Harley Quinn: 15 Best DCEU Quotes

Whether she viewed her as a misunderstood villain or an evil one, Harley Quinn is one of the most beloved characters of the DCEU. She was by far the star of Suicide Squad, stealing the show and waltzing her way into the audience’s heart despite the movie’s low ratings and poor criticisms. It has now been four years since the movie’s release, Harley Quinn has been gone for a while but she is finally back to the big screen with Birds Of Prey.

While Margot Robbie reprises her legendary role as the Queen of Gotham, we’ve gathered Harley Quinn’s best quotes to entertain us. There are many things about Harley that make her so captivating and likable, but one of her best qualities has to be her lines. She is humorous, chatty and plenty strange; and thus her unpredictable lines never fail to make us laugh or think.

Updated February 7, 2020 By Amanda Bruce: Now that audiences have had the chance to check out Harley in action with her Birds of Prey costars, there are even more quotable moments from the big screen. Harley Quinn continues to prove that DC’s ladies can be funny, brutal, intelligent, and relatable with these additional quotes.

15 “Behind Every Successful Man Is A Badass Broad.”

This particular line comes early in Birds Of Prey when Harley is still so sure that no one in Gotham will come after her because she’s just that good. While that’s not entirely true as nearly everyone in Gotham wants a piece of her when they find out she and Joker are no longer together, the quote still stands.

It’s evident that Harley’s got a lightning fast mind for planning and some serious combat skills as the movie goes on. It makes the audience wonder just how many of the Joker’s schemes were really Harley’s.

14 “We’re Bad Guys, It’s What We Do!”

Bad guys do bad things, as Suicide Squad doesn’t fail to remind us. Assembling a team of villains who are locked up for murder, amongst other things, is a pretty ambitious task.

Nonetheless, we learn soon enough that these guys still have some good in them. Amanda Waller may call them the ‘worst of the worst’, but they’re really not. It’s almost like Harley Quinn is aware of this irony when she nags the general about doing bad things because she’s a bad guy when really, she was just stealing a tiny handbag.

13 “That’s Childhood Trauma Right There.”

Played for laughs when the identity of Huntress is revealed in Birds of Prey, this isn’t just a customary one-liner; it’s also not just true about the Huntress.

Though Harley says this about one member of the gathering group of women wronged by Roman Sionis, it really could apply to nearly all of them. The entire group had traumatic events in their past, specifically when they were younger, that help get them to a place where they’re willing to go toe-to-toe with some of the worst people in Gotham.

12 “Are You The Devil?”

Amanda Waller must be quite something for Harley Quinn – someone who isn’t afraid of the Joker – to be wary of her. That’s on the surprising aspects of Suicide Squad: the movie begins with Amanda Waller putting together a team of what she deems are the worst villains locked up. As the story develops, however, these villains don’t seem half as bad as Amanda Waller had made them out to be, and instead, she appears as the more questionable one.

Harley’s intrigue at meeting Amanda Waller is understandable, the woman is beyond mysterious. It’s also a great example of the power dynamic between them: Amanda Waller is in control, and ready to blow up Harley at any moment – but on the other hand, Harley is the Queen of Gotham and she manages to escape Amanda’s claws. Twice.

11 “You Got This…”

Harley Quinn and Dinah Drake meet because they’re both fixtures at Roman’s club. While Dinah sings, Harley hangs out at the bar. When Harley becomes so inebriated that a couple of thugs try to kidnap her, Dinah reluctantly comes to her aid.

Initially, Harley thinks she can handle the situation, but as she slumps against the wall, nearly passed out, she mumbles, “you got this…” to Dinah. At that point, she’s only seen Dinah fight for a few seconds, but she’s already got faith that the other woman can get the job done. Either that’s Harley’s knowledge that she’s got insanely good luck, or that’s Harley’s recognition that the women around her can definitely take care of themselves.

10 “I’m Known To Be Quite Vexing – I’m Just Forewarning You.”

Part of what makes Harley Quinn such a funny and captivating characters is how blunt and honest she is – whether she is teasing, joking around or talking seriously. She simply has no filter. When the Suicide Squad is assembled for the first time, trying on their uniforms, Harley has no problem being the center of attention and interrupting the general with silly questions.

She tries to issue a warning that she can be vexing and, true enough, the general gets vexed and yells at her to shut up. Her face at that is quite priceless; Harley Quinn just doesn’t like being silenced.

9 “Psychologically Speaking, Vengeance Rarely Brings The Catharsis We Hope For.”

It was a rare moment in Suicide Squad to get a peek into the psychiatrist mind of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, but Birds of Prey doesn’t shy away from that past. Harley is quick to analyze people as soon as she meets them – and she’s usually right about them.

