You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen this movie. But I’ve got some thoughts on several of these quotes, so I might as well offer them up for consideration.

“If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything.”

I’ve always hated this one, too. “Standing for something” is about courage of conviction. “Falling for anything” is about gullibility. They have nothing to do with one another.

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.”

This is one that actually strikes me as being much more reasonable 20 years ago. So maybe it made sense then, but it doesn’t now.

Twenty years ago, dreaming big really meant dreaming big. It meant dreaming of levels of success that can, in fact, be a little scary.

In today’s economy? Dreaming big, for me, just means someday being able to pay off my student loans.

“I love him for the man he wants to be, and I love him for the man he almost is.”

Yes, please, let’s put loving someone that doesn’t exist and constantly wanting a person to change up on a giant silver screen without even a hint of irony and convey the message that it’s a perfectly reasonable tenet of desire.

Now, as I said, I haven’t seen the film. So I’m working without context here, and maybe the context proves you right, but to me the quote doesn’t sound that bad.

I agree 100% that it’s a bad idea to go into a relationship hoping the other person will change, and if the quote was “I love him for the man I want him to be…” then I’d be first in line to criticize it, too.

But the quote is, “I love him for the man he wants to be…” and that doesn’t seem nearly as bad.

“You had me at hello.”

Yep, this one infuriates me, too. I’m not a big believer in love at first sight.

“You complete me.”

This line implies we are all incomplete, from birth to coupledom. You guys…no. We are not incomplete, we are not missing something that we can only get from another person…

Well, that’s certainly a nice sentiment, and I’d like to believe it’s true. But as someone who has been single for a while, it’s not at all how I feel. I certainly feel like I have a large person-sized hole in me.