The Secret of My Success Movie Quotes
[after sex]
Brantley Foster
Can I make a personal observation?
Vera Prescott
Um, anything but the thighs.
Brantley Foster
You know, somebody sold you a bill of goods and convinced you you had to be 21 forever. That's bullshit. I think you're terrific; I think the only thing wrong with you is your husband is a jerk. You're beautiful, you're intelligent, you're sensuous...
Vera Prescott
Say that again!
Brantley Foster
Which part?
Vera Prescott
All of it!
[sounds of car]
Vera Prescott
Oh, no.
Brantley Foster
What, what is it?
Vera Prescott
It's the jerk.
[Brantley rushes to the window]
Vera Prescott
My husband.
Brantley Foster
My uncle!
Vera Prescott
Your what?
Brantley Foster
Oh God, that makes you...
Vera Prescott
Auntie Vera?
Brantley Foster
Oh! God!
[Vera laughs]
Brantley Foster
Oh God, oh God, oh God! What's my mother going to say? I've disgraced my whole family!
Vera Prescott
Oh, the hell you did!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Because you keep saying such stupid things.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
No, the question is how many people *did* you sleep with in order to get to the top?
[Christy throws a vase at Brantley, smashing it]
Vera Prescott
That was a very expensive vase, you BITCH!
Christy Wills
*SHUT UP*! What I did was my business, not yours!
Brantley Foster
No, you mean it was *company business*!
Brantley Foster
I'll tell you something, sweetheart. You're very good at your job.
[Brantley leaves, Christy starts crying]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[after reviewing Brantley's (faked) résumé]
Mrs. Meacham
Outstanding! Outstanding!
Brantley Foster
You're not going to tell me I have too much experience, are you?
Mrs. Meacham
Certainly not - you're perfect for the job.
Brantley Foster
Great!
Mrs. Meacham
Except...
Brantley Foster
No! No exceptions! I want this job, I need it, I can do it. Everywhere I've been today there's always been something wrong, too young, too old, too short, too tall. Whatever the exception is, I can fix it. I can be older, I can be taller, I can be anything.
Mrs. Meacham
Can you be a minority woman?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Unnamed employer
I'm sorry, Mister...
Brantley Foster
Foster.
Unnamed employer
I'm sorry, Mr. Foster. We need someone with experience.
Brantley Foster
But how can I get any experience until I get a job that GIVES me experience?
Unnamed employer
If we gave you a job just to give you experience, you'd take that experience and get a better job. Then that experience would benefit someone else.
Brantley Foster
Yeah, but I was trained in college to handle a job like this, so in a sense I already have experience.
Unnamed employer
What you've got is college experience, not the practical, hard-nosed business experience we're looking for. If you'd joined our training program out of high-school, you'd be qualified for this job now.
Brantley Foster
Then why did I go to college?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Howard Prescott
Let me get this straight - Brantley is Whitfield?
Brantley Foster
That's right. Brantley is Whitfield; Whitfield is Brantley.
Vera Prescott
And Christy is the bimbo! Well, now that we've all had Mouseketeer roll call, I'm just going to go call my lawyer.
Howard Prescott
[lying]
No, wait a minute. Christy is not the bimbo I was screwing around with at the office.
Christy Wills
People better stop calling me bimbo!
Howard Prescott
It was an entirely different bimbo altogether.
Vera Prescott
That's fine; how many bimbos would you say there were?
Howard Prescott
I misspoke myself. There weren't any bimbos at all.
Brantley Foster
Except Christy.
Howard Prescott
Right. No!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Fred Melrose
Hey, you look like death on a cracker, man. What happened to you?
Brantley Foster
Well, I was chased by a 200 pound dog with a mouth as big as my head. And that was the best thing that happened last night.
Fred Melrose
What was the worst thing?
Brantley Foster
Got laid.
Fred Melrose
Not sure you got your priorities straight, Brantley.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Christy Wills
Just tell me one more time what your solution is to this crisis.
Brantley Foster
We don't cut, we expand.
[the waitress, Sheila, arrives]
Sheila
I agree. Expansion is a positive reaction to the universe, while retraction, or cutting back, or pulling off, those are all negative forces. I used to be very negative, and then I took this personality workshop - my whole life turned around. Hiya, my name's Sheila. You make a good-looking couple - how long you been going together?
Brantley Foster
About 20 minutes.
Sheila
Ohhhhh, first date, huh? Good luck.
Christy Wills
No, we're business colleagues.
Sheila
Colleagues, who needs that? You should go together. You look good together. - Oh, oh, d'you want to order?
Brantley Foster
Yeah, we need to see some menus, Sheila.
Sheila
Menus! I'm sorry. - I'm studying to be an actress. I'm a much better actress than I am a waitress. Concentration, that's my big problem. I'll be right back.
Brantley Foster
Well, Sheila's in favor of expansion.
Christy Wills
We should bring her to our next executive meeting. I think Art Thomas would like her a lot.
Brantley Foster
Sheila is also in favor of us seeing each other.
