Tough Love
Buffy: "Professor Lillian?"
Professor: "Buffy."
Buffy: "I'm sorry that I missed the lecture today. Was it good? Um, of course it was."
Professor: "I'm glad you like poetry, Buffy."
Buffy: "I wish I had time for it. But I just... don't right now."
Professor: "Well, maybe short poems."
Buffy: "Yeah! Like, like those, those Japanese ones that, that, um, sound like a sneeze?"
Professor: "Haiku?"
Buffy: "Right. Maybe those. A-and hopefully I'll be back next semester. When I'm more myself again."
Ben: "I haven't been here... I haven't been here in two weeks. There's an explanation for this. Which... I... can't exactly give you. I - can I just tell you it's not my fault?"
Doctor: "Sure. You can also tell me that the dog ate your homework, or maybe eating Twinkies made you do it, or... maybe yeah, that there's really a wicked demonic creature living inside you that takes control of your body and forces you to do its bidding. Take responsibility for your actions, Ben!"
Ben: "No. No. Not here. Not now, please. I'm Ben. I'm Ben. I'm Ben."
Glory: "I'm hungry."
Buffy: "What about all the times I asked you how school was and you said 'fine'?"
Dawn: "Well, it was! You didn't ask if I was in it when it was fine."
Xander: "Honey. Old saying. 'A watched customer never buys'."
Anya: "They would if they were patriotic."
Xander: "Okay, I'm goin in. Patriotic?"
Anya: "Yes. I've recently come to realize there's more to me than just being human. I'm also an American."
Giles: "Yes, I suppose you are, in a manner of speaking. You were born here -- your mortal self."
Anya: "Well, that's right, foreigner. So I've been reading a lot about the good ol' us of A, embracing the extraordinarily precious ideology that's helped to shape and define it."
Willow: "Democracy?"
Anya: "Capitalism. The free market depends on the profitable exchange of goods for currency. It's a system of symbiotic beauty apparently lost on these old people. Look at em. Perusing the shelves. Undressing the merchandise with their eyeballs all ogle, no cash. It's not just annoying, it's unAmerican."
Giles: "Appalling. Almost as if they no longer think money can buy happiness."
Anya: "Totally unAmerican. Oh, and you know what else is unAmerican? French people."
Willow: "You don't say."
Anya: "From what I hear, they don't tip. Now, French old people? That's really the bottom of the barrel, you know?"
Xander: "Ahn, how's about we try being a bit less prejudiced, and a bit more inclusive? Not us, just you."
Anya: "Fine. I'm gonna make those fogeys buy things."
Xander: "Whatever you choose, you've got my support. Just think of me as... as your... You know, I'm searching for supportive things, and I'm coming up all bras, so... something slightly more manly, think of me as that. Seriously. Whatever you need."
Buffy: "I just don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean, she's messing up... I'm messing up... it's a mess."
Willow: "We were acting out a geometry problem, cause I read this really neat article that said kids learn math better if you, you stimulate their, uh, visual learning pattern. You know, using the right side of the brain instead of just the left? Stuff like that."
Buffy: "Uh-huh."
Willow: "So we made a triangle with our bodies, and that's whe I called Xander obtuse, and he got really grumpy and then Dawn said we were 'acute' triangel, and, well, hilarity ensued."
Willow: "Who among us can resist the allure of really funny math puns?"
Willow: "We were having good clean educational fun, and then all of a sudden it was all gloom and doom and the outlawing of human triangles."
Buffy: "It's really important that Dawn finishes her schoolwork right now."
Willow: "I know it is, and I'm a big fan of school. You know me! I'm like, 'Go school! It's your birthday!' Or somethign to that effect."
Willow: "I do so understand, it... you're stressed out."
Buffy: "I'm more than stressed out. I'm freaked out."
Buffy: "It's not like I don't have a life. I do. I have Dawn's life."
Willow: "I'd totally be blowing off classes if I were in Dawnie's shoes."
