Northern Exposure, Season 5

Joel:
Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.

Joel:
Excuse me, would you ladies mind postponing your trenchant literary critique so we can continue with our little medical practice here?

Chris:
You know what you are Earl? You're a little, tiny, busy ant. You too, Mike. Both you guys, with your mortgages and your term life insurance and your Weber kettles. Ant. Ant. All of you, you're all a bunch of little, busy, blind ants. All you all. Saving up for your rainy days. Scratching up your acorns for the winter. You look at me and you think, "What a piece of pathetic trash out there in that leaky trailer." No spoon, no fork, no prospects. But, you know why? Cause I'm a grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant. Grasshopper. Ant!

Maurice:
[Maurice catches Ed talking to his statue] Look, Ed. If you've got something to say, you say it to me. You got that?

Ed:
Okay, Maurice. But, uh -

Maurice:
But what?

Ed:
Well, it's just that he's a little easier to talk to.

Maurice:
The statue?

Ed:
Well, he doesn't throw my thoughts off like you do sometimes.

Maurice:
I don't throw your thoughts off, son! What are you talking about?

Ed:
Well, kind of like now, Maurice.

Maurice:
I'm not in the business of throwing people's thoughts off! Is that clear?

Joel:
Oh God. Oh my God. I'm sitting here eating seeds and having a serious conversation about winter clothing. First my wallet and now this. What is happening?

Kevin:
The Homecoming queen is supposed to be a babe.

Marilyn:
The Eagle wasn't always the Eagle. The Eagle, before he became the Eagle, was Yucatangee, the Talker. Yucatangee talked and talked. It talked so much it heard only itself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the Wolf. The Raven came and said "The Wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you'll hear him. The wind too. And when you hear the wind, you'll fly." So he stopped talking. And became its nature, the Eagle. The Eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say

Leonard:
The path to our destination is not always a straight one, Ed. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.

Leonard:
If you're going to be a healer, it's not enough to read books and learn allegorical stories. you need to get your feet wet, get some clinical experience under your belt.

Chris:
I think the saying is, "better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all" and if they didn't say it, they should have.

Chris:
Oh the snow the beautiful snow filling the sky and earth below. Over the house tops and over the streets, over the heads of people you meet. Dancing flirting skimming along. Oh the snow the beautiful snow how the flakes gather and laugh as they go. Whirling about in their maddening fun it plays in its glee with everyone. Chasing laughing hurrying by it lights on the face and sparkles the eye. And even the dogs with a bark and a bound snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive and its heart in a glow to welcome the coming of beautiful snow. Bon Hiver Cicely.

Ed:
Like Woody Allen says 'It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return dog's phone calls'.

Holling:
I'm my mother. I'm my father. I'm chipped beef on toast?!

Maggie:
Life is everywhere. The earth is throbbing with it, it's like music. The plants, the creatures, the ones we see, the ones we don't see, it's like one, big, pulsating symphony.

Adam:
You think Nature is some Disney movie? Nature is a killer. Nature is a bitch. It's feeding time out there 24 hours a day, every step that you take is a gamble with death. If it isn't getting hit with lightning today, it's an earthquake tomorrow or some deer tick carrying Lyme disease. Either way, you're ending up on the wrong end of the food chain.

Joel:
I know Adam is a walking pathology, but the guy's never hurt anybody, not that I know of. I mean, threats of imminent danger are just his way of saying "good morning."

Chris:
It looks like a fine winter's morning out there at the 63rd latitude. Jack Frost is tagging up those window panes, hot java, english muffins, locked and loaded. The word on the street is that the Tambo-Vincour addition is due to pop out and see its shadow manana. From the safety of the womb to the bright unknown. Hey little one, you got 843 expectant aunts and uncles out here all queued up for a little koochie koochie koo.

Maggie:
You haven't vacuumed, Fleischman? What's this, petrified corn chips?

Chris:
Morning Cicely. 8:00 A.M. muchachos. Time to finish those flapjacks, knock back that second cup of joe, get ready to greet the day. Temperature's creeping towards double digits as the solar drought continues--23 days, an average of an hour and a half of sunlight every day. No relief on the horizon. Which only makes sense cause there is no horizon. Our friends at the weather service are calling for another storm and as we know, they've been batting a thousand lately. Hey, let's check our social calendar. Nothing. Total blank. It's cabin fever season people, that time of year when four walls feel like they're going to come in here and choke the spirit right out of you. Time to lock away those firearms and hang tough. No way through it except to do it.

Chris:
"Time is but the stream I go a fishing in." Henry David Thoreau.

Ed:
"Pass me a sandwich." Ed Chigliak.

Maurice:
The orchid, the aristocrat of the flower family. The most sophisticated plant on earth. Clearly a cut above. But, it's got petals like everybody else. The lowly daisy, the cheap carnation, half-baked azelia. Like these, the orchid needs warmth. It needs care and kindness to get by. These flowers need you people. No, I need you.

Shelly:
Do I get a real priest? No. I get this dud, some smoke-ring blowing, arm-wrestler with a rip in his pants.

Chris:
Marriage. Why do we do it? Everybody knows the stats. One in two marriages end up in broken dishes and a trip to Tijuana. Is it loneliness? Partly. Is it teamwork? Definitely. Things just kind of go easier when there's two of you. One of you can wait in line at the movie theater while the other guy parks the car. Get better seats that way. Better room rate when it's a double. Are you ready to file jointly?...Above you is the sun and sky. Below you, the ground. Like the sun, your love should be constant, like the ground, solid. Are you both OK with that? In that case, I now pronounce you, married.

Little Green Man:
Ed, you're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.

Joel:
First I thought it was numbness, you know, shock. The inability to believe that a just God could allow someone to destroy a gold mine of prehistoric knowledge for a year's worth of Salisbury steak. I feel like I am floating. Like I'm watching myself leave my body. I think about what happened today and I just, I want to laugh. I should be foaming at the mouth like any other normal person. Maybe what I am experiencing is a euphoria you're supposed to feel just before you give up, you know, just let the lungs fill with water. Life is a mystery. One man's life-altering experience is another man's tenderloin. I'm one of you now. I'm a Cicelean.