Sex and the City

Season 1, Episode 1, Sex and the City

Carrie: Welcome to the age of un-innocence. No one has breakfast at Tiffany’s and no one has affairs to remember. Instead we have breakfast at 7 am and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible. Self protection and closing the deal are paramount. Cupid has flown the co-op.

     

Season 1, Episode 12, Oh Come All Ye Faithful

Carrie: After he left I cried for a week. And then I realized that I do have faith. Faith in myself. Faith that I will one day meet someone who would be sure that I was the one.

   

Season 2, Episode 1, Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Carrie: And finally, the most important break-up rule: No matter who broke your heart, or how long it takes to heal, you’ll never get through it without your friends.

  

Season 2, Episode 12, La Douleur Exquise!

Carrie: I wanted to kill him. And he’s standing there and giving me the “what’s the big problem eyes,” you know, like I don’t understand, like it’s my problem.
Charlotte: Ok, just calm down. There are ways to make it work. It’s just seven month, and you can go visit him in Paris and he can come back here.
Carrie: No, it’s not about that. It’s about the fact that I wasn’t even a factor in his decision making process.
Miranda: Totally.
Samantha: Men do this all the time. Women walk around thinking we. And their version of we is me and my dick.
Miranda: Totally.
Carrie: I mean, just tell me what’s going on. Is that too much to ask? “Um, Carrie, I’m thinking about going to France. For the rest of my life.” Am I right?
Charlotte: Totally.
Carrie: One minute he’s all over me, and the next minute he’s pushing me away. And I just cannot believe this is happening… again. (bangs on the table) Why do I keep doing this to myself? I must be a masochist or something.
Carrie Voice-over: That’s when I first realized it. I was in an SM relationship with Mr. Big…   In love relationships there is a fine line between pleasure and pain. In fact, it’s a common belief that a relationship without pain is a relationship not worth having. To some, pain implies growth. But how do we know when the growing pains stop, and the pain pains take over? Are we masochists or optimists if we continue to walk that fine line? When it comes to relationships, how do you know when enough is enough?

   

Mr. Big: Look I have to be in a relationship where if I have to go to Paris, I have to go to Paris.
Carrie: Fine, go to Paris. But what happens to us next year when you decide you just have to go to Brazil?
Mr. Big: This isn’t about us. This is about work.
Carrie: No, this isn’t about work. This is about us getting closer and you getting so freaked out that you have to put an ocean between us.
Mr. Big: I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
Carrie: Why is it so hard for you to factor me into your life in any real way?
Mr. Big: I guess old habits die hard.
Carrie: Well, maybe I can’t do this anymore.
Mr. Big: I understand.
Carrie: Yeah, I bet you do. You said you loved me.
Mr. Big: I do.
Carrie: Then why does it hurt so fucking much?

Carrie Voice-over: On the way home I was furious. Not with Big, with myself. I was the real sadist. He might be the one with a whip, but I was the one who tied myself up. Tied myself to a man who was terrified of being tied down.

Carrie: There were no words left. We’d said them all…. After we made love, I knew it was over. Did I ever really love Big, or was I addicted to the pain? The exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable. … And just like that I had untied myself from Mr. Big. I was free. But there was nothing exquisite about it.

Season 2,  Episode 13, Games People Play

Carrie: We spend our childhoods playing games. Were they just primers for the games we play as adults? Were relationships just a big chess match, strategy, moves counter-moves, all designed to keep your opponent off-balance until you win? Was there such a thing as an honest relationship? Or was it true – do you have to play games to make a relationship work?

Season 2,  Episode 18, Ex and the City

Carrie: Then I had a thought. Maybe I didn’t break in Big. Maybe the problem was he couldn’t break me. Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with.

Season 3, Episode 1, Where There’s Smoke…

Carrie to Charlotte: Did you ever think that maybe we’re the ones that have to rescue ourselves?

Carrie: Later that day I got to think about fairy tales. What if Prince Charming had never showed up? Would Snow White have slept in the glass coffin forever? Or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a health care package, and a baby from her local neighbourhood sperm bank? I couldn’t help but wonder, inside every confident, driven, single woman was there a delicate fragile princess just waiting to be saved? Was Charlotte right? Do women just want to be rescued?

