Cornell researchers striving to understand memorable movie quotes
(PhysOrg.com) -- Why do some movie quotes stand out and stick not just in our minds, but in the minds of many? “I’ll be back,” spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator movie, for example, or “Make my day,” whispered by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Such phrases become part of our collective culture, used by many long after the movie itself has become old news. But why, that’s what Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and colleagues at Cornell want to know, so much so that they’ve undertaken a serious study of the matter, and have, oddly enough, come up with some interesting ideas, as they describe in their paper pre-published on arXiv, to help explain in a general sense, what happens when say, Renée Zellweger offers the line “You had me at hello,” in the otherwise forgettable movie Jerry Maguire.