Summary

  • The emotional impact of Everything Everywhere All at Once comes from deeply moving quotes that explore regret, love, and acceptance.
  • The movie's focus is on the characters and their relationships, making it a relatable and profound story.
  • The quotes mix sadness with humor and thrills, creating a unique and powerful film experience.

While there are big concepts, action scenes, and wild comedy bits, there are many Everything Everywhere All at Once quotes that pack an emotional punch more effectively than any of those moments. The Best Picture winner deals with a multiversal war where reality hangs in the balance, but the real focus is on the characters and their relationships which makes it a deeply moving and relatable story. The themes of regret, love, and acceptance are all echoed in the saddest Everything Everywhere All at Once quotes that elevate the movie.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is already being hailed as one of the best movies of the 2020s and its impact goes beyond the inventive filmmaking. Its heartbreaking and profound moments come from the anguished relationship of a mother and daughter, a husband's attempts to reconnect the love in their family, and a woman's feelings that her life has passed her by. These quotes from Everything Everywhere All at Once mix the sadness of the movie with those moments of humor and thrills to create a truly unique movie.

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10 “Becky Is A Very Good Friend.”

Evelyn Quan Wang

Joy and Becky in the laundromat in Everything Everywhere All at Once

When Joy introduces Becky to Gong Gong as her girlfriend, she struggles to find the right word for “girlfriend” in Mandarin. Instead of helping her, Evelyn steps in and turns it into a disheartening scene when she says Becky is a “good friend.” Joy’s reaction says everything the audience needs to know about how hurtful that line is, as she’s obviously disappointed and understandably angered by her mom’s insensitive decision.

Though Evelyn insists she does this to make things easier, it is another sign to Joy that her mother doesn't accept who she is. The moment is only made worse by the fact that Becky has no idea what just happened. Evelyn thankfully makes up for this towards the end of the film with a proper introduction.

9 “If Nothing Matters, Then All The Pain And Guilt You Feel For Making Nothing Of Your Life Goes Away – Sucked Into A Bagel.”

Jobu Tupaki

Everything Everywhere All at Once's Jobu Tupaki is the villain of the story but one easy to understand and even sympathize with. This quote from her perfectly captures her motivation for making the black hole that’s destroying everything in the multiverse. After explaining to Evelyn how “nothing matters,” she reveals the personal impact that this realization has, underscoring how much she’s hurting by thinking she has made nothing of her life.

It’s the scene that turns the monstrous Jobu Tupaki into just another version of Joy, albeit a dangerous and seemingly omnipotent one. She carries the same pain that Evelyn’s Joy does, and this moment allows her to be seen as more than a villain hellbent on destruction.

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8 “I Saw My Life Without You. I Wish You Could Have Seen It… It Was Beautiful.”

Evelyn Quan Wang

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) in the universe where she's a movie star in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Before Evelyn is reminded of how important Waymond really is to her and how much she actually loves him, she seems to be learning all the wrong lessons. Evelyn gets a glimpse at the various universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once, including one where she chose not to marry Waymond and became a famous movie star.

Despite filing for divorce, Waymond loves Evelyn and wants their marriage to work which is why it's a gut-wrenching moment when Evelyn coldly tells him that life without him was "beautiful.” Her quote is not just sad because of Waymond’s heartbreaking reaction, but also because it highlights how much Evelyn hates her current variant. She’s too caught up in the tempting what-ifs that the multiverse offers, which prevent her from seeing the value in her own life and family.

7 “I'm Tired. I Don't Want To Hurt Anymore And For Some Reason When I'm With You, It Just Hurts The Both Of Us.”

Joy Wang

Joy Wang driving her car in Everything Everywhere All At Once

The emotional argument that takes place between Evelyn and Joy towards the end of the film is one of the most tumultuous and memorable parts of the whole epic journey. Joy admits that she’s tired of how every interaction “just hurts" the both of them, asking Evelyn to let her go. It’s a monologue that expresses just how miserable Joy is, which is why it’s so jarring to hear Evelyn reply with “okay.” It’s thankfully not how Everything Everywhere All at Once ends, as the duo begins the long road to healing and forgiveness soon after.

6 “Do You Know Why I Actually Built The Bagel? It Wasn't To Destroy Everything. It Was To Destroy Myself.”

