How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from A Beautiful Mind.
Quote #1
HANSEN: This is going to be classic.
WOMAN: Maybe you want to buy me a drink.
JOHN: I don't exactly know what I'm required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me, but could we assume that I said all that? I mean, essentially we're talking about fluid exchange, right? So, could we just go straight to the sex?
This is our first introduction to John's smooth moves with the ladies. As a bunch of his grad school colleagues watch, John decides to cut through all the small talk that usually goes with flirting and get to what he really wants: sex. As you might imagine, the young lady he's talking to isn't impressed. He gets slapped immediately after the exchange.
Quote #2
ALICIA: I'm wondering, Professor Nash, if I can ask you to dinner. You do eat, don't you?
JOHN: Oh, on occasion, yeah. Table for one. Prometheus alone, chained to the rock with a bird circling overhead, you know how it is. No, I expect that you wouldn't know.
John has better luck with a student named Alicia, who comes to his office to ask him out. He's still super awkward, with all this talk about usually eating dinner alone like a god chained to a rock…but he kind of saves the convo by acknowledging that his smart and pretty date-to-be probably doesn't know much about that.
Quote #3
JOHN: I have a tendency to expedite information flow by being direct. I often don't get a pleasant result.
ALICIA: Try me.
JOHN: All right. I find you attractive. Your aggressive moves towards me indicate that you feel the same way. But still, ritual requires that we continue with a number of platonic activities before we have sex. I am proceeding with those activities, but in point of actual fact, all I really want to do is have intercourse with you as soon as possible. Are you going slap me now?
ALICIA [kisses him]: How was that result?
Whoa, John really has found his match, hasn't he? As he tells Alicia, his typical directness tends not to go over super well with the opposite sex, but Alicia is totally down with it. He's a lucky man.
Quote #4
JOHN: Alicia, does our relationship warrant long-term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable, empirical data.
ALICIA: Um, I'm sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance. A proof. Verifiable data. Um, okay. Well, how big is the universe?
JOHN: Infinite.
ALICIA: How do you know?
[…]
JOHN: I don't; I just believe it.
ALICIA: Mmm. It's the same with love, I guess. Now, the part that you don't know is if I want to marry you.
We'll say it again: John is really lucky to have found someone who can deal with his kind of emotionless, almost robotic attitude toward other people and human emotions. Here, John wants empirical proof that marriage is a good idea, and Alicia manages to get him to understand—using an example from science, which is in John's wheelhouse—that marriage and love just kind of have to be a leap of faith, to some extent.
Quote #5
JOHN: William, my circumstance has changed. Alicia's pregnant.
PARCHER: I told you attachments were dangerous. You chose to marry the girl. I did nothing to prevent it. The best way to ensure everybody's safety is for you to continue your work.
Unfortunately, John's contact at the Department of Defense does not think it's great news that John has hooked up with Alicia, because it means John doesn't want to keep doing the agency's super secret spy work. On the plus side, Parcher is actually a hallucination, so John's not in any real danger, and his love life isn't actually getting in the way of anything.
Quote #6
ALICIA: I think often what I feel is obligation. Or guilt over wanting to leave. Rage against John, against God, and…but then I look at him and I force myself to see the man that I married. And he becomes that man. He's transformed into someone that I love.
And I'm transformed into someone who loves him. It's not all the time, but it's enough.
Things get tough for Alicia and John when they discover that John is schizophrenic and suffering from delusions. However, Alicia is pretty strong, and uses her memories of the man she married to keep their love intact.
Quote #7
ALICIA: I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible.
When John eventually goes off his meds because he hates the way they make him feel, things are looking even more dicey for the couple—like, at one point, his doctor strongly suggests that she commits him. But, at his request, here she agrees to stick it out and help him get his life back on track without meds.
Quote #8
JOHN: My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career. The most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons.
When John accepts the Nobel Prize late in life, he gives up big props to Alicia for sticking by him and believing in something "extraordinary"—since, without her love and trust, he probably wouldn't have been able to stand there accepting the award (or they might not have even given it to him at all).