Kate and her actor brother live in N.Y. in the 21st Century. Her ex-boyfriend, Stuart, lives above her apartment. Stuart finds a space near the Brooklyn Bridge where there is a gap in time.... See full summary »

Stuart: It is no more crazy than a dog finding a rainbow. Dogs are colourblind, Gretchen. They don't see colour. Just like we don't see time. We can feel it, we can feel it passing, but we can't see it. It's just like a blur. It's like we're riding in a supersonic train and the world is just blowing by, but imagine if we could stop that train, eh, Gretchen? Imagine if we could stop that train, get out, look around, and see time for what it really is? A universe, a world, a thing as unimaginable as colour to a dog, and as real, as tangible as that chair you're sitting in. Now if we could see it like that, really look at it, then maybe we could see the flaws as well as the form. And that's it; it's that simple. That's all I discovered. I'm just a... a guy who saw a crack in a chair that no one else could see. I'm that dog who saw a rainbow, only none of the other dogs believed me.
Gretchen: I believe you.
Kate: She was a real romantic, my mom. When, when Prince Charles and Lady Di got married, she had a party, she made crumpets and jam. It was like a Super Bowl party, but for moms. She cried for a week.
Leopold: I don't know the story of Prince Charles and Lady Di.
Kate: Oh, you don't want to. It's a cautionary tale, further proof.
Leopold: Of what?
Kate: You can't live a fairy tale.
Charlie: [about the dishwasher] And you push this button. Word to the wise: don't press that till she wakes up, so she sees you doing it.
Leopold: How clever. The proverbial tree in the woods.
Charlie: If a man washes a dish, and no one sees it...
Charlie, Leopold:
Charlie: Right.
[Talking to himself]
Leopold: Ah Miss Blaine, you dance like a herd of cattle. You are a rare woman who lights up a room simply by leaving it!
Charlie: Don't you think it's time you told me who you are. I mean, don't get me wrong, doing the Duke thing with you 24/7 is a blast, but really. Who are you?
Leopold: [after a pause, simply] I'm the man that loves your sister.
Kate: I'm not very good with men.
Leopold: Perhaps you haven't found the right one.
Kate: Maybe. Or, uh... maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.
[Has chased and cornered a bag snatcher, while on horseback]
Leopold: I warn you scoundrel, I was trained at the King's Academy and schooled in weaponry by the palace guard. You stand no chance. When you run, I shall ride, when you stop, the steel of this strap shall be lodged in your brain.
[bag snatcher throws down the bag an flees, onlookers applaud]
Kate: I don't want it to be Sunday. I want more of this, more 1876.
Kate: People might think I'm brave, but I'm not.
Leopold: [quoting Thucydides] "The brave are simply those with the clearest vision of what is before them - glory and danger alike - and, notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
Uncle Millard: It has always been your greatest misfortune, nephew, that you so thoroughly amuse yourself with the sound of your own voice.
Leopold: In a life as stagnant as mine, that I can amuse myself at all is an evolutionary miracle.
Leopold: Some feel that to court a woman in one's employ is nothing more than a serpentine effort to transform a lady into a whore.
Leopold: Marriage is the promise of eternal love. As a man of honor I cannot promise eternally what I've never felt momentarily.
[last lines]
Leopold: Well, let us proceed. Please raise your glasses so we may toast to my bride-to-be, the woman whose welfare and happiness shall be my solemn duty to maintain. The future Duchess of Albany...
[Kate catches his eye]
Leopold: Kate McKay. Of the McKays of...?
Kate: Massapequa.
Leopold: Massapequa.
[to his uncle's confusion, Leopold goes to Kate]
Kate: I love you.
Leopold: I love you.
[They kiss, then begin to dance]
[while at dinner, JJ has been quoting Boheme to Kate. As Leopold leaves, he decides to correct JJ's errors]
Leopold: By the way. There is no "Andre" in Boheme. It's Rodolfo. And though it takes place in France, it is rarely played in French as it is written in Italian. Goodnight, Kate.
[he leaves. Charlie grins at JJ and Kate and then follows]
Roebling: Behold, rising before you, the greatest erection on the continent... the greatest erection of the age... the greatest erection on the planet!
Leopold: [Leopold writes an apology letter to Kate] Dearest Katherine... I behaved as an imbecile last night,I animated in part by drink, in part by your beauty,and in part by my own foolish pride and for that I am profoundly sorry. Please accept as a gesture of apology, a private dinner on the roof top tonight at 8 O'Clock .
Leopold: [of the Brooklyn Bridge] Good Lord, it still stands. The world has changed all around it, but Roebling's erection still stands! Ha, ha!
[to nearest bystander]
Leopold: That, my friend, is a miracle!
