Donnie Darko (2001)

Drew Barrymore: Karen Pomeroy

Photos 

Quotes 

• [from the Extended and Deleted Scenes. The class is discussing "Watership Down"] 

  Karen Pommeroy : When the other rabbits hear of Fiver's vision, do they believe him?

  Donnie : Why should we care?

  Karen Pommeroy : Because the rabbits are us, Donnie.

  Donnie : Why should I mourn for a rabbit like it was human?

  Karen Pommeroy : Are you saying that the death of one species is less tragic than another?

  Donnie : Of course. The rabbit's not like us. It has no history books, no photographs, no knowledge of sorrow or regret. I mean, I'm sorry, Miss Pommeroy. Don't get me wrong. You know, I like rabbits and all. They're cute and they're horny. And if you're cute and you're horny, then you're probably happy that you don't know who you are or why you're even alive. You just wanna have sex as many times as possible before you die. I just don't see the point in crying over a dead rabbit, you know, who never even feared death to begin with.

• Karen Pommeroy : This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that "cellar door" is the most beautiful.

• Karen Pommeroy : The children have to save themselves these days because the parents have no clue.

• Gretchen : Um, where do I sit?

  Karen Pommeroy : Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest.

  [the class gasps] 

  Karen Pommeroy : Quiet! Let her choose.

• Karen Pommeroy : [to Principal Cole]  I don't think that you have a clue what it's like to communicate with these kids. And we are losing them to apathy, to this prescribed nonsense. They are slipping away.

• Donnie : So, what do I tell the other kids when they ask about you?

  Karen Pommeroy : Tell them that everything is gonna be just fine.

• Karen Pommeroy : [reading "The Destructors"]  "It was as though this plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his 15th year crystallized with the pain of puberty."

• [Pommeroy is reading to the class from the 1954 short story "The Destructors" by Graham Greene] 

  Karen Pommeroy : "There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the Barrow Boys would hear with respect of how Old Misery's house had been destroyed. It was as though this plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his 15th year crystallized with the pain of puberty." What is Graham Greene trying to communicate with this passage? Why did the children break into Old Misery's House? Joanie?

  Joanie James : They wanted to rob him.

  Karen Pommeroy : Joanie, if you had actually read the short story, which, at a whopping 13 pages, would have kept you up all night, you would know that the children find a great deal of money in the mattress, but they burn it.