50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Little Miss Sunshine

Access 40 more quotes from Little Miss Sunshine and our downloadable list! 

Access 40 more quotes from Little Miss Sunshine and our downloadable list! 

#11: Everyone, just try and act normal.

• Techniques: Irony

#12: She’s kickin’ ass. That’s what shes’s doing.

• Techniques: Colloquialism

Little Miss Sunshine Quotes – Frank

#13: You don’t speak because of Friedrich Nietzsche?

• Techniques: Intertextuality, rhetorical question

#14: Wow, Richard, you’ve really opened my eyes to what a loser I am. How much do I owe you for those pearls of wisdom?

• Techniques: Sarcasm, idiom

#15: No one gets left behind! No one gets left behind! Outstanding soldier! Outstanding!

• Techniques: Repetition, symbolism, exclamation

#16: Dwayne, I think you might be colour-blind. You can’t fly jets if you’re colour-blind.’

• Techniques: Epistrophe

#17: He’s colour-blind. He can’t fly.

Techniques: Anaphora, juxtaposition

#18: French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay.

• Techniques: Parataxis, black humour

#19: Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he’s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare.

• Techniques: Antithesis

#20: All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn’t learn a thing.

• Techniques: Black Humour, Hypophora

#21: So, if you sleep until you’re 18, ah, think of the suffering you’re going to miss.

• Techniques: Black Humour

#22: High school? Those are your prime suffering years. You don’t get better suffering than that.

• Techniques: Black Humour, repetition

#23: You’re not nearly as stupid as you look.

• Techniques: Humour

Little Miss Sunshine Quotes – Dwayne

#24: No, you’re not my family! Okay? I don’t wanna be your family.

• Techniques: Repetition, exclamation

#25: I hate your fucking people! I hate you!

• Techniques: Colloquialism, emotive language, repetition

#26: Divorce? Bankrupt? Suicide? You’re fucking losers! You’re losers!

• Techniques: Declarative questions, repetition, colloquialism

#27: Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. You know, school, then college, then work? Fuck that. 

• Techniques: Metaphor, colloquialism, listing

#28: If I wanna fly, I’ll find a way to fly.

• Techniques: Epiphora

 #29: You do what you love, and fuck the rest.

• Techniques: Colloquialism

#30: I don’t want these people judging Olive, fuck them!

• Techniques: Colloquilaism, exclamation

Quotes by Grandpa

#31: I coached her! I gave her the steps! I have to be there!

Techniques: Exclamation, tricolon

#32: You are the most beautiful girl in the world.

• Techniques: Superlative

#33: No! I’m madly in love with you and it’s not because of your brains or your personality. It’s because you’re beautiful, inside and out.

• Techniques: Exclamation, Cliché

#34: Olive, Richard is an idiot. I like a woman with meat on her bones.

• Techniques: Idiom

#35: You took a big chance. That took guts, and I’m proud of you.

• Techniques: Emotive language, idiom

Quotes about Winners and Losers

#36: Losers don’t get what they want. They hesitate. They make excuses. And they give up.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Anaphora, tautology

#37: No hesitating. No complaining. And no excuses.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Anaphora, tautology

#38: Now I want you to go out into the world, and I want you to be winners!

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: High modality, exclamation

#39: There are two kinds of people in this world, there’s winners, and there’s losers. Okay, you know what the difference is? Winners don’t give up.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Hypophora, juxtaposition

#40: He gave up on himself, which is something winners never do.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: High modality

#41: It’s about wanting to win. Willing yourself to win. You got to want it badder than anyone.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Colloquialism, Epistrophe

#42: ‘Now, there is no sense in entering a contest if you don’t think you’re going to win. So, do you think you can win Little Miss Sunshine? Are you going to win?”

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Aporia

#43: Sarcasm is just the sour grapes of losers trying to pull winners down to their level. That’s one of the lessons of Step Four.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Humour, internal allusion

#44: You know what a loser is? A real loser is somebody that’s so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.

• Characters: Grandpa (Speaker)
• Techniques: Hypophora

#45: Winners don’t give up. So what are we here? Are we winners, or are we losers?

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Juxtaposition

Little Miss Sunshine Quotes about Ice Cream

In ‘Little Miss Sunshine, ice cream functions as a recurring symbol representing conformity to societal standards and the pursuit of happiness.

Richard, the patriarch of the family, is a man who is obsessed with the concept of winning and losing as he dedicates his life’s work to becoming a motivational speaker.

Seeing success as the only outcome to strive for, Richard warns Olive about how eating ice cream can impact her prospects of winning her pageants as she will stand out from the slim bodies of the other girls.

As the film continues, we see Olive grow increasingly insecure in her appearance, and conversely, we see Richard start to lose faith in his strongly-held beliefs about winners and losers. After learning that Miss Florida eats ice cream, Olive regains confidence in herself, while Richard realises that the superficiality and pressures of beauty pageants exploit young girls.

During the final moments of Olive’s performance, Richard recognises that Olive’s happiness is more important than her winning the pageant, ultimately embracing individuality over conformity to societal conventions.

#46: Ice cream is made from cream, which comes from cow’s milk, and cream has a lot of fat in it.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Diacope

#47: Do you really want to eat that Olive? You see, when you eat ice cream, the fat in the ice cream becomes the fat in your body.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Hypophora, analogy

#48: So if you eat lots of ice-cream, you’re gonna become big and fat. But if you don’t, you’ll probably stay nice and skinny.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Juxtaposition

#49: Those women in Miss America, are they skinny or are they fat? I guess they don’t eat a lot of ice cream.

• Characters: Richard (Speaker)
• Techniques: Hypophora

#50: Boy, I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t want to enjoy their ice cream so early in the morning. 

• Characters: Grandpa (Speaker)
• Techniques: Colloquialism

#51: Do you eat ice cream? / Yes. My favorite is Chocolate Cherry Garcia… except technically I think it’s a frozen yogurt.

• Characters: Miss Florida (Speaker), Olive (Speaker)
• Techniques: Motif, dialogue, symbolism

#52: Mum, she eats ice cream.

• Characters: Olive (Speaker)
• Techniques: Motif, symbolism

Access 40 more quotes from Little Miss Sunshine and our downloadable list!