Sanitation Worker: What?
Leopold: It's a miracle, man!
Sanitation Worker: It's a bridge.
Kate: And... it's a great thing to get what you want. It's a really good thing unless what you thought you wanted wasn't really what you wanted... because what you really wanted you couldn't imagine or you didn't think it was possible but what if someone came along who knew exactly what you wanted without asking they just knew... like they could hear your heart beating or listen to your thoughts and what if they were sure of themselves and they didn't have to take a poll and they loved you... but you hesitated and I... uh... I have to go... I'm sorry but... I have to go!
Kate: Why are you standing?
Leopold: I am accustomed to stand when a lady leaves the table.
[So, Charlie gets up]
Stuart: Theoretically, if you go to the past in the future, then your future lies in the past. This is a picture of you in the future - in the past.
[Kate finds a letter Darci has written in response to Leopold's invitation to dinner]
Kate: Darci? What is this?
Darci: It's a reply to Leopold's invitation... You're going, right?
Kate: I haven't decided yet.
Darci: Oh, you haven't decided if you want to have dinner on the rooftop with a duke?
Kate: Who thinks he's from 1876! NO. And I would appreciate it if...
Darci: Oh come *on*! I don't know what this guy did to piss you off, but that is the best apology letter in the history of mankind. Just sign it, Kate! It's four-thirty, we'll fax it.
[the phone rings and Darci picks it up, flustered]
Darci: Kate McKay's office.
[Darci slams the phone back down and starts to cry]
Darci: They hung up!
Leopold: Otis always told me love is a leap. Lamentably, I was never inspired to jump.
Charlie: You want to vex my sister!
[Talking on the phone]
Stuart: Are you sitting down?
Kate: [standing] Yes.
Stuart: No, you're not.
Kate: Yes, I am.
Stuart: No, you're not.
Kate: Ye...
[Kate sits down in chair with a thud]
Kate: Okay.
Stuart: I found it.
Kate: What did you find?
Stuart: The portal. A crack in the fabric of time. It was over the East River, Kate, just where I said it would be.
Kate: You found the portal?
Stuart: A portal into April 28th, 1876. I jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and took a walk in 1876 today. I followed the Duke of Albany around old New York. Are you listening?
Kate: Avidly.
Stuart: This here's the twist, Kate. Here's the kicker.
Kate: What's the kicker?
Stuart: [whispering] He followed me home.
Leopold: You require a chaperone. His intentions are obvious.
Kate: I'm alone with you, do I need a chaperone?
Leopold: We are not courting, Kate. If we were, as a man of honour, I would have informed you of my intentions in writing.
Kate: You're tucking me in.
Leopold: Yes.
Kate: You're my Otis.
Leopold: Yes, Your Grace.
Charlie: Victorian dude, who has never seen a Met's game, watching TV. Scene: "I say, are those little people in that box of phosphors. Crikey, I believe it is. This game is more beguiling than cricket"
Kate: I've been paying dues all of my life. And I'm tired, and I need a rest, and if I have to peddle a little pond scum to get one, then so be it.
Kate: Stuart, you can tell me you picked up a transvestite in Times Square. I don't care!
Stuart: You of all people should understand, you're a scientist. I mean, you invented the elevator.
Leopold: What is an elevator? What are you talking... Where the hell am I?
Stuart: I told you, you haven't actually gone anywhere, you're still in New York.
Leopold: That sir, is not New York!
Kate: I'm afraid it is!
Stuart: All this time I thought that I had pretxeled fate and that it had to be untwisted, but what I had never considered is that the whole thing *is* a pretzel. A beautiful 4D pretzel of kismetic inevitability.
Kate: Sunday is the day before the day I work, so it gets poisoned.
Charlie: [Charlie, obviously drunk, is entertaining his friends with stories from acting camp] He started squirting everybody with this turkey baster and screaming "Un-sex me! Un-sex me!"
Dennis: Wasn't Willem Dafoe in that group?
Charlie: Yeah, and he went on to talk about how a lot of secrets are hidden in people's basements...
Leopold: Like the Louvre?
[everybody pauses and looks at Leo]
Leopold: I'm sorry, Charles, you were saying?
Patrice: What about the Louvre?
Monica: Yeah, tell us what you were going to say.
Leopold: Well, not all of the artwork in the Louvre is on the walls. Some is in the basement.
Patrice: You've been in the basement of the Louvre?
Leopold: Why, yes!
Patrice: I was a art history major at Vassar!
Leopold: Ahhhh...
[to Charlie]
Leopold: Is it your habit sir, to simply enter a conversation without introduction?
Leopold: I feel as though we've met on a previous occasion.
Kate: Well Lionel, seeing as how I've never met any of Stuart's friends, not even sure he has any, I don't think that's possible.
