50 Great Rory-Lorelai Exchanges From ‘Gilmore Girls’

Hey, let's look into each other's eyes and say "I wish I were you" at exactly the same time -- maybe we'll pull a 'Freaky Friday.'

By Nico Lang

Updated 12 years ago, April 24, 2013

Fans of Gilmore Girls know that Gilmore Girls has great dialogue, so much of it that the scripts were twice as long as normal TV scripts. It’s why they talked so fast. But at the center of all the chatter was the indispensable relationship between a mother and daughter, best friends who happened to share jeans.

As a tribute to the fabulous women of the family Gilmore, these are some of the best conversations Rory and Lorelai had on the show. I picked mostly from the first five seasons, only because the last two seasons included April, the Dawn Summers of Stars Hollow. You can’t sit with us, April.

1. Rory: The house is burning and you can save the cake or me. Which do you save?

Lorelai: That’s not fair. The cake doesn’t have legs.

2. Lorelai: You have to sleep. It’s what keeps you pretty.

Rory: Who cares if I’m pretty if I fail my finals?

Lorelai: Oh-kay. You’ve got this so completely backwards.

3. Lorelai: Well… I feel like I’ve gotten sloppy with this whole 10 and 2 hand position thing.

Rory: Uh huh.

Lorelai: Yeah, seriously. The other day I caught myself doing a 9 and 4.

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: Well, if left uncorrected that can only lead to a 6 and 12. Or, worse yet, an 8 and 11, which is not only dangerous but damn uncomfortable.

4. Lorelai: Follow the post-its!

Rory: Does our life seem at all ridiculous to you?

5. Lorelai: The plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac?

Rory: Yep.

Lorelai: That doesn’t even sound like English.

Rory: That’s because it’s French.

6. Rory: Okay. You’re sure you’re not mad?

Lorelai: Oh, well, you’ll never truly know until you read my memoir.

7. Rory: I’m going to a serious school now, I need serious paper.

Lorelai: Paper’s paper.

Rory: Not at Chilton.

Lorelai: Alright, fine. Here is your serious paper.

Rory: Thank you.

Lorelai: Ooh and here are your somber highlighters, your maudlin pencils, your manic-depressive pens.

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: Now these erasers are on lithium so they may seem cheerful but we actually caught them trying to shove themselves in the pencil sharpener earlier.

Rory: I’m going home now.

Lorelai: No, wait! We’re going to stage an intervention with the neon post-its and make them give up their wacky crazy ways.

8. Rory: He smells really good, and he looks amazing, and I am stupid! I said “Thank you!”

Lorelai: Whoa, whoa, whoa. You said, “Thank you?”

Rory: When he kissed me!

Lorelai: Wait, he kissed you again? What is he, just out of prison or something?

Rory: No, not now. Yesterday? At the store?

Lorelai: Oh, all right. Strike the prison comment. So wait. He kissed you, and you said “Thank you?”

Rory: Yes!

Lorelai: Well, that was very polite.

11. “Lorelai: “Maybe if we concentrate really hard our combined psychic powers will move it closer.”

Rory: “I don’t think its working.”

Lorelai: ” It’s my fault. I’m not focusing.”

Rory: “Yes, that must be why we cant move a half a city block closer to us.”

12. Lorelai: Oh, I want a pet.

Rory: You have me.

Lorelai: You won’t bring me my slippers in the morning.

Rory: I might if you had slippers.

Lorelai: Will you wear a collar?

Rory: No.

Lorelai: It’ll be pink!

Rory: You’re sick.

13. Lorelai: Hey, you didn’t wake me up!

Rory: I set the clock.

Lorelai: The clock stops ringing when you throw it against the wall, giving me ample time to fall back asleep. You, however never shut-up no matter how hard I throw you against the wall, thus ensuring the wake-up process.

14. Rory: Mother-daughter window washing. We should try that.

Lorelai: Yeah, right after mother-daughter shock treatments.

15. Lorelai: The freaking Blue Man Group is outside our house!

Rory: I was sleeping through it!

Lorelai: It had to have woken you up.

Rory: No my insane mother, Margot Kidder Gilmore, woke me up.

16. Rory: How am I supposed to get into Harvard if I have no wilderness skills?

Lorelai: I don’t know honey. Maybe you’ll have to give up your dream of majoring in Logging.

17. Rory: And when I got back from Grandpa’s office, they all invited me out onto the patio.

Lorelai: No no no, please tell me you did not go out onto the patio.

Rory: I went out onto the patio.

Lorelai: Ugh, Rory, that’s like accepting the position as the drummer in Spinal Tap.

18. Lorelai: That’s what you got busted for, ringing a bell?

Rory: Yeah, mm hmm.

Lorelai: That’s it? Bell ringing?

