When people talk about Gilmore Girls, they’re amazed by how fast Lauren Graham’s infamous character Lorelai talks and they think that she’s one of the most hilarious TV characters. She jokes about motherhood, coffee, and popular culture, and always has a clever comment up her sleeve. She honestly never passes up the chance for a good rant.
But there is another character on this show who says funny and smart things, too, and that’s Lorelai’s sweet daughter Rory. Like mother, like daughter: the two characters both enjoy junk food, coffee, and funny quips. Rory’s quotes definitely deserve a lot more credit than they usually get. Here are the 10 most underrated quotes from Rory Gilmore.
10. “I’m going to a serious school now, I need serious paper.”
This is a Rory Gilmore quote from the fourth episode of season one called “The Deer Hunters” and it couldn’t possibly describe Rory’s character more perfectly.
Rory is always going to be the girl who cares deeply about the kind of paper that she buys and uses. She’s always going to make sure that she does a great job, no matter what. (Let’s forget about the time when the Netflix revival A Year In The Life came out and Rory’s career wasn’t going super well…) Only Rory would call paper “serious” or even have a descriptor for it at all.
9. “He’s like the lost Farrelly brother. He’s so stupid. He watched The Breakfast Club and decided to tape his own butt cheeks together.”
After noticing that Luke has hired an old classmate of hers to work at Luke’s Diner, Rory makes this joke. It’s so amazing (and so underrated) because we’re not always expecting Rory to be so hilarious and so sardonic.
Most of the time, it’s Lorelai who is making comments like this about other people, and Rory is telling her to be nicer and calm down. Rory is the sensible one, right? This quote is a good reminder that Rory has a great, sometimes biting sense of humor and is a lot like her mom that way (besides just sharing her enjoyment of coffee).
8. “My sock drawer could be a better mother than Courtney Love.”
Rory Gilmore strikes again, this time with a great burn and also a great pop culture reference. She says this quote to Lane in the season seven episode “That’s What You Get, Folks, for Makin’ Whoopee.” While of course this isn’t the best season of Gilmore Girls and many fans like to say that it doesn’t exist, there are still some pretty good lines in this batch of episodes.
This Rory Gilmore quote is underrated and deserves to be in the spotlight as it’s really clever. When we imagine what Rory would say to Lane when she learns that she’s pregnant, this isn’t exactly what we would expect, which makes it such a funny line.
7. “I live in two worlds: one is a world of books.”
Rory Gilmore says this amazing line in her high school graduation speech (yup, the famous scene when Lorelai and Sookie pretended not to cry and Luke admitted that he was sobbing). Rory says “I live in two worlds: one is a world of books” and she is never more relatable than in this moment.
Chances are, many of us feel this way and we’re big-time readers just like Rory Gilmore. It’s really nice to see that in a TV character. It’s honestly tough to think of someone else who not only loves to read but literally talks about books and stories on a fairly regular basis.
6. “Oh, I found that if I focus too much on one subject, I start to get a little punchy.”
Gilmore Girls fans may focus on Lorelai’s famous quotes like “Oy with the poodles already” but we’re going to say that some of Rory’s lines deserve as much love. This one in particular is really great.
“Oh, I found that if I focus too much on one subject, I start to get a little punchy. This way, when I hit Bolshevik Revolution overload, I just shift over here and, oh, hello, Anne Boleyn is going down, and then when that gets too depressing, it’s right over to calculus.”
Rory says this in the season three episode “Here Comes The Son.” What makes this quote so special? It’s funny but it also tells us everything that we need to know about Rory’s personality. She honestly loves studying more than anything else, and she’s worked out a system that sounds pretty good.
5. “God, you’re like a pop-up book from hell!”
This is quite possibly Rory’s most hilarious quote, and she says it to Paris, which makes it even better. Isn’t this the perfect way to describe Paris? She’s always moving around super quickly and getting into people’s faces.
Rory says this quote in the season two episode “Like Mother, Like Daughter” (and we can picture her mom saying this, too, that’s for sure). It’s really cool to see Rory start standing up for herself in general (and standing up to Paris in particular). She’s just as smart as Paris (if not more since she’s a bit more street smart and a bit less sheltered) and she deserves to be at Chilton.
4. “Well, that’s better than a bun in your oven.”
In the season four episode “Luke Can See Her Face” Lorelai says “There’s a cat on my doorstep” and Rory responds, “Well, that’s better than a bun in your oven.”
This is another amazing quote from Rory that we would honestly think Lorelai had said instead. It’s another example of how funny Rory can be. Sure, she’s often a lot more serious than this, and she’s always focused on doing well at Chilton and getting into Harvard (then Yale), but sometimes she surprises us and comes up with a joke like this one. This quote also gets major points since not many daughters would joke about their moms getting pregnant.
3. “You never socialized me properly, I should hate you right now. Do something to make me hate you.”
Rory says this to Lorelai in the season four premiere, “The Lorelais’ First Day At Yale.” It’s definitely one of Rory’s most underrated quotes and should get a lot more credit because it’s so hilarious and has so much truth to it.
Rory is nervous about starting college and realizes that she’s not used to making small talk with strangers or attending parties or basically doing anything that is super social. After all, she has grown up with a single mom, and that means she has spent a lot of time talking to grown-ups. She also hasn’t had a ton of friends and while she learns to get along with Paris and some other girls at Chilton, Rory’s only true friend is Lane.
2. “One of those moments that everything is so perfect and so wonderful that you almost feel sad because nothing can ever be this good again.”
In the season one episode “Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers,” Rory Gilmore says this quote to Dean during a super romantic scene. Well, it starts off romantic and then, as all Gilmore Girls fans know all too well, leads to Dean breaking up with Rory.
After Dean fixes up a car for their three months of dating, Rory says that this is such a “perfect moment” and this is one of her most perfect quotes. It’s also one of Rory’s most underrated quotes. Sure, Lorelai is funny and she quips about coffee or whatever situation is in front of her, but Rory has some really intelligent and deep things to say about the world around her. Everyone can relate to what Rory is saying here.
1. “I’m gonna have to quit drinking coffee! And I love coffee! I really love coffee!”
It’s definitely true that Rory inherited her deep love of coffee from Lorelai, but Rory loves this beverage just as much as her mom does. And she proves it with this quote from episode 11 of season six, “The Perfect Dress.”
Rory goes to meet with a therapist and talks about her stressful relationship with Logan. She tells all about stealing a yacht and how he dated someone else while they were supposedly “on a break” (just like Rachel and Ross on Friends). Rory says, “I don’t think I can take running into him every day in the halls, and in the paper and the coffee cart” and then laments having to give up coffee. It’s pure Rory: funny, sweet, and adorable.