[on phone]
Kate: My palm pilot! You still have it.
Stuart: Kate, it's one in the morning.
Kate: And clearly, you're awake, so what is the infraction?
[From Director's Cut]
Kate: We make cereal crunchier. We make boring movies shorter. We made Smucker's get the seeds out of their jam. We did that. As far as I'm concerned, we're heroes.
Leopold: Where I come from the meal is the result of reflection and study. Menus are prepared in advance, timed to perfection. It is said that without the culinary arts, the crudeness of reality would be unbearable.
Leopold: Are you suggesting madam that there exists a law compelling a gentleman to lay hold of canine bowel movements?
Police Officer: I'm suggesting that you pick the poop up.
Kate: Can you go away? Can you just go away? Can you go away?
Leopold: Im sorry if I have offended you in anyway...
Kate: So clearly, you must be a man out of time or Sergeant Pepper!
Kate: Stuart, Can you tell me in short, complete sentences featuring no words over two syllables why exactly I am in these pictures?
Stuart: Probably not.
Kate: Try!
Kate: You're sucking the life out of my condiments!
Leopold: What has happened to the world? You have every convenience and comfort, yet no time for integrity.
[first lines]
Roebling: Time. Time, it has been proposed, is the fourth dimension. And yet, for mortal man, time has no dimension at all. We are like horses with blinders, seeing only what lies before us. Forever guessing the future and fabricating the past.
Leopold: [to Charlie] You're intoxicated. We should retire.
Charlie: We have a saying in the McKay house: "You shake and shake the ketchup bottle, none will come, and then a lot'll."
Leopold: That thing is a damned hazard!
Kate: It's just a toaster!
Leopold: Well, insertion of bread into that so-called toaster produces no toast at all, merely warm bread! Inserting the bread twice produces charcoal. So, clearly, to make proper toast it requires one and a half insertions, which is something for which the apparatus doesn't begin to allow! One assumes that when the General of Electric built it, he might have tried using it. One assumes the General might take pride in his creations instead of just foisting them on an unsuspecting public.
Kate: You know something? Nobody gives a rat's ass that you have to push the toast down twice. You know why? Because everybody pushes their toast down twice!
Leopold: Not where I come from.
Kate: Oh, right. Where you come from, toast is the result of reflection and study!
Leopold: Ah yes, you mock me. But perhaps one day when you've awoken from a pleasant slumber to the scent of a warm brioche smothered in marmalade and fresh creamery butter, you'll understand that life is not solely composed of tasks, but tastes.
Kate: [mesmerized] Say that again.
[Leopold and Charlie leave the club. Charlie is fuming because Leopold has enthralled Patrice, Charlie's love interest]
Charlie: And I would have gotten her number if you hadn't turned the evening into a guided tour of the Louvre!
Leopold: My apologies.
Charlie: Let's get one thing straight. Patrice, she thought you were cute - probably gay, and cute - and cute, Leo, that's just the kiss of death.
Leopold: Perhaps.
Charlie: Perhaps? Certainly!
Leopold: [produces a napkin] I believe this is her number.
[Charlie takes it from him in disbelief]
Leopold: As I see it, Patrice has not an inkling of your affections, and it's no wonder. You, Charles, are a merry-andrew.
Charlie: A what?
Leopold: Everything plays a farce to you. Women respond to sincerity. No-one wants to be romanced by a buffoon. Now, that number rings her.
Charlie: Yes?
Leopold: So ring her tomorrow.
Charlie: I can't. She gave the number to you.
Leopold: Only because I told her of your affections.
Charlie: [taken aback] Wha - what did you say?
Leopold: Merely that you admired her, but you were hesitant to make an overture, as you'd been told she was courting another.
Charlie: Shit... that's good! Well, what did she say?
Leopold: She handed me the napkin.
[Charlie rushes under a lit store window to read the napkin, and starts dialing his cell phone]
Leopold: Charles, it's quite late.
Charlie: No, no, she won't be home yet. I get her machine and leave a message, ball's in her court.
Leopold: You're ladling calculation upon comedy. The point is, to keep the ball in *your* court.
Charlie: [slaps his phone shut] You're right! You're right!
Stuart: Women have changed since your time, Leo. They've become dangerous!
Kate: I wasted the best years of my life on you.
Stuart: Those were your best years?
Kate: Are you for real?
Leopold: I believe so.
Kate: Look, this is not complex. He gave me the Palm Pilot, he just forgot the pointy thing.
Leopold: I've been warned about you.
Kate: Oh. And what, pray tell, did the great disappointment say?
Stuart: Maybe the reason I was your guy was so I could help you find your guy.
Kate: I'm not the protagonist in a major motion picture.