- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, I know you're planning a celibate life, but with half my chromosomes, I think that might be tough.
- Rachel Flax: [to Charlotte as she goes out to spend time with Joe] Don't do anything I wouldn't do...
- [pause]
- Rachel Flax: Or don't do anything I would!
- Charlotte Flax: I want to stay!
- Rachel Flax: And do what?
- Charlotte Flax: Finish high school!
- Rachel Flax: Great start! What's your major, town tramp?
- Charlotte Flax: No, Mom, the town already has one.
- [Rachel slaps her]
- Rachel Flax: Alright, you know what? I'll make you a deal. You stop being a little bitch for, let's say, oh, I don't know, an hour or two, and I won't knock the religion of your choice for a week. Deal?
- Charlotte Flax: Deal!
- Dr. Reynolds: [after examining Charlotte, who thinks she is pregnant after kissing Joe] Has your mother ever talked to you about sex?
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] Please, God, I want to die.
- [to the doctor]
- Charlotte Flax: Yeah, all the time.
- Dr. Reynolds: So you do know how babies are conceived?
- Charlotte Flax: Oh, yeah. We talk about everything. She's a wonderful mother.
- Dr. Reynolds: Then why did you think you were pregnant? You're still a virgin.
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] I want to die now. Right now.
- [Charlotte is praying at a shrine she has made in her room to the Virgin Mary]
- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, we're Jewish.
- Mary O'Brien: You see that woman there?
- [she points at a fat, frumpy woman]
- Mary O'Brien: That's my mom. But when I grow up, I want to be just like yours.
- Charlotte Flax: Mary, you already are!
- Charlotte Flax: I'll make real sandwiches. Big ones a man can sink his teeth into and use both hands to hold 'em.
- Lou Landsky: If you care about us, would it kill you to show it?
- Rachel Flax: "Us"? When did YOU and *my* children become "us"? You're just YOU, Lou - me and the girls, THAT'S "us"!
- Lou Landsky: I was talking about you and me.
- Lou Landsky: [Reacting to an odd smile from Rachel as they lay in bed together] What?
- Rachel Flax: You're a sexy guy.
- Lou Landsky: Do you have to sound surprised when you say that?
- Rachel Flax: I *am* surprised.
- Charlotte Flax: Oh, I'm going to hell for sure. Here he is, talking about his poor dead mother and I can't help wishing his hands were unbuttoning my dress!
- Charlotte Flax: He has the most beautiful skin in captivity, I love him because he wears moccasins in the winter even though his feet must feel like blocks of ice.
- Charlotte Flax: [about to put on her mother's polka dot dress] Care to dance, Mrs. Flax? Mrs. Polka Flax?
- Rachel Flax: You know, Charlotte, I think you might be old enough for a boyfriend now.
- Charlotte Flax: If I'm old enough, maybe you're too old.
- Rachel Flax: Don't be ridiculous. A real woman is never too old.
- Rachel Flax: Who's that?
- Charlotte Flax: That's Mr. Crane, my history teacher, and he is very nice.
- Rachel Flax: *He* is an asshole.
- Charlotte Flax: You haven't even spoken to him yet!
- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, I don't need to speak to him. He's driving an Edsel, for Christ's sake.
- Charlotte Flax: OK, Mom, if you want to drive Lou away, that's your business. You want Joe, that's war.
- Charlotte Flax: So Joe, tell me about the nuns in the convent. Do they wear underwear in the shower?
- [narrating]
- Charlotte Flax: I don't believe I said that.
- Kate Flax: When I die, I want to be sprinkled in the ocean. I don't care if a whale eats me. I could live inside a whale like Jonah with an angel guard.
- Rachel Flax: Girls...
- Charlotte Flax: Yeah, well, what if you get a whale that doesn't have a living room inside him and you end up in someone's tuna fish sandwich?
- Rachel Flax: I'm never growing old.
- Lou Landsky: Well, time catches up. What can you do?
- Rachel Flax: Keep moving.
- Rachel Flax: [after another of Charlotte's criticisms] Ooh, we're going to play my favorite game - Who's the worst mother in the world? Ooh, now, don't tell me, let me guess, who could it be? Could it be... ME?
- Rachel Flax: OK, how do I look?
