10 Funniest Quotes From Clerks

25 years ago, Kevin Smith maxed out ten credit cards and went a month without sleep to shoot his feature directorial debut: Clerks. It was a quirky black-and-white comedy set in the convenience store where Smith was working by day (they shot it at night, hence the running gag of the shutter being closed) and it could’ve easily bombed, leaving Smith in a lifetime of debt.

But something about this fun, fresh perspective of New Jersey life struck a chord at Sundance. The rest is history (and a pre-Marvel shared cinematic universe). Here are the 10 Funniest Quotes From Clerks.

10 “That’s what high school was about: algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity.”

Anyone who has dated someone who turned out to be cheating on them or had a friend in that situation can relate to the kind of denial that Dante goes through in this scene. He says, “Yeah, I mean, aside from the cheating, we were a great couple.”

And then he adds that cheating was the norm back then and he shouldn’t hold his ex-girlfriend accountable for something she did in high school when cheating was all the rage back then: “I mean, that’s what high school was about: algebra, bad lunch, and infidelity.” This quote is two great one-liners rolled into one. It’s a two-liner.

9 “Do you have that one with that guy who was in that movie that was out last year?”

Long before everyone had a digital video rental store on their computers and TVs, video store clerks had to answer questions like this. Even Amazon Prime can’t answer this question and it’s fitted with an artificial intelligence – and somehow, a guy like Randal is supposed to decipher exactly which movie this guy is asking about.

“Do you have that one with that guy who was in that movie that was out last year?” It’s a movie, it stars a guy, and the guy previously starred in another movie that was released last year. That’s all the information he gets. This is why Randal hates the customers.

8 “All Jedi had was a bunch of Muppets.”

Long before Star Wars message boards were flooded with debates about which was the best movie, we had to go to a Kevin Smith movie to see those debates play out. As Dante and Randal discuss the merits of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Randal is firmly in the Jedi camp, while Dante is in the Empire camp.

“Empire had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader’s his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that’s what life is, a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of Muppets.” This meta scene prepares you for the end of the movie you’re watching by subtly referencing how downer endings are more realistic.

7 “Are there any balls down there?”

Jay is not a particularly likable character, but he does represent an identifiable type of person. He’s the guy who sells dime-bags down at the convenience store and is completely insecure in his manhood and tries to counteract that by constantly acting like the top dog.

During the scene where the friends play hockey on the roof, Dante asks Jay, “Are there any balls down there?” and Jay angrily replies, “About the biggest pair you ever seen, dingleberry!” As soon as there’s the slightest hint of a question about Jay’s manliness, he dives into the deep end of the toxic masculinity pool, like when he’s spotted making passes at Silent Bob and yells out, “I love women!”

6 “What was that called again?”

Randal is a great counterpart to Dante in the story. He represents a Dante who doesn’t care that he’s stuck in a dead-end job – next door at the video store. In one scene, he’s on the phone with the distributor, requesting some movies, and a woman and her small child are asking for a movie called Happy Scrappy: Hero Pup.

He rattles off a long list of adult films with the most graphic titles ever conceived, before asking this woman, “Oh, wait a minute. Uh, what was that called again?”

5 “They don’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of ‘em just cheat on you.”

In Clerks, Kevin Smith’s character Silent Bob was born. The character’s quirk is that he never speaks until he has some profound wisdom to impart. This makes him the perfect partner for Jay, who never shuts up and never has anything meaningful to say.

When Dante is freaking out about the number of guys his girlfriend has been with, Silent Bob steps in to tell him how lucky he is to have her in the first place: “You know, there’s a million fine-looking women in the world, dude. But they don’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of ‘em just cheat on you.”

4 “There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?”

Randal is one of those people who constantly screw things up, but thanks to a miraculous circumstance that fixes everything, they never have to learn any lessons from their mistakes and they go on screwing things up.

He’s also a blunt and brutally honest guy. He sums up exactly what gives him so much glee about being a jerk all the time when he says, “There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?” He says it to a customer after she tries to trick him into giving away that he wasn’t paying attention to her.

3 “It’s important to have a job that makes a difference, boys.”

The whole point of Clerks is that, while your job might suck, it’s okay, because most people’s jobs suck. It might seem like sitting behind a counter and watching people check the expiry date of every carton of milk in the fridge is a huge waste of time that has zero impact on the world, but the jobs that do make a difference can suck, too.

This woman tells Dante and Randal, “It’s important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That’s why I manually m********* caged animals for artificial insemination.” Her job makes a difference and it still sucks.

2 “This job would be great if it wasn’t for the f***ing customers.”

For most of the day, Dante and Randal get to sit around and read comic books. In Randal’s case, he can also stick on a video and watch that. If Clerks were set today, they’d spend the whole day on their phones. So, it’s not a bad job. If you get paid to do basically nothing all day, then surely that’s a pretty sweet deal.

The only downside is that every now and then, a customer will come in and ruin their fun. Randal summed it up perfectly – and hilariously – when he said, “This job would be great if it wasn’t for the f***ing customers.”

1 “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

Everyone with a crummy, low-paid, mundane, menial job has thought this at some point on a day where they’ve covered someone else’s shift or been called in for extra hours. “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” It’s like a mantra for the downtrodden. Like John McClane in Die Hard, Dante has found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time for a terrible day. This was supposed to be his day off, and instead, his relationship is in shambles. In the original cut of the movie, there was a darker ending where a guy holds up the store and kills him. That would have added a tragic element of foreshadowing to this line.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3459 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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