Jobu Tupaki

Jobu Tupaki in a white room in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

The bagel in Everything Everywhere All at Once that Jobu builds is destroying the entire multiverse, but that wasn’t the goal she had in mind when she built it. She just wants a way to “finally escape” and “actually die,” inviting Evelyn to go with her so that she doesn’t “have to do it alone.” It’s a tear-jerking confession that further creates a complex villain for the story and reveals Jobu as a truly tragic figure.

She has seen too much and felt too much and, thinking that she can never be happy again, she chooses to walk into the abyss with the one person who understands her.

5 “You Have So Many Goals You Never Finished, Dreams You Never Followed. You're Living Your Worst You.”

Alpha Waymond

With so many intriguing variants of Evelyn across the multiverse, it’s hard for the protagonist to believe that she’s the only one who can save the world. Waymond’s explanation only makes her feel worse, as it turns out that she’s the worst version of herself. Since “every failure” in Evelyn’s universe “branched off into a success for another Evelyn in another life,” she’s unusually close to countless “alternate life paths,” which makes her powerful.

This is, of course, not what the offended Evelyn hears, as she’s hung up on how she’s worse than “that hot dog one.” It is a somewhere funny quote as Waymond delivers it as encouraging news rather than a biting insult. However, it speaks to the struggles of Evelyn throughout the movie that she feels inadequate and depressed with where her life has ended up.

4 “We're All Small And Stupid.”

Evelyn Quan Wang

A googly-eyed rock in Everything Everywhere All at Once

After a long time spent fighting, Evelyn and Joy both end up as rocks in a world within Everything Everywhere All at Once's multiverse where the conditions weren’t right for life to form. Joy launches into an angry rant about how humanity’s “whole deal” is to be “small and stupid.”

After detailing how people eventually realized they weren’t the center of the universe, Evelyn finishes her statement about how “every new discovery” is just a reminder of that fact. It’s a melancholic exchange, as it’s apparent that Evelyn now shares her daughter’s nihilism about the multiverse and the meaninglessness of life – this only further confirms Joy’s pessimistic outlook.

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3 “Why Not Go Somewhere Where Your Daughter Is More Than Just This?”

Joy Wang

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) looking distressed outside their laundromat in Everything Everywhere All At Once

During her climactic argument with her mother, Joy can’t believe that Evelyn would choose her over multiversal possibilities, reminding her that she could be “anything, anywhere.” She starts crying when she asks why Evelyn would want to be with a version of her daughter who is “just this.” It’s an incredibly sad quote that reflects her insecurities and deepest fears. Joy wrongly believes that she is a disappointment, even though she’s actually the most important person in the world to Evelyn, who would risk her life traveling through the multiverse to save her.

2 “I Have Felt Everything Your Daughter Has Felt And I Know The Joy And The Pain Of Having You As My Mother.”

Jobu Tupaki

Joy looking glum beside a washing machine in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Evelyn finally understands who Jobu really is when she says her spine-chilling Everything Everywhere All at Once quote about how “every version of Joy is Jobu Tupaki.” This means that everything Joy has felt across the multiverse, including "the pain" of having Evelyn as her mother, is somewhere inside Jobu. It’s obvious how much hurt, guilt, and anger she carries in the way she says the haunting line. It is also clear where this pain comes from, as the complicated mother-and-daughter relationship is still at its worst point at that moment.

1 “So, Even Though You Have Broken My Heart Yet Again, I Wanted To Say, In Another Life, I Would Have Really Liked Just Doing Laundry And Taxes With You.”

Waymond Wang

After listening to Evelyn reject him and callously say that she doesn’t want to keep “going around in circles,” the successful variant of Waymond reminds her that he’s a fighter through a brilliant monologue. This variant gets some of the best quotes in Everything Everywhere All at Once, with this one being among the saddest in the entire film.

The final line he says is brutally honest and deeply emotional, as it highlights how different his perspective is from Evelyn's. Unlike her, he’s more than content and happy to live his life doing supposedly menial tasks like “laundry and taxes” – they become special because she was there with him.

  • everything everywhere all at once
    Everything Everywhere All at Once
    Summary:
    Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the film is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can't seem to finish her taxes.
    Release Date:
    2022-03-25
    Cast:
    Jenny Slate, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Harry Shum Jr., Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, Michelle Yeoh
    Director:
    Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
    Genres:
    Adventure, Comedy, Action
    Rating:
    R
    Runtime:
    132 minutes
    Writers:
    Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan
    Budget:
    14.3–25 million