Phoebe in Wonderland

Phoebe:
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. It's a beautiful name I think. I was born with it. Starting now. It'll get worse before it gets better. My shoulders, my fingers, and imitating. Spitting. It's a voice in your head that makes you do the opposite of what you're supposed to. It makes you break rules. But sometimes breaking rules is good. So I like to think about it that way.

Sally:
Homo

Jamie:
Homo got the part!

Colleague:
How does a seven-year-old have angst?

Hillary Lichten:
You don't know the half of it.

Olivia Lichten:
Mozart was six when he wrote his first opera! I'm seven!

Hillary Lichten:
Well, he's only got a year on you, sweetie.

Olivia Lichten:
You don't understand!

Jamie:
I have Mary. She's a Patriot Girl too, except British. She escaped the bombing of London during World War II.

Phoebe:
I know who she is. She's a loser.

Jamie:
You think?

Phoebe:
What are you looking for?

Jamie:
Money. Yesterday I found a dollar. I'm saving up for Sings With Birds, the noble Sioux girl growing up in 1732.

Phoebe:
Do you want my Catherine doll?

Jamie:
Thanks, but I have her.

Phoebe:
Why'd she take off her dress? If I had a dress like that, I'd never take it off.

Olivia Lichten:
You'd have to, to wash it.

Phoebe:
No, because maybe if I wore it long enough, one day I'd wake up and I'd be that person.

Hillary Lichten:
You'd have to choose your part carefully.

Phoebe:
Oh, I would. Believe me, I would.

Jamie:
How'd your audition go? I think mine went well. I practiced forever. I was better at home. Auditions are stressful. When I wanted my baking kit, I prayed to God every night for a whole month to get it.

Phoebe:
Is that what you have to do?

Jamie:
Well, if you want something really bad, you have to pray. Or do something you hate, and God will see you deserve it.

Phoebe:
I don't believe in God.

Jamie:
Me neither, but I did get the baking kit.

Dr. Miles:
Have you told anyone about the Red Queen?

Phoebe:
My mother. It made her nervous.

Dr. Miles:
Do you hide things from your parents if you think it'll make them nervous?

Phoebe:
Of course.

Dr. Miles:
What do you and the Red Queen talk about?

Phoebe:
Wonderland. How nice it is to have a place where things aren't fixed. It's all the opposite there, you know. It'd be nice if...

Dr. Miles:
If?

Phoebe:
If it were the same here.

Phoebe:
Where's Daddy going?

Hillary Lichten:
He had some work to do.

Olivia Lichten:
But it's Halloween. What are you doing?

Phoebe:
Take my candy.

Olivia Lichten:
Why?

Phoebe:
It's my fault... Daddy leaving.

Hillary Lichten:
No, he had work to do.

Peter Lichten:
Why do we have to go to the principal's office?

Phoebe:
I spat at the other kids. I couldn't help it.

Peter Lichten:
Phoebe, what do you mean you couldn't help it?

Hillary Lichten:
She means she couldn't help it.

Phoebe:
Please tell Mr. Davis I couldn't help it.

Principal Davis:
She spat, Mrs. Lichten, she spat.

Phoebe:
Spat, spat, water rat.

Principal Davis:
So I thought you could come in and we could chat about it.

Phoebe:
Tommy spat first!

Principal Davis:
Phoebe, perhaps you should let your mommy and daddy and I talk alone about it. Here, you can have a candy.

Hillary Lichten:
Phoebe is imaginative and sensitive and passionate and if she did get excited about the gerbil, I'm sure she was provoked. You heard her, that other terror spat first.

Miss Dodger:
Sometimes you think you don't have hope but you keep on anyway and then you know you have hope.

Miss Dodger:
At a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by... you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are... especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself... But I am this person. And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.

[first lines]

Peter Lichten:
Happy Birthday!

Miss Reiter:
[to the class] What do we know about Good Job Jenny?

Phoebe:
[under her breath] She deserves a slow and painful death.

Phoebe:
Are you always supposed to feel hope?

[last lines]

Caterpillar:
Who are you?

Phoebe:
I hardly know, sir, right now. At least I knew who I was when I got up this morning. But I think I've must have changed many times since then.

Caterpillar:
Explain yourself.

Phoebe:
I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly, for I can't understand it myself to begin with. And being so many different sizes in a day, it is very confusing.

Caterpillar:
It isn't.

Phoebe:
Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet, but when you have to turn into a chrysalis - you will some day, you know - and then into a beautiful butterfly, I think you'll feel a little odd.

Caterpillar:
Not a bit.

Phoebe:
Your feelings may be different. All I know is, it would feel very strange to me.

Caterpillar:
You? Who are you?

Phoebe:
[just stares brightly]

Phoebe:
I can see myself wrecking and ruining. But I can't stop myself.

Olivia Lichten:
[Halloween 'costumed' as Karl Marx] How come no one knows who I am?

Hillary Lichten:
It's esoteric, sweetie.

Peter Lichten:
You're very original. Now, go try this other house. Don't let the poppies put you to sleep.