Christy Wills
Yes, well, Sheila is clearly a nut.
Sheila
[from across the room]
I heard that! You should try to be more positive with your life, or you're gonna wind up miserable.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
What's up? You seem kind of upset.
Christy Wills
I hate men.
Brantley Foster
Well! Glad I'm not one of 'em.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
I'm going to introduce you to the most powerful money men in New York, and if you can do to them what you've done to me...
Brantley Foster
I can't do that!
Vera Prescott
I mean bowl them over, darling! You're irresistible when you turn on that boyish charm.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Howard Prescott
What you are doing in here?
Vera Prescott
[half naked]
Feeling romantic...
Howard Prescott
Oh. What's for dinner?
Vera Prescott
Ohh, Howard! You really know how to sweep a girl back onto her feet.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
Don't worry, Brantley. I don't wanna marry you. I'm already married. I just wanna love you. Love! I don't mean love as in two star-crossed virginettes running through the clover. Nothing icky like that. I'm a practical woman. You should be a practical young man. If you would just relax and let me, I could steer you through these shark-infested waters of this stupid company just like I steered Howard.
Brantley Foster
Look, I like you, I really like you, but I gotta tell you, I have become seriously and emotionally involved with someone who isn't my aunt.
Vera Prescott
I forgive you, Brantley.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
Why haven't I met you before?
Fred Melrose
Maybe you ain't been hangin' out in the mailroom.
Vera Prescott
Oooh, the "male room." I like that sound!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Please God, help me get out of this. I swear I'll go all over the world telling people not to screw the boss's wife.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster aka Carlton Whitfield
Okay, so you don't eat lunch. Do you eat dinner?
Christy Wills
Occasionally.
Christy Wills
Booked.
Brantley Foster aka Carlton Whitfield
Tomorrow night?
Christy Wills
Booked.
Brantley Foster aka Carlton Whitfield
All right, but don't beg, okay? It's embarrassing.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Jean
I was having fun on this job! You had all this energy, and all these crazy ideas... and you kept taking your pants off.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
[reading mail while sorting]
Some of this stuff doesn't make any sense. They send requisitions through two departments to get procurements for a third. What kind of thinking is that?
Fred Melrose
That's suit thinking. Something happens to a man when he puts on a necktie. Cuts off all the oxygen to his brain.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[on entering his newly rented apartment]
Brantley Foster
All right, listen up. If there are any bugs in here, or rats, or anything that has more legs than I do, you just stay on your side of the room, okay? I'll stay on mine. I should warn you, I'm packing an iron.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Grace Foster
Take this. It's Uncle Howard's phone number in New York.
Brantley Foster
I've got an uncle in New York?
Grace Foster
My cousin Ellen married his half-sister's nephew, before she got bit by that dog and died.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[security arrives, having been called by Art Thomas at Howard Prescott's order]
Vera Prescott
Ah, gentlemen, just in time. Mr . Prescott and his aide have disrupted an important business meeting. Would you please escort them out of the building?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
[into phone]
This is the third weekend in a row he's found an excuse not to come to the country... No, I don't know, but knowing him it's probably some teenage airhead from the steno pool. Hmph. The last one I caught him with was so dumb, she thought "dictation" was some kind of S&M trip.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
We have a problem.
Vera Prescott
What?
Brantley Foster
It's your husband: he's my boss.
Vera Prescott
O-oh, him. We won't tell him. Besides, Howard's working late tonight - on whom, I have no idea.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Christy Wills
You want me to spy on him?
Howard Prescott
No, I don't want you to spy on him. I want you to get to be friends with him, and then rifle through his papers and tell me what you find.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Whoa, whoa, listen, I'm going to need your help, both of you.
Fred Melrose
Is it something I could get fired for?
Brantley Foster
Absolutely.
Fred Melrose
I like it!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Fred Melrose
Something happens to a man when he puts on a necktie. It cuts off all the circulation to his brain.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
At least I didn't sleep with the boss.
Christy Wills
No, you slept with the boss's wife!
Brantley Foster
She seduced me!
Christy Wills
He seduced ME! What's the difference?
Brantley Foster
I couldn't help it. You went willingly.
Christy Wills
I suppose *you* were tied up in chains.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Davidson, tell him! You wrote a memo to Mr. Thomas here explaining exactly what I'm talking about.
Davidson
[embarrassed]
Well, h-how did you know I wrote that memo?
[all the executives look at Brantley]
Brantley Foster
How did I know you wrote that memo? Who else could write that memo, Davidson? That memo was famous. That memo was a masterpiece. Clear, concise, to the point. That was the best damn memo I ever read! In fact, that memo wasn't even a memo. That memo was literature.
Davidson
Well, thank you.
Brantley Foster
You're welcome.
Christy Wills
[dryly]
If you have finished your book report, I wonder, could you explain what your point is?
Brantley Foster
All right. Look, the point is, we gotta be bold.
Davidson
That's my point.
Brantley Foster
We gotta build!
[other executives agree]
Brantley Foster
We gotta expand!