Season 3, Episode 2, Politically Erect

Miranda: I’m just so ambivalent about Steve and moving forward.
Carrie: But you did let him back into your life.
Miranda: So?
Carrie: So that’s gotta mean there is something there.
Miranda: Sure there’s plenty there. Lots of flaws that make me not want to stick my neck out. But then there is a lot of really great stuff too. Maybe I should just be honest and tell him what I’m really feeling, which is what if somebody better comes along.
Carrie: You gotta put a better spin on it than that.
Miranda: That’s my problem. I don’t know how to be political in relationships.
Carrie: It’s time for the old list. Things you like about Steve. Things you don’t like about Steve. See which column is longer.
Miranda: That’s so judgmental.
Carrie: Miranda, you are judgmental. Why don’t you put it to good use?
Miranda: Ok, fine. I’ll make a list.

Season 3, Episode 3, Attack of the Five Foot Ten Woman

Miranda: Do you have a rolling pin?
Carrie: On me?
Miranda: In your kitchen.
Carrie: Are you kidding me, I use my oven for storage!

Carrie voice over: The following Monday Samantha and I were the definition of civilized. We officially became “Ladies Who Luncheon.”
Samantha: I’m telling you it was entrapment false advertising and blatant discrimination. You can’t randomly go down on one woman and not on another. I paid good money expecting to be eaten out.
Carrie: This is not the conversation I wish to have as my most amazing self.

Season 3, Episode 7, Drama Queens

Carrie voice-over: As I walked away I realized, I haven’t seen Charlotte that happy in years and with a man she had known for 5 minutes. And just when I thought I was safe, I ran into the man I’d been happy with for 5 minutes.

Charlotte (about Trey): Sometimes you just know. With the right man it’s just fate.
Miranda: It’s not fate. His light is on, that’s all.
Charlotte: What light?
Miranda: Men are like cabs. When they’re available their light goes on. They wake up one day, they decide they are ready to settle down, have babies, whatever, and they turn their light on. The next woman they pick up, boom, that’s the one they’ll marry. It’s not fate. It’s dumb luck.
Charlotte: Sorry, I refuse to believe that love is that random.
Miranda: It’s all about timing. You gotta get them when their light’s on.
Carrie: Most men I meet are flashing yellows.
Miranda: Or off duty. They can drive around for years picking up women and not be available.
Carrie: Then they really shouldn’t be allowed to get behind the wheel!
Miranda: Most men don’t stay lit long before they take the plunge, verses most women who’ve been lit pretty much since birth.

Carrie voice-over: That night I couldn’t stop thinking about time. Was every second of our lives controlled by fate, or was life just a series of random occurrences?  If I wasn’t perpetually 10 minutes late, would my life be totally different? Would I never run into Big, and would there ever be a good time to see him? Was Miranda right? Is timing everything?

Season 3, Episode 9, Easy Come, Easy Go

Carrie (to Miranda): There should be some sort of city-funded break-up housing for those who find themselves in need.
Miranda: Really?
Carrie: Like a big orphanage filled with white beds where old boyfriends could think about what they did wrong and cry themselves to sleep in a clean, safe environment.

Carrie voice-over: It’s a pretty common belief that women tend to use the left, more emotional side of their brain, and men the right, more logical side. But is it really that cut and dry? It seems that when it comes to the affairs of the heart, there is a battle between what we know and what we feel. But what do you do when you find yourself in a situation that leads back and forth between left and right side? When it comes to relationships, is it smarter to follow your heart or your head?

Carrie voice-over (while hugging Aiden after he offered to strip her floors): Here in my arms was a guy who wanted to make my home better. And somewhere out there was a guy who wanted to pull it apart. It wasn’t a left or right brainer, it was a no brainer.

