How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from When Harry Met Sally.
Quote #1
HARRY: Of course she wants to stay. Wouldn't you rather be with Humphrey Bogart than the other guy?
SALLY: I don't want to spend the rest of my life in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar. I probably sound very snobbish to you but I don't.
HARRY: You'd rather be in a passionless marriage. […] Than live with the man you've had the greatest sex of you life with, and just because he owns a bar and that is all he does.
SALLY: Yes. And so had any woman in her right mind, woman are very practical, even Ingrid Bergman, which is why she gets on the plane at the end of the movie.
Way to generalize about your own gender, Sally. Her argument here—about the ending of Casablanca, of course—is that no woman in her right (and practical) mind would ever choose a lifetime married to a barkeep when she could be married to the awesome and noble Victor Laszlo. What's really interesting, though, is that she changes her mind later in the movie. Maybe women aren't so practical after all, Sally?
Quote #2
HARRY: What I'm saying is... and this is not a come-on in any way, shape, or form, is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
SALLY: That's not true, I have a number of men friends and there's no sex involved.
HARRY: No you don't.
SALLY: Yes I do.
According to Harry, gender matters in friendship. Men and women can't be friends—not because they're super different, but because men always want to sleep with women. Setting aside that stereotype for a moment, we have to ask: is there a reason you can't actually be friends with someone you want to sleep with? Hmm. Food for thought, no?
Quote #3
SALLY: I said to myself, "You deserve more than this, you're thirty-one years old..."
MARIE: And the clock is ticking.
SALLY: No the clock doesn't really start to tick until you're thirty-six.
Tick tock, ladies. Here, Sally and Marie point out one of the tricky parts of being a single lady: the old biological clock. The movie doesn't make much of Sally's decision to have—or not to have—kids except for one scene, but this brief moment reminds us that on some level, as a woman who wants kids, it's got to be in the back of her mind.