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Inventing the Abbotts

Inventing the Abbotts quotes

33 total quotes

Major cast




View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: Jacey pretended to care for Alice so well, the illusion became so complete that even he was fooled.
View Quote [Jacey talks about Doug's artificial sideburns.]
Jacey Holt: You look like a clown. He looks like a clown, mom, and he doesn't even know it. I thought you weren't going to the party.
Doug Holt: I changed my mind.
Helen Holt: Doug, you do realize that you maybe the only person in this party with artificial sideburns.
View Quote [first lines]
Narrator/Older Doug: The end of my innocence and childhood began in 1957. It is remarkable to me now just how little I knew then about the people around me. It took me years to figure out exactly what the truth was, especially given my brother's knack at inventing himself. My mother once told me that if the Abbotts didn't exist, my brother wouldn't have to invent them.
View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: Everything Jacey wanted in life, the Abbotts already had: their cars, money, country clubs. But in the beginning, more than anything else, he wanted Eleanor Abbott. I'd witnessed enough of my brother's social agony to resolve early on. I would never let the Abbotts matter to me.
View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: I had always thought of Eleanor Abbott as just another stuck-up rich girl, a flirt, a tease. But she proved to be a bigger riddle than I ever was. Jacey and I never talked about that thing with Eleanor in the garage, but Jacey never bragged about his conquests. When he went off to college that fall, I didn't feel particularly sad, I felt free.
View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: My brother was more successful at reinventing himself than I was. Jacey's parties at the University of Pennsylvania were the hippest ones around. And even though he had a major in architecture, he seriously minored in beautiful coeds.
View Quote Coed: You know, I'm engaged.
Jacey Holt: So am I.
Coed: You are?
Jacey Holt: Sure, I'm engaged in conversation with you
Narrator/Older Doug: I was in awe of his success with women. Just the thought of Eleanor Abbott conjured up images of absolute debauchery in my mind. After a while, I didn't see Jacey lying beneath her on the old sofa in the garage, I saw me.
View Quote Pamela Abbott: Look, I'm not rich. My father is. And I didn't pick my father. And if I had a choice between having tons of money and having another father, I'd be absolutely delighted to be poor. But unfortunately, life is just not a cafeteria.
Doug Holt: Life is not a cafeteria?
Pamela Abbott: You know what I mean.
View Quote Lloyd Abbott: That bet was your father's idea. And I never meant your mother any harm. I would have done anything for her, anything. I loved her. So, what do you want?
Doug Holt: I want to find Pam. I want you to tell me where she is.
View Quote Pamela Abbott: How can you ever forgive me?
Doug Holt: You always love me no matter what I did, right?
Pamela Abbott: Yeah.
Doug Holt: Maybe that's how I love you. No matter what. It's the best kind of love, you know?
View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: Although I share Jacey's Abbott interest in the opposite sex, I obviously lacked his consummate skills. When Jacey came home that summer, he picked up right where he left off with Eleanor, and she was more than eager to pick up right where she left off with him.
View Quote [Lloyd catches Eleanor walking with Jacey.]
Eleanor Abbott: Hi, daddy.
Lloyd Abbott: What are you doing out here?
Eleanor Abbott: ****ing Jacey.
Lloyd Abbott: Get in the car.
View Quote Joan Abbott: Jacey needs to be disciplined.
Helen Holt: I don't think that's neccesary.
Joan Abbott: Well if I were you, I'd talk to him, and--.
Helen Holt: No, Joan, I'm not going to do that. If you've got something to say to my son, you're going to have to say it to him yourself.
Joan Abbott: I just thought you would like to know what your son has done.
Helen Holt: And why on Earth should I believe anything you say, Joan.
View Quote Narrator/Older Doug: That visit from Joan Abbott not only marked the end of Jacey's affair with Eleanor, but also the end of Eleanor Abbott herself. She disappeared from Haley, vanished or banished, no one knew for certain. But life with the Abbotts went on without her.
View Quote Pamela Abbott: You don't know my father, you don't know how he is about Jacey. He blames him for everything that happened with Eleanor.
Doug Holt: Look, Eleanor flirts with a lot of guys. It's not Jacey's fault you dad kicked her out.
Pamela Abbott: He didn't kick her out, he sent her off to some goddamned nuthouse. He just up and shipped her off to some clinic; she was consigned.
Doug Holt: Wait, I thought you said that she's in Chicago.
Pamela Abbott: Well, she is now, they let her out like a month ago.