'Sleepless in Seattle' 25th anniversary: 25 best quotes

It’s nearly impossible to think about romantic comedies without thinking about Nora Ephron. Monday marks the 25th anniversary of her film "Sleepless in Seattle," and 25 years later we still get chills thinking about Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks locking eyes atop the Empire State Building.

Esteemed critic Roger Ebert wrote in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times that the film was "as ephemeral as a talk show, as contrived as the late show, and yet so warm and gentle I smiled the whole way through."

Here are the 25 most memorable quotes from "Sleepless in Seattle" on love, fate, movies and pizza:

1

Annie Reed (Ryan): “Destiny is something that we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.”

2

Movie poster tagline: “What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?”

3

Dr. Marcia Fieldstone (Caroline Aaron): “People who truly loved once are far more likely to love again.”

4

Sam Baldwin (Hanks): “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together, and I knew it. I knew it the first time I touched her. It was like coming home, only to no home I’d ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew it. It was like magic.”

5

Annie Reed: “You make a million decisions that mean nothing, and then one day you order take-out and it changes your life.”

6

Jay (Rob Reiner): “Well, this is fate! She’s divorced, we don’t want to redo the cabinets, and you need a wife. What do they call it when everything intersects?”

Sam: “The Bermuda Triangle.”

 7

Annie: “Now that was when people knew how to be in love. They knew it! Time, distance; nothing could separate them because they knew. It was right. It was real. It was…”

Becky (Rosie O'Donnell): “...a movie. That’s your problem. You don’t want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie.”

8

Becky: “Verbal ability is a highly overrated thing in a guy, and it’s our pathetic need for it that gets us into so much trouble.”

9

Dennis Reed (David Hyde Pierce): “Annie, when you’re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.”

10

Co-worker: “It’s easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to find a husband over the age of 40.”

Annie: “That statistic is not true.”

Becky: “That’s right, it’s not true. But it feels true.”

11

Jonah Baldwin (Ross Malinger): “Talk to her, dad. She’s a doctor.”

Sam: “Of what? Her first name could be Doctor.”

12

Walter (Bill Pullman): “Marriage is hard enough without bringing such low expectations into it.”

13 

Sam: “I am not going to New York to meet some woman who could be a crazy, sick lunatic. Didn’t you see ‘Fatal Attraction?’ ”

14 

(At the Empire State Building)

Taxi driver: “There it is. What are you gonna do when you get up there? Spit off the top?”

Jonah: “No. I’m gonna meet my new mother.”

15

Sam: “I’m not looking for a mail-order bride. I just want somebody I can have a decent conversation with over dinner.”

16

Woman on airplane: “Don’t you just hate flying?”

Annie: “Yes, I do, and I just told the most terrible one to the man I’m about to marry. Do you feel that any lie is a betrayal?”

Woman: “(pause) I said flying.”

17

Sam: “I’m gonna get out of bed every morning … breathe in and out all day long. Then after a while, I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out. And then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.”

18 

Jonah: “A ho! A ho! My dad’s been captured by a ho!”

19

Annie: “When a man is a widower, why do we say he was widowed? Why don't we say he was widower-ed?”

20

Jonah: “Do you believe in heaven?”

Sam: “I never did. I mean, the whole idea of an afterlife … But now, I don’t know. ‘Cause I have these dreams. About your mom. And we have these long talks about you and how you’re doing, which she sort of knows, but I tell her anyway. So what is that? That’s sort of an afterlife, isn’t it?”

21

Becky: “Your destiny can be your doom. Look at me and my Rick.”

22 

Jonah: “Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked like that before.”

23

Sam: “Mommy got sick. And it happened just like that. There was nothing anybody could do. It isn’t fair. There’s no reason. But if we start asking why, we’ll go crazy.”

24

Sam: “I’d much rather just see somebody I like and get a feeling about them and ask them if they want to have a drink.”

Jonah: “Or a slice of pizza.”

25

Barbara (Le Clanché du Rand): “I’ve probably told you this a million times, but I don’t care. And then he held my hand. At one point I looked down and I couldn’t tell which fingers were his and which were mine. And I knew… I knew we would be together forever and that everything would be wonderful.”

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