Mal: Because we are so ... very ... pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die.

Wash: Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Mal: I don't believe there is a power in the 'verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.

Wash: Sweetie, we're crooks. If everything were right, we'd be in jail.

Jayne: 10 percent of nothing is -- let me do the math here -- nothing into nothing, carry the --

Book: Captain, you mind if I say grace?
Mal: Only if you say it out loud.

Jayne: Here's a little concept I been workin' on. Why don't we shoot her first?

Mal: Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.

Mal: You've only got to scare him.
Jayne: Pain is scary.

Zoe: If they take the ship they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

Mal: How come you didn't turn on me, Jayne?
Jayne: Money wasn't good enough.
Mal: What happens when it is?
Jayne: Well, that'll be an interesting day.
Mal: Imagine it will.

Mal: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.

Mal: Had a good day.
Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals and savages... half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded including yourself, and you're harboring known fugitives.
Mal: We're still flying.
Simon: That's not much.
Mal: It's enough.

Mal: Kaylee, what the hell's goin' on in the engine room? Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?

Jayne: Time for some thrilling heroics.

Jayne: Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in ruttin' command here.

Mal: We're not thieves...but we are thieves. Point is, we're not taking what's his.

Wash: Oh my god. What can it be? We're all doomed! Who's flying this thing!? Oh right, that would be me. Back to work.

Mal: It's a real burden, being right so often.

Harken: You fought with Captain Reynolds in the war?
Zoe: Fought with a lot of people in the war.
Harken: And your husband?
Zoe: Fight with him sometimes, too.

Mal: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

Zoe: Planet's coming up a mite fast.
Wash: That's just cause, I'm going down too quick. Likely crash and kill us all.
Mal: Well, that happens, let me know.

Badger: You think you're better than other people.
Mal: Just the ones I'm better than.

Kaylee: Is that him?
Mal: That's the buffet table.
Kaylee: Well how can we be sure, unless we question it?

Wash: You're acting captain. Know what happens you fall asleep now?
Zoe: Jayne slits my throat, and takes over.

Mal: And I think calling him that is an insult to the psychotic low-life community.

Mal: My work's illegal, but at least it's honest.

Mal: I never back down from a fight.
Inara: Yes, you do! You do all the time!
Mal: Well, yeah ... but, I'm not backing down from this one.

Mal: See how I'm not punching him? I think I've grown.

River: The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Mal: See, morbid and creepifying, I got no problem with, long as she does it quiet-like.

River: They weren't cows inside. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see the sky, and they remember what they are.
Mal: Is it bad that what she said made perfect sense to me?

Jayne: "Dear Diary, Today I was pompous and my sister was crazy." "Today, we were kidnapped by hill folk never to be seen again. It was the best day ever."

Zoe: Captain will come up with a plan.
Kaylee: That's good. Right?
Zoe: Possibly you're not recalling some of his previous plans.

Mal: What's "sanguine" mean?
Zoe: "Sanguine." Hopeful. Plus, point of interest, it also means "bloody."
Mal: Well, that pretty much covers all the options, don't it?

Mal: Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?
Zoe: Big damn heroes, sir.
Mal: Ain't we just!

Mal: If your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty flowered bonnet, I will end you.

Jayne: You got a wife? All I got is that dumbass stick sounds like its raining.

Kaylee: Don't feel bad - he makes everybody cry. He's like a monster.
Mal: I am *not* a monster!

Mal: And don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! You got the right same as anyone to live and try to kill people.

Book: If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre.

Zoe: Remember that sex we were planning to have, ever again?

Mal: Well, my days of taking you seriously are coming to a middle.

Saffron: You're good.
Inara: You're amazing. Who are you?
Saffron: Malcolm Reynold's widow.

Simon: I swear when it's appropriate.
Kaylee: Simon, the whole point of swearing is that it ain't appropriate.

Kaylee: What's so damn important about bein' proper? It don't mean nothin' out here in the black.
Simon: It means more out here. It's all I have.