Season 3, Episode 10, All or Nothing

Carrie voice-over: I thought about choices. Since birth modern women have been told that we can do and be anything we want. Be an astronaut, the head of an internet company, a stay at home mom. There aren’t any rules anymore and the choices are endless, and apparently they can all be delivered right to your door. But is it possible that we have been so spoiled by choices that we have become unable to make one. That a part of us knows that once you chose something – one man, one great apartment, one amazing job – another option goes away. Are we a generation of women who can’t choose just one from column A, did we all have too much to handle, or was Samantha right, can we have it all?

Samantha (sick with flu and sleep-deprived to Carrie): I’m gonna tell you something. There are two types of guys out there – the ones that hold your hand, and the ones that fuck you.
Carrie (in an aside voice over about her affair with Big): And I’d slept with both of them in the last 48 hours.
Samantha: And the guys that fuck you aren’t worth a damn. (crying) We’re all alone, Carrie.
Carrie: Oh, we are not alone. We have each other.

Season 3, Episode 11, Running with Scissors

Carrie voice-over: Later that night I got to thinking about safe sex. Odd how only when our physical lives are at risk do we follow certain guidelines to protect ourselves. But what about our emotional lives? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a little pamphlet to warn us what unsafe behaviour might be of high risk to ourselves or our relationships? And even if you take all the precautions and emotionally try to protect yourself, when you crawl in bed with someone, is sex ever safe?

Season 3, Episode 12, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Carrie voice-over (at Charlotte’s wedding, after break-up with Aiden): It’s hard to find people who will love you no matter what. I was lucky enough to find three of them.

Season 3, Episode 14, Sex and Another City

Carrie voice-over: And somewhere out there Big was alone again. The universe may not always play fair, but at least it’s got a hell of a sense of humour.

Season 3, Episode 15, Hot Child in the City

In the end I’ve decided I was definitely 34 going on 35. But in a city like New York with its pace and its pressures, sometimes it’s important to have a 13-year-old moment, to remember a simpler time, when the best thing in life was hanging out, listening to records, and having fun with your friends. In your very own apartment.

Season 4, Episode 1, The Agony and the Ex-tacy

Carrie: The longer I sat at that table, the more alone I felt. And it really hit me, I am 35 and alone.
Miranda: You are not alone.
Carrie: No, I know I have you guys, but, and I really, I have myself a little for saying this, but if felt really sad not to have a man in my life who cares about me. No special guy to wish me a happy birthday. No god-damned soul-mate. And I don’t even know if I believe in soul mates.
Charlotte: Don’t laugh at me, but maybe we can be each other’s soul mates. And then we can let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with.

Season 4, Episode 2, The Real Me

Carrie: So, what’s the problem?
Miranda: He said, “I think you are very sexy.”
Carrie: And?
Miranda: I was wearing no make-up and my Hanes $3 old men’s undershirt.
Carrie: Nice!
Miranda: I just can’t believe that a guy would think that I was sexy.
Carrie: Ok, I’m hanging up now.
Miranda:  No, I’m serious. Smart, yes. Sometimes cute, but never sexy. Sexy is the thing I try to get them to see me as after I win them over with my personality.
Carrie: You win men over with your personality?
Miranda: They want you to be a model?
Carrie: Ok, I’m hanging up now.

Carrie voice-over (after falling on the runway): I had a choice – I could slink off the runway and let my inner model die of shame, or I could pick myself up, flaws and all, and finish. And that’s just what I did. Because when real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep on walking.

Season 4, Episode 3, Defining Moments

Carrie voice-over: The Eskimo have hundreds of words for snow. And we’ve invented three times that many words for relationship. But the more words we invent, the harder it becomes to define things. In a world where you can date without sex, screw without dating, and in the end keep most of your sex partners as friends long after the screwing is over, what really defines a relationship?

Carrie: With every second of our kiss it was becoming clear, I really like this guy. So, maybe that’s it. What ultimately defines a relationship is another relationship.

Season 4, Episode 9, Sex and the Country

Carrie voice-over (at Aidan’s country house): Relationships, no matter how good, are inevitably a series of compromises. But how much of ourselves should we be willing to sacrifice for the other person before we stop being ourselves? In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?

