Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Penny Escher: Man in tweed?
Kay Eiffel: There's nothing wrong with him, he just likes looking at sick people.
Penny Escher: Oddly spoken with disdain.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Harold Crick: What do these questions have to do with anything?
Professor Jules Hilbert: Nothing. The only way to find out what story you're in is to determine what stories you're not in. Odd as it may seem, I've just ruled out half of Greek literature, seven fairy tales, ten Chinese fables, and determined conclusively that you are not King Hamlet, Scout

Finch, Miss Marple, Frankenstein's monster, or a golem. Hmm? Aren't you relieved to know you're not a golem?
Harold Crick: Yes, I am relieved to know that I am not a golem.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Kay Eiffel: What's this?
Penny Escher: It's literature on the nicotine patch.
Kay Eiffel: I don't need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes.
Penny Escher: Well, it may help.
Kay Eiffel: May help? Help what? Help what, Penny? Help write a novel?
Penny

Escher: May help save your life.
Kay Eiffel: I'm not in the business of saving lives.
[spits into tissue to Penny's disgust, and puts cigarette in tissue]
Kay Eiffel: In fact, just the opposite.
[wipes water out of eye]

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Harold Crick: Aren't you too old to go to space camp?
Dave: You're never too old to go to space camp, dude.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Ana Pascal: Mr. Crick, it was a really awful day. I know, I made sure of it. So pick up the cookie, dip it in the milk, and eat it.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Professor Jules Hilbert: Meeting an insurance agent the day your policy runs out is coincidence. Getting a letter from the emperor saying he's visiting is plot. Having your apartment eaten by a wrecking ball... is something else entirely. Harold, you don't control your fate.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Penny Escher: I'm Penny Escher. I'm the assistant your publishers hired.
Kay Eiffel: The spy.
Penny Escher: The assistant. I provide the same services as a secretary.
Kay Eiffel: I don't need a secretary.
Penny Escher: Then I will have to find some other way of occupying my time.

Kay Eiffel: Like watching me like a vulture in case I get distracted, because they, the publishers, think I have writer's block, isn't that right?
Penny Escher: Do you have writer's block?
[Kay doesn't answer]

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Kay Eiffel: [narrating] Why was Harold talking to this man? This man was an idiot.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Professor Jules Hilbert: [walking to pool] Some plots are moved forward by external events and crises. Others are moved forward by the characters themselves. If I go through that door, the plot continues. The story of me through the door. If I stay here the plot can't move forward, the story ends. Also if I stay here, I'm late.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Professor Jules Hilbert: You dislike your work?
Harold Crick: Yes.
Professor Jules Hilbert: Well, not the most insightful voice in the world, is it? First thing on the list of what Americans say they hate: work; second, traffic; third, missing socks. See what I'm saying?

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Kay Eiffel: ...It came to me.
Penny Escher: How?
Kay Eiffel: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing it came inexplicably and without method.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Dr. Mittag-Leffler: Mr. Crick, you have a voice speaking to you.
Harold Crick: No, not to me - about me. I'm somehow involved in some sort of story, like I'm a character in my own life. But, the problem is that the voice comes and goes, like there are other parts of the story not being told to me. And I need to find out what those other parts are before

it's too late.
Dr. Mittag-Leffler: Before the story concludes with your death.
Harold Crick: Yes.
Dr. Mittag-Leffler: [clears throat] Mr. Crick, I hate to sound like a broken record, but that's schizophrenia.
Harold Crick: You don't sound like a broken record, but, it's just, not schizophrenia.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Harold Crick: What if what I said was true? Hypothetically speaking, if I was part of a story, a narrative... even if it was only in my own mind... what would you suggest that I do?
Dr. Mittag-Leffler: I would suggest you take prescribed medication.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Penny Escher: [sitting on bench under an umbrella] May I ask what we're doing out here?
Kay Eiffel: [sitting next to Penny without an umbrella] We're imagining car wrecks.
Penny Escher: I see. And we can't imagine car wrecks inside?
Kay Eiffel: No. Did you know that 41 percent of accidents occur in times of

inclement weather?
Penny Escher: So do 90 percent of pneumonia cases.
Kay Eiffel: Really? Pneumonia. That's an interesting way to die. But how would Harold catch pneumonia?
Penny Escher: Have you written anything new today?
Kay Eiffel: No.
Penny Escher: Did you read the poems I

suggested, or make a list of words, buy new typing paper, anything?
Kay Eiffel: No, none of it.
Penny Escher: Sitting in the rain won't write books.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

[to Harold during their first meeting]
Ana Pascal: Get bent, Tax Man!
[gets everyone else in the bakery to boo Harold]

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Kay Eiffel: Excuse me, where are the dying people? Most of these people are sick or injured - Which is great, don't get me wrong. But they're gonna get better, which doesn't really help me. Is there any way to see the people who aren't going to get better?
Head ER Nurse: Excuse me?
Kay Eiffel: I'd like to see, if at all possible, the

ones who aren't going to make it. You know, the dead-for-sure ones.
Head ER Nurse: I'm sorry, are you suffering from anything?
Kay Eiffel: [shrugs] Just writer's block.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

Karen Eiffel: As Harold took a bite of Bavarian Sugar Cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian Sugar Cookies, and fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin...

or a kind and loving gesture... or a subtle encouragement... or a loving embrace... or an offer of comfort... not to mention hospital gurneys... and nose plugs... and uneaten Danish... and soft-spoken secrets... and Fender Stratocasters... and maybe, the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only

accessorize our days, are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And so it was a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

[standing outside Ana's bakery, Harold starts to lose it]
Kay Eiffel: Harold suddenly found himself beleaguered and exasperated, standing outside the bakery...
Harold Crick: [screaming upwards] Shut up!
Kay Eiffel: ...cursing the heavens in futility.
Harold Crick: [continuing screaming] No I'm not! I'm

cursing you, you stupid voice! So shut up and leave me alone!

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

[Harold meets Jules Hilbert for the first time]
Professor Jules Hilbert: So, you're the young gentleman who called me about the narrator?
Harold Crick: Yes.
Professor Jules Hilbert: Says you're gonna die.
Harold Crick: Uh, yes.
Professor Jules Hilbert: Uh-huh. How long has it

given you to live?
Harold Crick: I don't know.
Professor Jules Hilbert: Dramatic irony. It'll fuck you every time.

Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger Than Fiction

[Harold is talking with a coworker, Dave, in the IRS archives]
Harold Crick: Dave, I'm being followed.
Dave: [looks around] How are you being followed? You're not moving.
Harold Crick: It's by a voice.
Dave: What?
Dave: I'm being followed by a woman's voice.

Dave: Okay. What is she saying?
Harold Crick: She... She's narrating.
Dave: Harold. You're standing at the water cooler? What is she narrating?
Harold Crick: I... I had to stop filing. Watch. Listen, listen.
Kay Eiffel: [as Harold resumes filing, Kay's voice is heard - but only to

Harold] The sound the paper made against the folder had the same tone as a wave scraping against sand. And when Harold thought about it, he listened to enough waves every day to constitute what he imagined to be a deep and endless ocean...