The King of the Hill Quotes Page: "Cotton's Plot"
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Quotes from "Cotton's Plot"
Written by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger
Directed by Anthony Lioi
DOCTOR: Now, Peggy, don't expect to be 100% right away. It's likely your muscles have atrophied.
PEGGY: Well, what you don't know, doctor, is that every day since the accident, I have been doing asymmetric butt-clenches.
RAMSEY: I'm your physical therapist, and I am going to have you -- (consults chart) -- walking again in no time.
PEGGY: You will?
RAMSEY: Sure. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. A month -- way too soon.
PEGGY: Oh.
RAMSEY: Don't be so tough on yourself. Nobody spends six weeks in a cast without their body going a little soft. But that's okay. Water's soft too, but give it time and it'll carve the Grand Canyon. Now, that didn't take a day, a week, or even a month. It took over two hundred years.
PEGGY: The Grand Canyon took millions of years.
RAMSEY: You're going to have to learn to trust me, Mrs. Hill. We're going to be working together, an hour at a time, once a week, for as long as it takes to carve you a Grand Canyon. We're going to do this drop by drop. Are you with me?
PEGGY: Well, all right, I guess. Okay. Let's do it.
RAMSEY: Great! See you next week.
COTTON: Tojo had me cooped up in a bamboo rat cage. There was nothing to eat except rats. So that's what I ate. After two weeks I was down to my last rat. I let him live so I could eat his droppings. Called it "Jungle Rice." Tasted fine. About September, I was finally thin enough to slip between the bamboo bars. I strangled the guard with a rope made of grated rat-tails, and ran to safety.
COTTON: What are you on your knees for, woman? Prayin' ain't gonna help! If God loved you, he'd have opened your sissy-chute!
PEGGY: Teach me to walk.
COTTON: You ready to hate me more than you ever hated anyone in your life?
PEGGY: I already do.
COTTON: Then we're halfway there.
COTTON: Look at you, all high and mighty, sittin' in that wheelchair like some Franklin D. Eleanor Roosevelt!
COTTON: Tojo had a machine gun nest high up on a hill, and my whole unit pinned down. So I snuck myself behind enemy lines in a fi'ty-five gallon drum of sake. Held my breath until they was good and drunk, and then I jumped out, spittin' out the whole end of my supply. Yep, I hibachi'd the whole squad.
COTTON: Guam, 1944. I crawled through a minefield to retrieve General MacArthur's corn-cob pipe.
DIDI: Colonel, I think the baby's crying.
COTTON: Good job. Those parenting classes are startin' to pay off.
DIDI: Thank you.
COTTON: Meet the greatest collection of soldiers this country has ever known: Stinky, Fatty, Stinky, Brooklyn, Stinky, Brooklyn, Fatty, Fatty, and Doc. Oh, and Irwin Linker.
PEGGY: Hank, he is not torturing me. He is inspiring me. And with his help, Peggy Hill is doing things I could never have done on her own.
PEGGY: Oh, God, it was all lies! Why did I ever believe him? Why did I ever believe I could walk?
HANK: Oh, come on, Peggy. So I was right. That's not important now.
PEGGY: He may rot in hell, but he will not rot in the Texas State Cemetary.
DALE: Colonel, from your dress and demeanor, can I assume you are about to take your own life in a cheap motel room with your service revolver?
PEGGY: What was I thinking? Munich? Rat-tails? He is no hero. He was just torturing me. He is a complete fraud.
HANK: (mutters to himself)
PEGGY: What are you muttering? Are you actually trying to defend him?
HANK: I said that fraud used to be six foot four.
PEGGY: So?
HANK: When he came back from the Pacific, he was five foot even. A Japanese machine gun blew away his shins. The doctor said he'd never walk again. Eighteen months later, my father walked right over to that doctor, reached up, and punched him in the kidneys. Now, I can't prove what he did at those battles. In fact, I'm not even sure if the part about hitting the doctor is true. But I do know this: my father doesn't have shins, and somehow he walks. And that's pretty heroic to me. And that's what I was muttering.
DIDI: It's a lovely grave, Cotton. You deserve it.
COTTON: You get to the top of that hill, and I'll let you dance on my grave!