Season 4, Episode 16, Ring a Ding Ding

Carrie voice-over (after break-up with Aiden and threatened to vacate her apartment): So here I was. A 35-year-old single woman with no financial security, but many life experiences behind me. Did that mean nothing? After all, heartbreak and break-ups are the hardest kind of work. So shouldn’t there be some sort of credit for enduring them? And if not, how do you retain a sense of value when you have nothing concrete to show for it? Because at the end of yet another failed relationship, when all you have a re war wounds and self-doubt, you have to wonder, what’s it all worth?

Carrie (at a shoe store with Miranda, but not being able to shop): Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

Season 5, Episode 1, Anchors Away

Carrie voice-over (walking away from the sailor party): Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.

Season 6, Episode 5, Lights, Camera, Relationship

Carrie voice-over: As women’s roles evolve, we assume that men’s do as well. There are hundreds upon hundreds of articles written about the new man. But does this new man really exist? Perhaps he’s just the old man renamed and repackaged by some clever PR woman? Are the men of today less threatened by a woman’s power, or are they just acting?

Charlotte (at the coffee shop): Carrie, what was your news?
Carrie: Oh, ah Berger broke up with me on a post-it.
Miranda: On a post-it?
Carrie: Aha, aha, yep (putting the post-it on the table). Read it and weep, my friends.
Samantha (reading): “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.” The motherfucker is concise.
Miranda: First of all, I thought you were gonna break up with him.
Carrie: Yeah I was and I should have, but he said that he wanted to “work things out,” a.k.a. leave in the middle of the night.
Charlotte: A post-it, that’s infuriating!
Carrie: I remember when breaking-up over the phone was considered bad form.
Miranda: I was once broken up by a guy’s doorman: “Jonathan won’t be coming down, ever.”
Samantha: I miss having a doorman.
Charlotte: So, are you gonna call him?
Carrie: No, I’m not going to dignify his behaviour with a response. I’m not even going to leave him one of those angry answering machine messages: “hi, it’s me, you’re a DICK!…” but it sure felt good saying it right now, even to you.
Samantha: Well, that’s what we’re here for.
Charlotte: I’m so sorry.
Carrie: Yeah, I’m sorry too. That relationship was a complete waste of time.
Charlotte: Oh, it’s never a complete waste of time. I mean even in the worst relationship you always learn something.
Carrie: You might not wanna say that to a woman carrying a loaded post-it!
Charlotte: But Carrie, everything happens for a reason. Even if you don’t know what it is yet.
Miranda: That’s such bullshit.
Charlotte: It’s not. Look at me. If I had never married Tray, then I never would have gotten divorced, and I never would have met my divorce lawyer Harry, and I wouldn’t be engaged now (reaching her hand with the engagement ring out).
Carrie (covering Charlotte’s ring with the post-it): Aha, paper covers rock!

Carrie voice-over (after Berger broke up with her on a post-it): People say everything happens for a reason. These people are usually women. And these women are usually sorting through a break-up. It seems that men can get out of a relationship without even a goodbye, but apparently women have to either get married or learn something. Why are we in such a rush to move from confused to Confucius? Do we search for “lessons” to lessen the pain?

Billy (Berger’s friend): Break-ups are tough.
Carrie: Sure, under normal circumstances, they are tough. And in this case, tougher. Look, I don’t wanna drag you into this, but… Berger broke up with me on a post-it.
Billy (blank look) nodding.
Carrie: Yeah, I know as Berger’s friends you can’t have a normal reaction, but just so you know, the normal reaction has been (makes an outraged face). Not that I’m going around telling everyone, just some girlfriends. I’m trying to understand why someone would do that.
Billy: Well, maybe he was afraid.
Carrie: Interesting, how so?
Billy: Women can get really angry.
Carrie: Well, I assure you, I would have been very understanding.
The other friend: Yeah, right.
Carrie: Excuse me?
The other friend: You all say that, but then you just freak, and get all psycho bitch.
Carrie: Really? So now it’s our fault?
Billy: All we’re saying is that there really is no good way to break-up with someone, is there?
Carrie: Well, it’s funny you say that, Billy, because, actually, there is. You can have the guts and the courtesy to tell a woman to her face that you no longer wanna see her. Call me crazy but, I think that you can make a point of ending your relationship in a manner that does not include and email, a doorman, or a missing person’s report. I think you can all get over your fear of looking like the bad guy and actually have the uncomfortable break-up conversation, because, here’s what, avoiding that is what makes you the bad guy. And just so you know, Alan…
The other friend: Andrew
Carrie: Aha, most women aren’t angry, irrational psychos. We just want an ending to a relationship that is thoughtful and decent and honours what we had together. So my point, Billy, is this. There is a good way to break up with someone, and it doesn’t include a post-it!
Billy: Oh. Ok.

