Jim Douglas: What do you know? Engine stalled.
Carole: [tries to get out] How about that? Door's stuck. That's how it is with cars sometimes. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens next.
Jim Douglas: Well, as someone very wisely once said, "That's how it is with cars sometimes."
Carole: I just said that.
Jim Douglas: Oh.

Jim Douglas: Why is it the only food we have in this house is parrot food? I mean, we don't *have* a parrot.
Tennessee Steinmetz: Eat that! That's good. That's pressed kelp. That aerates your liver.

Jim Douglas: Without a real car, I'm only half a man.

Jim Douglas: You don't understand what happens, do you? They make ten thousand cars, they make them exactly the same way, and one or two of 'em turn out to be something special. Nobody knows why.

Tennessee Steinmetz: [holding a pot full of coffee while using a welding iron to fire it up, and wearing big gloves] The trick is always remember to have asbestos gloves when you make coffee this way.

Tennessee Steinmetz: [Thorndyke's car blares by, with a bear sitting in Havershaw's place in the passenger seat] Who's the guy in the fur-coat?

Tennessee Steinmetz: Herbie's all right.
Jim Douglas: Who's Herbie?
Tennessee Steinmetz: This little car. Named after my Uncle Herb. He used to box middleweight. Preliminary, mostly. Gradually, his nose got shaped more and more like to remind me of this little car. Do you mind?
Jim Douglas: [laughing with him] Whatever you say, Tennessee.

Tennessee Steinmetz: I'm not saying a mechanical thing, can't be a friend. Like when, I was broke one summer, and there was this giant claw-machine in the Sutro amusement park, and it would grab cameras and watches and drop 'em down a hole to me, and I would hock 'em and buy lunch. You followin' me?
Jim Douglas: Yeah, yeah... I think you were up on that mountaintop too long.
Tennessee Steinmetz: Contrariwise, the traffic light down the street hates my guts. I don't know why, but in the last six months, I haven't caught anything but a stop signal. And it makes me wait SIX SECONDS LONGER than anybody else; I timed it! 'Course, those things like that happen to lots of other people, too, but the other people, they don't tell no other people, because the other people, they'd say, "Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey."
Jim Douglas: Tennessee, that traffic light is a lot of nuts and bolts. This little car, a lot of nuts and bolts. Everything explains itself one way or the other.

Tennessee Steinmetz: It's a matter of talking their language. You have a little feel for tradition and some courtesy, you'd be surprised, you can unscrew the inscrutable.

Tennessee Steinmetz: Jim, it's happening right under our noses and we can't see it. We take machines and we stuff 'em with information until they're smarter than we are. Take a car. Most guys spread more love and time and money on their car in a week than they do on their wife and kids in a year. Pretty soon, you know what? The machine starts to think it *is* somebody.