River: Fixing your Bible.
Book: What?
River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense.

Jayne: You guys had a riot? On account of me? A real riot?

Wash: We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm the hero!

Simon: You know, I've saved lives. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. I reattached a girl's leg. Her whole leg. She named her hamster after me. I got a hamster. He drops a box of money, he gets a town.

Jayne: You think there's someone just going to drop money on you?! Money they could use?! Well, there ain't people like that. There's just people like me.

Mal: Ship like this, be with you until the day you die.
Zoe: That's because it's a deathtrap.

Zoe: Get her running again?
Mal: Yeah.
Zoe: So not running now?
Mal: Not so much. But she will.

Jayne: Yeah, 'cos sick people are hi-larious.

Simon: If you don't let me through, she could die.
Jayne: I let you through -- we all die.

Mal: I need that in Captain Dummy mode, Kaylee.
Kaylee: We're dead in the water.

Simon: I always thought the name Serenity had a vaguely funereal sound to it.

Jayne: Hey! What do you two think you're doing? Fightin' at a time like this. You'll use up all the air!

Kaylee: Sometimes a thing gets broke, can't be fixed.

Mal: I'm not leaving Serenity.
Inara: Mal, you don't have to die alone.
Mal: Everyone dies alone.

Mal: Well. Looks can be deceiving.
Jayne: Not as deceiving as a low down dirty ... deceiver.

Wash: You know, it's all very sweet. Stealing from the rich, selling to the poor.

Mal: It's the Core. Everyone's rich and happy here, why wouldn't they smile?

Zoe: Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to enjoy the moment.

Inara: What's going on here?
Kaylee: Oh, let's see ... We killed Simon and River, stole a bunch of medicine, and now Zoe and the Captain are off springing the others that got snatched by the feds.

Jaye: What're you taking this so personal for? It ain't like I ratted you out to the feds.
Mal: Oh, but you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me.

Mal: The next time you decide to stab me in the back, do it to my face.

Book: I'd forgotten you're moonlighting as a criminal mastermind now. Got your next heist planned?
Simon: No. But I'm thinking about growing a big black mustache. I'm a traditionalist.

Mal: About fifty percent of the human race is middle men and they don't take kindly to being eliminated.

Zoe: Right. Because what this marriage needs is one more shouting match.
Wash: No, what this marriage needs is one less husband. Right now it's kind of crowded.

River: I function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away. The sun goes dark and chaos has come again.

Wash: I've been in a firefight. Well, I was in a fire. Actually, I was fired from a fry-cook opportunity.

Mal: There's plenty of my orders she didn't obey.
Wash: Name one.
Mal: She married you!

Wash: He's insane.
Zoe: I know it.
Wash: I mean, you've told the damn stories. Saved you in the war. I didn't know ...

Zoe: Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?
Book: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

Zoe: It's like throwing a dart, Jayne, and hitting a bulls-eye 6,000 miles away. That's my man.

Simon: I've never shot anyone before.
Book: I was there, son. I'm fair sure you haven't shot anyone yet.

River: No power in the 'verse can stop me.

Saffron: Relax. I'm not going for a gun or anything. Just freshening up.
Mal: You and lipstick is a dangerous combination, as I recall.

Mal: All right, no one's killing folk today, on account of our very tight schedule.

Saffron: He's my husband.
Mal: Well, who in the damn galaxy ain't?

Saffron: I tried. I actually tried. I thought, "This is a decent man. The genuine article."
Mal: A working man, struggling to get by with the barest necessities on his private floating island ...

Saffron: I should've killed Durran.
Mal: Right. The one guy that don't have it coming. The man who knows you and still loves you, treachery and all. Can't have him walking about.

Mal: I saw you without your clothes on once. I never thought I'd see you naked.

Saffron: You won't tell anyone about me breaking down?
Mal: I won't.
Saffron: Then I won't tell anyone how easily I got your gun out of your holster.
Mal: I'll take that as a kindness.