Rory: Yes.

Lorelai: Uh, were you at least smoking a Cuban cigar while you were doing it?

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: No, I mean, bad girl. How many times have I told you not to ring bells?

19. Rory: One sec. You know Mom, I hate to bring this up, but I think there’s a really obvious solution to our problem.

Lorelai: I know, hon.

Rory: You do?

Lorelai: Yes. And frankly, I think if I sold you into white slavery, I would miss you.

20. Lorelai: Its repetitive.

Rory: And redundant.

Lorelai: Its repetitive.

Rory: And redundant!

Lorelai: We certainly are entertaining, Mac!

Rory: Indubitably, Tosh.

21. Lorelai: Are you tilting?

Rory: No.

Lorelai: I think you’re tilting.

Rory: I’m not tilting.

Lorelai: Do you wanna hold onto my purse? It might even you out.

Rory: Stop anytime you like. What are you doing?

Lorelai: Well, I’m gonna get a pen and put it on top of your head and see if it rolls off.

Rory: Okay, see, this is not how you console the injured.

22. Lorelai: Not at all sad?

Rory: About getting my arm back? No.

Lorelai: Really? ‘Cause I’ve kind of gotten used to Casty over here. I mean, we decorated him, we talked to him, we protected him from getting wet in the shower.

Rory: Okay, it’s time to wean you off of getting attached to inanimate objects.

Lorelai: Casty, no one understands you like I do. What? No, I did not know Mr. Band-Aid said that to you. Ugh, I will talk to him when we get home.

23. Lorelai: I’m lying in bed and I’m sleeping and I’m wearing this fabulous nightgown, and like thirty alarm clocks go off, and so I get out of bed and I walk downstairs, and there, standing in the kitchen, is Luke!

Rory: Was he naked?

Lorelai: No! He was making breakfast.

Rory: Naked?

Lorelai: Okay, you’ve been in Washington way too long.

24. Lorelai: I got here early and there was nothing to do except feed gummy bears to the bomb-sniffing dogs which, apparently, the United States government frowns upon.

Rory:: You got in trouble with the government while you were waiting for me?

Lorelai: Just a little.

Rory: How much is a little?

Lorelai: Learn Russian.

25. Lorelai: My life stinks. Hey, let’s look into each other’s eyes and say “I wish I were you” at exactly the same time — maybe we’ll pull a Freaky Friday.

Rory: Or we can just pretend that we did and you can go around acting really immature. Oh, wait.

Lorelai: I can’t believe you won’t switch bodies with me.

Rory: Forget it. Then I’d have to date Kirk.

26. Lorelai: Just once I’d like to be able to say, “Yeah, I’m not feeling so good, my leg is haunted.”

Rory: See, there’s a reason why you only take one packet of TheraFlu at a time.

27. Lorelai: Rory, I cannot go out with Kirk.

Rory: Why?

Lorelai: Why? He’s Kirk!

Rory: Well, as long as he loves you.

Lorelai: You are not serious.

Rory: I just want you to be happy.

Lorelai: Hello, Headmaster Charleston, this is my stepfather Kirk. Please don’t make any sudden movements. He’s a fear biter!

28. Lorelai: Alright, we’re gonna have to move.

Rory: Okay.

Lorelai: Take off in the middle of the night, leave everything behind, assume different identities. I’ll join a local community theater and I’ll drive you to soccer. It’ll work for many years until the FBI comes to get me, and by that time, you’re on your own.

Rory: I don’t play soccer.

Lorelai: You do now.

29. Rory: He’s going to be expecting Chilton High School senior, Trixie McBimbo.

Lorelai: And her mother, Bambi McBimbo.

30. Lorelai: So, I think I’m in touch with the other side.

Rory: The other side of?

Lorelai: The other side.

Rory: With Republicans?

31. Rory: Kirk has very little in his life. He has no career, no girlfriend, no pet, no car. He lives with his mother, she won’t even let him have his own key. The only thing he does have in his whole lonely pathetic existence is this marathon. If we win, if we take him down, if we take away that last little piece of dignity, then we leave him with nothing.

Lorelai: I wonder if he’ll cry.

Rory: My mother, the Howard Roark of Stars Hollow.

32. Rory: Can we not say the word “college” for at least forty-eight hours?

Lorelai: Fine.

Rory: Thank you.

Lorelai: How ’bout “collage”, can we say “collage?” ‘Cause it sounds the same, but it’s actually very different.

Rory: “Collage” is fine.

Lorelai: Okay, good, ’cause I don’t even know how to get through a conversation without the word “collage.”

33. Lorelai: “Where’s the ladies room?” “More coffee, please.” “Does Antonio Banderas live near here?”

Rory: We do not need to know how to say, “Does Antonio Banderas live near here?”

