The Best Movie Lines to Use to Break Up with Someone

Hey, it worked for Humphrey Bogart.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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The breakup speech is always difficult to formulate. Depending on the state of your relationship, and whether not you'd actually like to keep that person in your life, some dumpings require more delicate words than others. Sure, there's always the go-to, "I don't think this is working" or "It's not you, it's me" line, but only a daft idiot wouldn't see that as bullshit.

Put a little thought into yours. Demonstrate care. Be creative. Use these break-up lines from movies as inspiration, or just rip them off entirely. Either way, they're a lot more inspired than, "It's over." 

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"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." —Rooney Mara as Erica Albright in The Social Network (2010)

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"Into the mud, scum queen!" —Steve Martin as Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr in The Man with Two Brains (1983)

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"If I want to be a Senator, I need to marry a Jackie, not a Marilyn." —Matthew Davis as Warner in Legally Blonde (2001)

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"Because. When I watch you eat. When I see you asleep. When I look at you lately, I just want to smash your face in." —Kathleen Turner as Barbara Rose in War of the Roses (1989)

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"Hey, psycho, we're not gonna discuss this, OK? It's over. Please get out of my Van Halen T-shirt before you jinx the band and they break up." —Adam Sandler as Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer (1998)

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"I just...I just woke up one day and I knew...what I was never sure of with you." —Zooey Deschanel as Summer in (500) Days of Summer (2009)

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"I'm fucking crawling out of my skin. I should've left you at the flea market." —Kate Winslet as Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

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"I don't care if you wake up in a ditch with grown men shitting on you and jumping on top of your head. Maybe your nose will turn into a big ol' dick and you can stroke that all the time. I hope your hair turns into dog shit one day. You wake up and you run your comb through it and all that it is, is little trundles of dog shit. The worst shit that you could imagine. AIDS...it's cool. Everything comes around, sweetheart." —Danny McBride as Fred Simmons in The Foot Fist Way (2006)

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"I don't know how to say goodbye. I can't think of any words." —Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday (1953)

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"I made up a new dance. It's called the Move on with Your Life." —Will Ferrell as Sky Corrigan in Superstar (1999)

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"We should break up or whatever." —Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (2009)

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"You don't even know how much you'll miss me." —Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983)

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"You...you're a bad person. Like, all the way through to your core." —Ed Helms as Stu in The Hangover (2009)

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"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." —Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939)

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"You're immature, Fielding...emotionally, sexually, and intellectually." —Louise Lasser as Nancy in Bananas (1971)

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"I don't feel anything, isn't that great! I never thought about how I would feel, I only ever thought about you. I only wanted to make you happy. I never thought I was good enough for you.... But Alex, you're not good enough for me!" —Barbra Streisand as Rose Morgan in The Mirror Has Two Face (1996)

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"I'm not going back in there again, not this time, never going back, never." —Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

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"You think I don't appreciate art? You think I don't understand fashion? You think I'm not hip? You think I'm pathetic? A nerd? A lard-ass fatso? You think I'm shit? Well, you're wrong, 'cause I'm champagne and you're shit. Until the day you die, you, not me, will always be shit." —Jon Lovitz as Andy Kornbluth in Happiness (1988)

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"You're at it again, you're running the game. I'm not gonna play second fiddle to that. I'm sick and I'm tired of starting a row and I'm telling you now that we're through." —Vivian Blaine as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls (1955)

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"I won't play the sap for you." —Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

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"I'm letting you go 'cause if we stay together, Will, we're gonna be miserable. I'm gonna hold you back from all these incredible dreams that you have. And then eventually you're totally gonna hate me for it." —Elizabeth Banks as Emily in Definitely, Maybe (2008)

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"My desert island, all-time, top-five most memorable breakups, in chronological order, are as follows: Alison Ashmore; Penny Hardwick; Jackie Alden; Charlie Nicholson; and Sarah Kendrew. Those were the ones that really hurt. Can you see your name on that list, Laura? Maybe you'd sneak into the top 10. But there's just no room for you in the top five, sorry. Those places are reserved for the kind of humiliation and heartbreak you're just not capable of delivering." —John Cusack as Rob in High Fidelity (2000)

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"It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed...like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain...and love." —William Holden as Max Schumacher in Network (1976)

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"I'd rather be his whore than your wife.'' —Kate Winslet as Rose in Titanic (1997)

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"I don't know who you are. I don't know what we've been playing at. So I was crying. Because I don't know if I love you any more. And I don't know what I'm going to do without that." —Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett in Ordinary People (1980)

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"I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that." —Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942)

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"I was gonna listen to that, but then, um, I just carried on living my life." —Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

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"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'OK, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." —Paul Varjak as George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

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"If staying here means working within 10 yards of you, frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse." —Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

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"Listen, Coop—last night was really great. You were incredibly romantic and heroic, no doubt about it. And that's great. But I've thought about it, and my thing is this: Andy is really hot. And I like you more than I like Andy, Coop, but I'm 16. And maybe it'll be a different story when I'm ready to get married, but right now, I am entirely about sex. I just wanna take him and grab him and fuck his brains out, ya know? So that's where my priorities are right now. Sex. Specifically with Andy and not with you." —Marguerite Moreau as Katie in Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

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"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." —Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in Annie Hall (1977)

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