Davidson
Expanding is the only way to help the situation.
Brantley Foster
We gotta make this company so damn strong, Davenport won't be able to find anyone willing to give up Pemrose stock. It'll be too damn valuable. Then we'll buy his ass out!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Grace Foster
Take this. It's uncle Howard's phone number in New York.
Brantley Foster
I've got an uncle in New York?
Grace Foster
My cousin Ellen married his half-sister's nephew before she got bit by that dog and died, but he's still kin, and kin is kin.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
I admit I felt *some* attraction towards Brantley at the beginning. But as you always told me, Howard, "Love is love, but business is business." You've run Daddy's company into the ground, Howard, and I believe these people here can bring it back to where it belongs again. So, UP Howard! Out of that chair!
Howard Prescott
Don't be ridiculous! I'm not about to resign my position!
Vera Prescott
Oh, you don't have to, Howard. You're fired!
Howard Prescott
Vera! You can't!
Vera Prescott
Oh, yes I can!
[to Davenport]
Vera Prescott
You see, Mr. Davenport, as of this afternoon *I* control 50.1% of the voting stock!
[to Art Thomas]
Vera Prescott
You too, Art! You're *history*!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[Brantley has to change from his mail-room uniform to suit and tie in the elevator, then back again. To buy time, he hits the emergency stop button on the elevator between floors. However, the elevator becomes unstuck in the middle of him changing back while he is only in his boxers and tie, so when the elevator door opens up on Jean, he poses like a bodybuilder, then sees it's her]
Brantley Foster
Hi, Jean.
[Brantley tosses her his dress pants]
Brantley Foster
Could you take those to the cleaners?
[Jean looks shocked as the elevator doors close]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[Brantley said "good morning" to an executive]
Fred Melrose
Not the suits, man! You never consort with the suits unless they consort with you first.
Brantley Foster
Wait a minute, that's ridiculous! He's a person, I'm a person. I can't say hello to him?
Fred Melrose
He's not a person, he's a suit! You're mailroom. No consorting.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[Brantley is carrying a briefcase into the mailroom]
Fred Melrose
What's in there?
Brantley Foster
My lunch.
Fred Melrose
Your lunch? In a briefcase?
Brantley Foster
Yeah. I ran out of brown bags.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[at Brantley's apartment]
Brantley Foster
Oh, God. What are you doing here?
Vera Prescott
Brantley, darling, I heard you calling me telepathically - I'm VERY psychic - so of COURSE I rushed right over.
Brantley Foster
I would've used the phone...
Vera Prescott
Mental telepathy's much more reliable.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[Vera tries to seduce Brantley at the office]
Brantley Foster
Aunt Vera, listen, since the last time we met there's been a change.
Vera Prescott
Yes... nice suit, Brantley!
[she starts undressing him; he tries to escape]
Brantley Foster
Agh! Ow! Look, what I mean to say is... Oh, Christ! I'm not free any more!
Vera Prescott
What, you're going to charge me? Oh ho, you're getting awfully cynical - does your mother know about this?
Brantley Foster
Ohh, no, I am not available.
Vera Prescott
Oh, good, you're not going to charge me.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Howard Prescott
Why are you wearing a suit?
Brantley Foster
Because of the funeral.
Howard Prescott
Whose funeral?
Brantley Foster
A friend. He died. We buried him.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
How do I get to Litchfield?
Barney Rattigan
You'll find it. Just follow the smell of money.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Christy Wills
I am not a bimbo!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Brantley Foster
Doin' this for you as much for me, Mom. All those years of college, they're gonna start payin' off.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Art Thomas
How old are you, Mr. uh, Mr. uh...
Brantley Foster
Whitfield.
Art Thomas
Yes.
Brantley Foster
24.
Art Thomas
Well, I think you should keep quiet until you're at least 25.
Davis
If I may, I don't think Mr. Whitfield's age should be an issue here.
Art Thomas
No one is interested in your opinion, Davis.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Barney Rattigan
Stay outta my way, don't use the stamp machine for personal letters and take off that stupid-lookin' tie, it looks like you shot your couch. You got any questions?
Brantley Foster
Yeah, what do I call you?
Barney Rattigan
You call me God.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
[to Brantley]
I could spend a week inside those sweet unwrinkled eyes...
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Vera Prescott
[Introducing Brantley to the money men of New York]
Roland Owens, First Federal. Very rich. We start with him. He made his money the really old-fashioned way. He inherited it. And see the man playing tennis with the elbow brace, the knee strap and the glove? Vernon S. Fletcher, Wall Street's iron man. If he likes you, you can write your own ticket, and he'll like you.
Brantley Foster
Who's the tall guy over there with all the girls?
Vera Prescott
Good eye, Brantley. Harley McMasters, First Multinational. Recently divorced. They're all dying to be the second Mrs. First Multinational.
Brantley Foster
Listen, Vera, you're not gonna tell anybody I work in the mail room, are ya?
Vera Prescott
Trust me, Brantley. I got Howard his key to the executive washroom. I can do the same thing for you.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