When Harley learns that Huntress is all about vengeance, she cautions her against making that her whole world, and she’s not wrong. After all, Batman also found that vengeance didn’t make Gotham a better place.

8 “I Sleep Where I Want, When I Want, With Who I Want.”

The segment where we get introduced to Harley Quinn is a powerful one; she’s described as Joker’s precious girl, as the Queen of Gotham. Together they ran around Gotham as partners in crime, playing their insane games and barely escaping Batman.

It was all fun and games until Harley got caught. Locked away, she couldn’t be her adventurous, carefree self anymore. Or that’s what you would think. When guards start teasing her, she doesn’t hesitate to fire back and use her violent gymnastic skills to knock some sense into them. There’s always a fight in her – and that’s probably what Joker likes.

7 “I’m Harley Freakin’ Quinn!”

Since Birds Of Prey sees Harley Quinn breaking away from her abusive Mister J and teaming up with other women on an unpredictable adventure, we finally see Harley Quinn in all her wild and free glory.

She may have appeared friendly, welcoming and rather fun for a bad guy in Suicide Squad, but she was operating under Amanda Waller’s commands. She is, after all, a criminal and a villain, regardless of her ties with Joker. She doesn’t really know what’s coming for her in a post-breakup world.

6 “Love Your Perfume. What Is That, The Stench Of Death?”

If there’s something people love above all about Harley Quinn, it’s her humor. She’s witty and fierce, grinning and throwing around risky jokes even during difficult situations. She can tease and nag people, but she’s still extremely friendly.

In fact, it’s adorable to see the excitement on her face when another girl, Katana, joins the Suicide Squad. And not any girl; a stoic, badass, sword-fighting girl. Katana is intimidating and slightly threatening; but not to Harley. Giddy as ever, the blonde looks at her and sees a new friend.

5 “Hair Tie?”

It’s an innocent enough word, but this question tossed out to Black Canary during a fight sequence shows the difference between a movie like Birds of Prey and a movie like Suicide Squad – and just how different Harley can be when surrounded by like-minded women.

Instead of competing for attention or planning to get back to her murderous boyfriend, Harley is supportive of the women she fights alongside. She has their backs, even if that just means helping them get their long hair out of their face so they can see the people they’re fighting.

4 “Sorry, it’s the voices. Haha, I’m kidding… That’s not what they really said.”

The only possible solution for Harley’s decision to leave all of her work as a psychiatrist and her life as a sane person behind, all just to walk around Gotham attached to Joker’s hip, is for her to have severe mental problems.

Just like Joker, she is aware of the reputation she gets as a mad clown, and she all but takes advantage of that by playing it up in front of people, joking about having voices in her head and hallucinating. She may act confident and unafraid, but Harley is far from easy to figure out. It’s a harmless joke, but the voices could very well be real. In the end, we don’t know exactly what makes her tick, and what truly compelled her to change her life around.

3 “I Know How The World Works, Okay? And When It Comes To The Heart, Everybody For Themselves, Right?”

This quote comes after Harley Quinn gets a flashback to her Harleen Quinzel days when she was just falling for Joker and transitioning to his world of madness. She remembers an encounter with him where she was desperately trying to convince him to let her love him, but Joker being Joker, simply didn’t care.

Harley is still whipped for him as she had the flashback, but we can tell that the unpleasant memories are a reminder of how poorly her supposed “puddin'” really treats her. She still may be relying on him to rescue her, but she is no fool. Their relationship is not a normal one – it’s about time she realized it’s also abusive.

2 “People Like Us, We Don’t Get Normal!”

El Diablo is perhaps the nicest villain you will ever see. He only wishes to do his time, pay for his crimes and spends most of the mission isolated, staying away from the violence and the fighting. It’s heartbreaking to discover that he accidentally burned down his house with his family in it in a burst of anger that set off his fire powers.

Harley Quinn tells him that the only thing he can do is face the truth and move on, instead of moping around. And that’s true. The sad part about her words is that it proves a lot of villains are just slaves to their powers or other issues that they didn’t ask for.

1 “Do You Know What A Harlequin Is?”

This is perhaps Harley’s most compelling quote; it works on its own, even without context. People may have walked out of Suicide Squad wondering what Harley Quinn was still doing with Mister J and why she put up with him in the first place after he tortured and manipulated her.

This quote seems to imply that Harley thought she was just playing her part as a harlequin. Maybe, this entire time, even before Joker, she was just trying to find her place in the world, and being a harlequin seemed like a good option. But Birds Of Prey shows us the real Harley Quinn, the one that doesn’t depend on anyone and knows what she’s worth.

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