- Charlotte Flax: Like a woman about to go forth in sin.
- Rachel Flax: Oh, good, exactly the look I was hoping for.
- Mother Superior: Yes, dear?
- [Charlotte stands in front of her, smiling awkwardly]
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] I desperately wanted to ask her what color her bra was and if she had pure thoughts every second of the day, but...
- [Charlotte is unable to speak]
- Charlotte Flax: A word about Mrs. Flax and food: the word is "hors d'oeurves". "Fun Finger Foods" is her main source book and that's all the woman cooks. Anything more, she says, is too big a commitment.
- [Charlotte is going fishing with Joe]
- Joe: Do you want to bait your own hook or do you want me to do it?
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] Mary, mother of God... he still wants to fish?
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] Please, God, let him throw me on the ground and make another Joey Junior.
- Kate Flax: [stumbling in, out of the blue, with a jack-o-lantern on her head, growling] Rachel Flax!
- Rachel Flax: [wearing a mermaid costume] You know, if I were to have had this costume when you guys were little, I would have done my ironing and all your diapers in it.
- Kate Flax: Oklahoma was great. I liked living there.
- Rachel Flax: Yeah, I know, and you'll love living here when you get used to it.
- Charlotte Flax: Yeah, and when you get used to it, we'll move and everything'll change again.
- Charlotte Flax: What are you doing?
- Kate Flax: Sucking out the pimentos. They give me hernias.
- Charlotte Flax: You mean hives, fish-head.
- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, you drive like old people make love.
- Charlotte Flax: Mom, I'm only 15. I get nervous.
- Rachel Flax: Driving happens to be one of the two most important skills a woman could have. You should be tickled pink that I taught you early.
- Kate Flax: I think I heard Mom say she'd be making a main course tonight.
- [Rachel gets out of the car and pulls a new dress out of her shopping bag]
- Kate Flax, Charlotte Flax: Nah!
- Lou Landsky: Know what we did if we used the wrong fork or spoon when I was a kid?
- Kate Flax: What?
- Lou Landsky: We had to go out back and stick 'em in the ground. Even if the ground was frozen solid. We used to call it the hardware garden.
- Rachel Flax: [wearing a mermaid costume for the New Year's Eve party] All right, I can tell by my mermaid watch that it's time for me to get in my mermaid car and hit the mermaid road!
- Kate Flax: And get the mermaid outta here!
- Kate Flax: Got anything for sharks and jellyfish?
- Carrie: What, dear?
- Rachel Flax: She means body grease. Miss Kate's going to swim the English Channel one day.
- [Lou is going to make dinner]
- Kate Flax: Anything that's hot and not shaped like a star sounds good to me.
- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, don't aggravate me, all right? You're starting a new school on Monday and those boots aren't.
- [Rachel, Charlotte and Kate enter Lou's shoe store and meet two nuns from the convent]
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] Oh, God, please let Mrs. Flax control herself.
- Lou Landsky: You're still a perfect seven, Reverend Mother. You know, most women's feet get bigger.
- Rachel Flax: Only if they marry.
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] Oh, no!
- Rachel Flax: You know, your feet swell. When you get pregnant, your feet swell.
- [Charlotte is mortified]
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] How could she? How could she?
- Rachel Flax: I know mine got swollen when I was pregnant.
- Charlotte Flax: [whispering] Mother, how could you say that? She's a holy vessel!
- Charlotte Flax: I feel I've wasted half my life in cars. I try to be charitable, taking care of Kate and not killing mother. But, I ask you, whoever heard the word of God going 70 miles an hour on the interstate?
- [everyone in town is stricken by the news of President Kennedy's assassination]
- Charlotte Flax: [narrating] It feels like there isn't a single adult left on the entire planet.
- Charlotte Flax, Rachel Flax: [Charlotte angrily confronts her mother after catching her making out with Joe]
- Charlotte Flax: You kissed him? You kissed him, how could you do that?
- [to Joe]
- Charlotte Flax: How could you let her kiss you?
- Rachel Flax: Charlotte, for God's sakes, it's just a little New Year's Eve kiss.
- Charlotte Flax: But you don't believe in New Year's.
- Rachel Flax: [with big grin] I know.