Season 6, Episode 6, Hop, Skip, and a Week

Carrie voice-over: When you’re young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun. Then you grow up and learn to be cautious. You can break a bone or a heart. You look before you leap, and sometimes you don’t leap at all because there is not always someone there to catch you. An in life, there is no safety net. When did it stop being fun and start being scary?

Season 6, Episode 9, A Woman’s Right to Shoes

Carrie voice-over: When we were young, Marlo Thomas sang to us about accepting each other and our differences. But then we got older and started singing a different tune. We stopped celebrating each other’s life choices and started qualifying them. Is acceptance really such a childish concept or did we have it right all along? When did we stop being free to be you and me?

Carrie voice-over (after finally getting her Manolo Blahnik shoes back from her friend Kyra): The fact is, sometimes it’s hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes. That’s why we need really special ones now and then, to make the walk a little more fun.

Season 6, Episode 11, The Domino Effect

Carrie voice-over (after Big’s heart surgery): It took the best heart surgeon in New York, but Big’s heart was finally unblocked. In fact, it was wide open.

Carrie voice-over (the next morning, after Big woke up feeling like his normal self again): It was a shift imperceptible to anyone but me. But I knew, Big’s heart had closed again. Maybe it would reopen in another five years, maybe it wouldn’t. But I knew myself well enough to know that that’s not enough. For the first time all week, I didn’t feel like crying. Life’s too short.

Season 6, Part 2, Episode 3, Catch-38

Carrie voice-over: After Miranda used the S-word twice, I wondered if “should” was another disease plaguing women. Did we want babies and perfect honeymoons? Or did we think we should have babies and perfect honeymoons? How do we separate what we could do from what we should do? And here’s an alarming thought. It’s not just peer pressure. It seems to be coming from within. Why are we should-ing all over ourselves?

Carrie (about not having children with Alexander): And the question I need to ask is impossible to ask.
Samantha: And what is that?
Carrie: Will you love me enough… to make up for the fact that I didn’t have a baby?
Samantha: Oh honey, no.
Carrie: Exactly. It’s only been two months. 38 years and two months.
Samantha: No no no no no no no no no no no.
Carrie: I know. It’s too early in a relationship to have that conversation. But it’s too late in my life not to. It’s a catch 38.

  

Season 6, Part 2, Episode 8, An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux

Carrie: How could you abandon me like that when I gave up my party for you.
Alex: I didn’t abandon you.
Carrie: I sat on a bench, alone, in a museum.
Alex: Let’s not do this now. I’m tired. I had a stressful day.
Carrie: I’m in this relationship too. I am a person. In this relationship. Have you any idea what it’s been like for me here? Eating alone and waiting for my boyfriend who would rather spend time with a light installation?
Alex: That’s what I do. That’s who I am. You always knew this.
Carrie: I had a life in New York. I had a job and friends. And I didn’t give all that up to come here and wander the streets of Paris alone.
Alex: Ok, I’m taking a shower and going to bed. And we’ll talk more as soon as…
Carrie: No, no no, not as soon as…
Alex: I’m so sorry I thought I was clear all along about who I am.
Carrie: Well, maybe it’s time to be clear about who I am. I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t live without each other love. And I don’t think that love is here in this expensive suite, in this lovely hotel, in Paris. It’s not your fault it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have come here.