River: Also, I can kill you with my brain.

Inara: Should I start with the part where you're stranded in the middle of nowhere, or the part where you have no clothes?

Simon: This may come as a shock, but I'm actually not very good at talking to girls.
Zoe: Why, is there someone you *are* good at talking to?

Jayne: What'd you all order a dead guy for?

Zoe: First rule of battle, little one. Don't ever let 'em know where you are.
Mal: Whoo-hoo! I'm right here! I'm right here! You want some of me? Yeah, you do! Come on! Come on!
Zoe: Of course, there are other schools of thought...

Mal: Everybody dies, Tracey. Somebody's carrying a bullet for you right now and doesn't even know it. The trick is to die of old age before it finds you.

Tracy: You know, it's funny. We went to the war not looking to come back, but it's the real world I couldn't survive.

Tracy: You two carried me through that war. Now I need you to carry me just a little bit further. If you can.

Mal: Using corpses for smuggling is a time-honored repulsive custom.

Tracy: Zoe got married?
Kaylee: Yeah.
Tracy: Yeah, next you'll be telling me she smiles and has emotions.

Tracy: That call means you just murdered me.
Mal: No, son. You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while.

Tracy: 'When you can't run, you crawl ... and when you can't crawl, when you can't do that--'
Zoe: 'You find someone to carry you.'

Mal: You know, not altogether wise, sneaking up on a fella when he's handling his weapon.

Jayne: 'Cause I don't know these folks. Don't much care to.
Mal: They're whores.
Jayne: I'm in.

Jayne: Oh, my John Thomas is gonna pop off and fly around the room, there's so much tasty here.
Wash: Would be you get your most poetical about your pecker.

Kaylee: Everyone's got somebody. Wash, tell me I'm pretty.
Wash: Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion.
Kaylee: Cause I'm pretty?
Wash: Cause you're pretty.

Mal: Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God.

Mal: Well, lady, I must say -- You're my kinda stupid.

Zoe: I don't give a good gorram about relevant, Wash. Or objective. And I ain't so afraid of losing something that I ain't gonna try to have it. You and I would make one beautiful baby. And I want to meet that child one day. Period.

Mal: Miss Nandi, I have a confession to make.
Nandi: Maybe I should get the Shepherd.
Mal: Well, I ain't sinned yet, and I'd feel a little more than awkward having him here when I did.

Nandi: Malcolm, I been waiting for you to kiss me since I showed you my guns.

Wash: Come on, Kaylee. We all know I'm the funny one.

Inara: This is just a moment in time, step aside and let it happen.

Jayne: Looks like we got some imminent violence!

Book: I don't give half a hump if you're innocent or not. So where does that put you?

River: It's just an object. It doesn't mean what you think.

Mal: We're deep in space, corner of No and Where.

Wash: Little River just gets more colorful by the minute. What will she do next?
Zoe: Either blow us up or rub soup in her hair. It's a toss-up.
Wash: I hope she does the soup thing. It's always a hoot, and we don't all die from it.

Jayne: Let's move this conversation in a not-Jayne's-fault direction?

Jayne: What? She killed 'em with mathematics.

Wash: Yes, Jayne. She's a witch. She has had congress with the beast.
Jayne: She's in Congress?

Wash: That sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoe: You live on a spaceship, dear.

Jayne: Well, I don't like the idea of someone hearin' what I'm thinkin'.
Inara: No one likes the idea of hearing what you're thinking.

Early: So is it still her room when it's empty? Does the room, the thing, have purpose?

Early: You oughta be shot. Or stabbed. Lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?

Simon: I can't keep track of her when she's not incorporeally possessing a space ship. Don't look at me.

Early: You folks are all insane.
Simon: Well, my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

Mal: You know, you ain't quite right.
River: It's a popular theory.

Mal: Give your brother a thrashing for messing up your plan.
River: He takes so much looking after.