- Psychiatrist: Your parents say you're always lying.
- Antoine Doinel: Oh, I lie now and then, I suppose. Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie.
- Antoine Doinel: Dad, I need some money.
- Julien Doinel: What?
- Antoine Doinel: I just need 1,000 francs.
- Julien Doinel: Which means you're hoping for 500, meaning you really need 300, so here's a hundred. All right, 500. But your mother should pay for that.
- English Teacher: Last and simple question. Where is the father?
- Rene: Ze fazer...
- English Teacher: No. The father.
- Rene: Ze fazer.
- English Teacher: No, the tip of the tongue between the teeth. As if you had a lisp. Father.
- Rene: Fazer.
- English Teacher: No.
- Rene: But I can't, sir. Not everybody has a tongue like yours.
- Juvenile Delinquent: Every time I cried, my father would imitate me on his fiddle, just to drive me nuts. One day I got fed up and I knocked him out.
- Examining Magistrate: I think we'd best put the boy in an observation center.
- Gilberte Doinel: Oh, could it be near the seashore, Your Honor?
- Examining Magistrate: It's not a vacation resort, ma'am.
- Juvenile Delinquent: I'm an unstable psychotic individual with perverted tendencies.
- Gilberte Doinel: My boss drove me home.
- Julien Doinel: Your boss.
- Gilberte Doinel: I couldn't very well refuse, could I?
- Julien Doinel: I hope you get overtime for that.
- Gilberte Doinel: I will, at the end of the month.
- Julien Doinel: Those services are usually paid in cash.
- Gilberte Doinel: Oh, knock it off!
- Julien Doinel: No wonder madame needs to rest on Sunday. By the way, where's my Michelin guide?
- Gilberte Doinel: How should I know? Ask the boy.
- Julien Doinel: He said he didn't touch it.
- Gilberte Doinel: He lies through his teeth.
- Julien Doinel: Like someone else I know.
- Gilberte Doinel: If you raised him better...
- Julien Doinel: I gave him my name, damn it! I put food on the table!
- Gilberte Doinel: I've had enough of your criticism! Fine! We'll send him to the Jesuits or the army orphans. At least I'd have some peace and quiet!
- Petite Feuille: Doinel, if your paper is first today, it's because I've decided to give the results beginning with the worst.
- Antoine Doinel: [heard thinking aloud, as he is writing on a wall] "Here lies poor Antoine Doinel, unjustly punished by Sourpuss for a pinup fallen from the sky. It will be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!"
- Gilberte Doinel: He's a liar!
- Julien Doinel: Like you!
- Gilberte Doinel: If you raised him right...
- Julien Doinel: Shit! I gave him a name! I feed him!
- Gilberte Doinel: I'm sick of your complaints! Fed up! If you can't stand him, say so. We'll put him in an orphanage so I can have some peace!
- Juvenile Delinquent: If she drops her pen, pick it up, but don't look at her legs. Or else it will be on your record.
- Gilberte Doinel: The best thing is to eat out until the end of the month.
- Julien Doinel: For that, I need a clean shirt.
- Julien Doinel: Women are always taken advantage of at the office, and they don't know what to do about it.
- Rene: You can sleep here. No one will know.
- Antoine Doinel: What about your parents?
- Rene: They never come in here. My mother drinks and my father spends all day at the races.
- Prostitute #1: I saw a police station in a movie. It was cleaner.
- Prostitute #2: I once saw a dirtier one.
- Prostitute #3: And I, a more cheerful one.
- Juvenile Delinquent: [to Antoine about another boy in the reformatory] He escaped a week ago, but they got him. Around here to escape is bad enough, but getting caught is worse.
- Gilberte Doinel: Antoine! He saw me!
- The Lover: Which one's he?
- Gilberte Doinel: With dark hair. But he should be in school!
- Rene: You'll get it!
- Antoine Doinel: She won't dare tell Dad.
- Julien Doinel: You don't seem surprised.
- Gilberte Doinel: Should I be? Nothing that boy does surprises me.
- Petite Feuille: Your quest of the absolute led you straight to a zero. For you who don't know Balzac, it concerns "A Shady Business".
- Julien Doinel: Look at your little flour boy here.
- Gilberte Doinel: That's not funny!
- Julien Doinel: I thought it was.
- Gilberte Doinel: I know they teach you a lot of useless stuff in school. Algebra. Science. Nobody uses that stuff in real life. But what about French? French. One always has letters to write.
- Gilberte Doinel: I was your age once too, you know. You kids always forget that. I was stubborn too and didn't want to confide in my parents. I preferred writing in my diary. No one's ever read it. I'll show it to you one day.
- Psychiatrist: Have you ever slept with a girl?
- Antoine Doinel: No, but some friends of mine have. They told me where the hookers hang out. So I went and tried to pick up some girls, but they all yelled at me so I got scared and I left. I went back a couple times. Once a man saw me and asked me what I was doing there. He was North African. So I told him. I guess he knew a lot of women, and he said he knew one who like guys my age. So he took me to her hotel, only she wasn't there that day. We waited an hour or two, but she didn't show up, so I left.
- Julien Doinel: We've tried everything: kindness, persuasion, punishment.. But, we never beat him, mind you.
- Commissioner: Sometimes the good old ways...
- Julien Doinel: Yes, of course, but his mother and I aren't like that.
- Petite Feuille: Now, Doinel, go get something to win that rubbish off the wall, or I'll make you lick it off, my friend!
- Rene: First off, we've got to think of a way to make some money.
- Antoine Doinel: Right, that's the first thing to do.
- Rene: Right. Meanwhile, I'll take an advance on my inheritance.
- Petite Feuille: We have a young Juvenal in our class, though he doesn't know an Alexandrine from blank verse. Doinel, for tomorrow you will conjugate.
- Petite Feuille: What class this year! I've known idiots before, but at least they were polite! They kept their heads down.
- Antoine Doinel: Sourpuss is a real asshole.
- Rene: That's his job.
- Antoine Doinel: Still, I'm gonna smash his face in before I go to the army!
- Julien Doinel: Your cousin called. His wife's expecting again.
- Gilberte Doinel: Four kids in three years? Like rabbits. It's disgusting.
- Gilberte Doinel: Once when I was your age, we were on vacation, and I ran away with a young farm boy. Puppy love. They caught us right away. Mother made me promise never to see him again. She never told my father. I cried and cried, but I obeyed her, because you should always obey your mother.
- Antoine Doinel: I want to quit school and earn a living.
- Gilberte Doinel: That's nonsense! Don't you understand? If you knew how sorry I am I stopped after high school! And your father never even finished! It's hurting his career now.