A janitor at MIT, Will Hunting has a gift for math and chemistry that can take him light-years beyond his blue-collar roots, but he doesn’t realize his potential and can’t even imagine leaving his childhood Boston South End neighborhood, his construction job, or his best friend. To complicate matters, several strangers enter the equation: a brilliant math professor who discovers, even envies, Will’s gifts, an empathetic shrink who identifies with Will’s blue-collar roots, and a beautiful, gifted pre-med student who shows him, for the first time in his life, the possibility of love.
Here are some of the most memorable quotes from Good Will Hunting.
Sean: Do you have a soul mate?
Will: Define that.
Sean: Someone you can relate to, someone who opens things up for you.
Will: Sure, I got plenty.
Sean: Well, name them.
Will: Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Frost, O’Conner…
Sean: Well that’s great. They’re all dead.
Will: Not to me, they’re not.
Sean: You can’t have a lot of dialogue with them.
Will: Not without a heater and some serious smelling salts.
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Will: Do you like apples?
Clark: Yeah.
Will: Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples?
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Chuckie: Look – you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way. In twenty years, if you’re still livin’ here, comin’ over to my house to watch the Patriots games, still workin’ construction, I’ll f***in’ kill you. That’s not a threat; now, that’s a fact. I’ll f***n’ kill you.
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Will: [Sean is going through Will’s profile. Inside we see are pictures of Will after brutal assaults by his foster parents] You ever have any, uh, experience with that?
Sean: Twenty years of counseling, I’ve seen some pretty awful s**t.
Will: No. I mean, have you ever had any experience with that?
Sean: Personally? Yeah. Yeah I have.
[Sean looks away for a moment]
Sean: I’m sure it ain’t good.
Will: My father was an alcoholic. Mean f***in’ drunk. Used to come home hammered, looking to whale on someone. So I had to provoke him, so he wouldn’t go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings…
Will: He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, “Choose.
Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt there.
Will: I used to go with the wrench.
Sean: Why?
Will: Cause f*** him, that’s why.
Sean: Your foster father?
Will: Yeah.
[pause]
Will: So what does it say? Will has an attachment disorder? Fear of abandonment? Is that why I broke up with Skylar?
Sean: Didn’t know you had. Wanna talk about it?
[Will shakes his head, stares off]
Sean: Will, you see this, all this s**t?
[Holds up the file, and drops it on his desk]
Sean: It’s not your fault.
Will: [Softly, still staring off] I know…
Sean: No you don’t. It’s not your fault.
Will: [Serious] I know.
Sean: No. Listen to me son. It’s not your fault.
Will: I know that.
Sean: It’s not your fault.
[Will is silent, eyes closed]
Sean: It’s not your fault.
Will: [Will’s eyes open, misty already] Don’t f*** with me Sean. Not you.
Sean: It’s not your fault.
[Will shoves Sean back, and then, hands trembling, buries his face in his hands. Will begins sobbing. Sean puts his hands on Will’s shoulders, and Will grabs him and holds him close, crying]
Will: Oh my God! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry Sean!
[Will continues sobbing in Sean’s arms]
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Skylar: Maybe we could go out for coffee sometime?
Will: Great, or maybe we could go somewhere and just eat a bunch of caramels.
Skylar: What?
Will: When you think about it, it’s just as arbitrary as drinking coffee.
Skylar: [laughs] Okay, sounds good.
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Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano, and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals, and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can’t play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my o-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right. Well, I mean when it came to stuff like that… I could always just play.
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Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna staht doin some thinkin on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don’t do that. And Two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a f***in education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library
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Lambeau: Most days I wish I’d never met you ’cause then I could sleep at night. I didn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there was someone like you out there. I didn’t have to watch you throw it all away.
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Sean: You’re not perfect, sport, and let me save you the suspense: this girl you’ve met, she’s not perfect either. But the question is whether or not you’re perfect for each other.
