Brothers & Sisters

Happy #39 to Rachel Griffiths, who was born on this day in 1968 in Melbourne, Australia. To celebrate this special day, I’ve gone back through the memorable lines round-ups for this past season-plus-nine, and picked out some choice bits of Sarah dialog. Did I miss one of your favorites? Add it in the comments.

From “Patriarchy”

Being a working mom is like being a currency that never has enough value.

Saul, this company has a serious cash flow problem, and we need to know why. And let me be very clear about this: I won’t be scolded, and I won’t be handled or spoken to like a child. So the next time you have an impulse to talk to me like that, please, take a beat and reconsider.

From “An Act of Will”

Being in synch with a man who’s not your husband, is almost as bad as not being in synch with your husband.

It’s the minimum basic requirement that a party store always have Hawaii. Children have recitals and their parents, their mothers can’t do it all and we rely on our party store to keep up their end of the bargain so that our husbands, our children don’t despise us when we come home empty handed.

From “For the Children”

Could we all stop pretending we’re perfect people, just for fourteen seconds?

(To Nora) You had Kitty to fight with, Kevin to admire, Justin to baby, Tommy to lean on. What were you thinking about me all that time?

From “Northern Exposure”

When one’s father embezzles 15 million dollars of his own company’s pension money, one can’t really afford to be sentimental.

Attic sex is much better than treehouse sex.

From “Mistakes Were Made” Part 1 and Part 2

(To Holly) You can condemn my whole family to bankruptcy to stop the truth about your life from coming out, but I can’t call you names? Are you kidding me?

Oh, come on, Justin, you don’t even carry your own credit cards. You really think you’re old enough to carry a gun?

(To Kevin) Stop saying legal things just to piss me off.

If I’m going to sleep in a rental car, I’m not going to do it sober.

I feel like Nick Nolte’s mug shot.

From “Light the Lights”

I am thinking of the business. Screwing Holly is merely a perk.

From “Valentine’s Day Massacre”

I thought the only position Republicans could commit to was missionary.

As for Holly, as long as we don’t have a gold-digging mistress division, she’s of absolutely no use to Ojai Foods or to me.

(To Nora) You spent a night in jail for smoking pot. This family should have like a bat signal for news this good.

From “Love Is Difficult”

(To Joe) We used to be something, and I don’t know what’s happened.

(To Tommy) I think you’re crazy to go into business with her, but I’ll watch your back. And I’ll drink your wine, probably all of it.

From “The Other Walker”

Intensive couples counseling didn’t work, but a good dinner should fix everything.

(To Holly) My place? Oh, you are unbelievable. It wasn’t your place to have an affair with a married man. It wasn’t your place to have my father’s child. It certainly wasn’t your place to come crawling out of the woodwork and demand a piece of our family business. But none of that stopped you, did it. You’ve done nothing but cause my family pain, so if your perfect little world has come crashing down around you because the truth has finally come out, you know what, join the damn club!

From “Bad News”

Oh, sleeping on the ground, in a musty old tent, eating rehydrated chicken pot pie doesn’t really count as time off.

(To Holly) I make it a policy never to believe a word that comes out of your mouth.

Joe, you don’t get to be the victim, you’re the one who did something wrong.

From “Grapes of Wrath”

Between work and the disaster that is my marriage, things couldn’t get any worse, except of course if Joe and I were to spend a cozy weekend at a vineyard where everybody knows that he tongued my 20-year-old half-sister.

Things have been said, I don’t know how to go back, I’m too scared to move forward, it’s like we’re stuck in relationship purgatory, which feels more like relationship hell.

(To Nora) I can’t sit around watching you run a bed and breakfast for the girl who ruined my marriage.

(To Nora) I know your marriage wasn’t perfect, but I am very glad that you guys stayed together. I had a good childhood. I grew up feeling like I was part of something whole. That’s all I wanted for my kids.

Oh, that’s just choice, Ma. You are delirious over the fact that Kitty’s going to marry a Republican she’s known for three months, but you’re prepared to write off my husband of ten years. That’s just lovely, that’s so lovely.

Where are the boundaries in this family? Listen, I can live with your good news, but you’re going to have to live with my bad news, or learn to shut up, okay?

From “Matriarchy”

Wow, it’s like the Passive-Aggressive Olympics here.

I think that tent coming down was a sign that you can’t control everything, which is kind of apropos at an engagement party. Talk about stepping into the great unknown. Two people who happen to love each other are suddenly going to transform themselves into something totally different: a family. A family, God, it’s the best and the worst thing that can ever happen to us. A lot of the times we want to kill each other … okay, most of the time. But the truth is that without each other, we would be truly lost. So I would like to propose a toast to families, to what an amazing and rare thing it is to be part of one so large and beautiful, to my sister, who I love completely, and to Robert, and everyone that you bring to the table. So to our new family that is bigger and better and greater than the sum of its parts.

From “An American Family”

You know, the really sad thing is, I loved you, Joe. I mean, I really loved you. Nothing’s ever going to make you love yourself. I wish I had known that when we met, because I wouldn’t have wasted my time.

From “States of the Union”

I am so pathetic. All I am missing is a Lionel Ritchie song and a pint of ice cream.

You know what you get for ten years of marriage? Daffodils, diamonds, or an aluminum paperweight. That’s correct, ladies and gentlemen, ten years and all you get is a stupid paperweight. And you know, the tragic thing is? I didn’t even get that.

Can we get back to Project Me? Mom, I need you. It’s why we’re here.

Mom, you just don’t get it. The whole idea of this weekend was for us to escape our problems. Instead, you’ve rubbed our faces in them, and then gone and created new ones.

From “Domestic Issues”

The only thing more depressing than not having your kids at Halloween is having to feed candy to other people’s kids. I thought the Republican debate would be more fun.

(To the judge) I’m a good mother. I know that. I may not be able to drop them off at school every day, but I am their mother, every day. You can’t punish me for trying to parent and work. I want my kids to know the joy that I get from my work, but it’s nothing compared to the joy that I get from being their mother, every day. And they know that. Please.

From “36 Hours”

(To Justin, when he wants to be left to detox alone) Who’d chain you to the radiator and poke you with a stick?

This is just the lull between hell and hell with vomiting.

From “Holy Matrimony!”

(Suggesting vows to Kitty) “Our love is like the war — out of control, endless, without reason.”

Why did I think that there would be any available men at this wedding? I just had a 20 minute conversation about quail hunting.

(To Rebecca) At the time, I told myself it was because you had a right to know. It was going to come out anyway. But you want to know the God’s honest truth? I did it to spite your mother.

_{Photo: ABC.com}

Brothers and Sisters, ABC, Rachel Griffiths, Sarah Whedon, memorable lines