully rapid, slurred take on “I also said that pesto is the quiche of the eighties.” It took me until I was 25 to realize he wasn’t saying “I also said…pastiche in the eighties.”

Bruno Kirby again, this time during the game of Pictionary: “Draw something…resembling anything.”

As always when the subject of When Harry Met Sally is raised, The Toast would like to take this opportunity to remind you that even though Jess promised Marie “You will never have to be out there again,” Bruno Kirby died in 2006 and somewhere Marie is back out there without him.

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