Lorelai: Oh, yes, we do.

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: When we’re in Spain, we need to know how to say, “Does Antonio Banderas live near here?” When in France, “Does Johnny Depp live near here?”

Rory: When in Rome, “Does Gore Vidal live near here?”

Lorelai: You know, you look like me, yet my ways are completely lost on you.

34. Rory: You never socialized me properly, I should hate you right now. Do something to make me hate you.

Lorelai: Um, go Hitler!

35. Rory: It’s shopping week.

Lorelai: Isn’t it always?

Rory: The first week of school is called shopping week. You get to try out as many classes as you want before you pick the ones you want to stick with for the semester. I picked over fifty classes I’m gonna try out, plus another ten I’m gonna squeeze in if I have the time. They all sound completely amazing. I stayed up all night reading the class subscriptions over and over.

Lorelai: You do know that if you weren’t so pretty, you would’ve gotten the crap kicked out of you every day of your life.

36. Lorelai: And apparently, now that I’m the pretty spinster living all alone, he’s concerned for my safety.

Rory: Did he tell you all this?

Lorelai: Do you think I labeled myself the pretty spinster?

37. Lorelai: “Twenty-three is old. It’s almost twenty-five, which is, like, almost mid-twenties.”

Rory: She did not say that.

Lorelai: She did say that.

Rory: It seems a little wrong that Jessica Simpson is alive and well and Roy got eaten by his tiger.

38. Lorelai: I’m going to go make out in the coat room. Don’t eat my chicken.

Rory: That’s going on your tombstone.

39. Rory: You’re not worried, are you? Because I’m just going for the sun and to read, nothing more.

Lorelai: I know, I know. It’s just, it’s always the good kids who’ve never had a drink that take one sip of Kahlua and fall out of a window.

Rory: So you’re sad you never taught me how to drink?

Lorelai: Exactly!

Rory: Well, grab a bottle and some quarters and let’s go.

40. Rory: So, inviting them to stay in the inn is going to do what?

Lorelai: I’m not inviting them to stay in the inn. I’m inviting them to stay in the bungalow 150 feet away from the inn.

Rory: Diabolical.

Lorelai: I’m going to lock those two in a room, and they are either coming out reconciled or in a body bag. Believe you me, I’m fine either way.

Rory: Well, look who died and made you Hayley Mills.

41. Lorelai: This was your first time, it’s just not the way your first time was supposed to be.

Rory: Oh, and how was my first time ‘supposed to be’?

Lorelai: Well, first of all, it was supposed to be in a retirement home.

42. Rory: I know [Logan] from school. He’s just a casual friend. That’s it.

Lorelai: Do you think he’s cute?

Rory: It doesn’t matter if I think he’s cute.

Lorelai: Uh, it matters to me. I don’t want ugly grandchildren.

43. Lorelai: Okay, I know I was the one that said I was craving mashed potatoes, but, oh my God, they’re a lot of work.

Rory: It’s instant mashed potatoes. Key word: instant.

Lorelai: Oh, no, not instant. I have to mix water and butter into it, not to mention the adding of salt and pepper.

44. Lorelai: Hey, isn’t that your naked guy?

Rory: Oh, yeah. Marty, hey! He’s not my naked guy.

Lorelai: Well, you don’t really want a communal naked guy, nowadays, you know, it’s too sketchy.

45. Lorelai: But, hey, don’t worry about me. Things are starting to look up. [holds up the flier] They think I’m a student.

Rory: And they also think you’re Polynesian and potentially sexually undecided.

Lorelai: Yeah. Well, still an improvement.

46. Rory: Hey, you called my cell.

Lorelai: I know.

Rory: I told you to call my landline. My cell phone bill’s astronomical.

Lorelai: But a conversation with me: priceless.

47. Rory: Grandma’s still hitting you with the postcards, huh?

Lorelai: As if nothing even remotely unpleasant happened between us. How does she do that? Compartmentalize like that. It’s weird. She’s the serial killer who goes to work and talks about a funny Seinfeld he saw and then goes home and cooks himself a man-flesh sandwich.

Rory: Eww.

Lorelai: Let’s see how her trip has been since her last card. “Dear Lorelai, kicked a dog, then punched a gypsy in the groin.” Oh, that’s nice.

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: “Complained about the foie gras to a waiter whose yearly pay is less than what I spend monthly on silver polish, then kicked another dog.”

Rory: Come on.

Lorelai: “Tripped a nun, then burned down an orphanage.”

Rory: Sounds like a busy itinerary.

48. Rory: We’re fondue purists, Grandma.

Lorelai: Yea we dip old school.

Emily: The government says you should have nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

Lorelai: Imperialist propaganda.

Rory: Noam Chomsky would agree.