Tara: "Sweetie, you wouldn't blow off a class if your head was on fire."
Tara: "No, please. I mean, I mean, tell me if I said something wrong, otherwise I know I'll say it again. Probably often and in public."
Willow: "No, I was snippy gal. It's just... I know I can't... on some level... it's like my opinion isn't worth anything because I haven't been through... I didn't lose my mom, so I don't know."
Tara: "Well... I-I'm not the expert. I mean, I've only lost the one."
Tara: "It frightens me how powerful you're getting."
Willow: "That's a weird word."
Tara: "Getting?"
Willow: "It frightens you? I frighten you?"
Tara: "That is so not what I meant. I meant i-impresses - impressive."
Willow: "Well, I took Psych 101. I mean, I took it from an evil government scientist who was skewered by her Frankenstein-like creation before the final, but I know what a Freudian slip is."
Dawn: "Why? Why should I care about any of this?"
Buffy: "Because they'll take you away!"
Dawn: "Take me away? What do you mean?"
Buffy: "They'll take you away from me. That's what your principal told me when you weren't in the room. If I can't make you go to school, then I won't be found fit to be your legal guardian."
Dawn: "Where would I go?"
Buffy: "I don't know. Dad maybe... or foster care... I, I didn't really want to ask."
Dawn: "You could have told me that."
Buffy: "I just did."
Giles: "I hope this isn't a return. Everyone wants petrified hamsters and they're never happy with them."
Glory: "I hate being lied to. It makes me feel so betrayed."
Glory: "Think about it. You think your hand hurts? Imagine what you'd feel with my fingers wiggling in your brain. It doesn't kill you. What it does... is make you feel like you're in a noisy little dark room... naked and ashamed... and there are things in the dark that need to hurt you because you're bad... little pinching things that go in your ears... and crawl on the inside of your skull. And you know... that if the noise and the crawling would stop... that you could remember how to get out. But you never, ever will. Who... is... the key? Fine. Let's get crazy."
Xander: "Man, words cannot express how much I hate this place."
Giles: "It's dreadful."
Anya: "It's like communism."
Tara: "They kill mice."
Spike: "Hey, chin up, platelet. Don't get scared. Maybe Glory doesn't wanna kill you, maybe it's something _"
Dawn: "Worse?"
Spike: "Hey."
Dawn: "You wanna know what I'm scared of, Spike?... Me. Right now, Glory thinks Tara's the key. But I'm the key, Spike. I am. And anything that happens to Tara... is cause of me. Your bruises, your limp... that's all me too. I'm like a lightning rod for pain and hurt. And everyone around me suffers and dies. I... must be something so horrible... to cause so much pain... and evil."
Spike: "Rot."
Dawn: "What do you know?"
Spike: "I'm a vampire. I know somethin about evil. You're not evil."
Dawn: "Maybe... I'm not evil. But I don't think I can be good."
Spike: "Well, I'm not good, and I'm okay."
Tara: "Don't! Please don't with that treachery! I told the cat. And now I beg my mother sitting all alone."
Willow: "I don't think I can sleep without her."
Anya: "You can sleep with me. Well, now that came out a lot more lesbian than it sounded in my head."
Glory: "Did anybody order an apocalypse?"
Spike: "So she's not gonna do anything rash then."
Buffy: "No. I explained that there was no point."
Spike: "Mm-hmm."
Buffy: "What?"
Spike: "You - so you're saying that a... powerful and mightly pissed-off witch... was plannin on going and spilling herself a few pints of god blood until you, what, 'explained'?"
Buffy: "You think she'd... no. I told Willow it would be like suicide."
Spike: "I'd do it. Right person. Person I loved. I'd do it."
Buffy: "Eggplant, that's me... salami with... ew, peanut butter? Dawn."
Dawn: "Yeah, like eggplant is normal. It's what, half egg, half plant? Cause that's just unnatural."
Tara: "Oh, look at that, look at that. The light! Oh, it's so pure! Such pure green energy! Oh, it's so beautiful."