"Makes me look the way I feel."
This quote is in response to Baxter’s noticing that Fran's compact mirror for applying makeup is cracked. She dejectedly tells him that she likes the crack because it reflects how she sees herself. The fractured reflection is reflective of the confused and negative self-image that Fran has of herself. For Baxter, her admission has a second layer of meaning: the revelation of the broken mirror is what clues him in to the fact that she is Sheldrake’s kept mistress, which fractures how he sees her as well. She is not only his office crush, but his boss's mistress.
"Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were."
Baxter is addressing these words to Fran. The analogy is hardly perfect, but it is a romantic assertion of how he feels about the unique elevator girl. Baxter feels helpless in his life as a corporate drone, but meeting Fran has transformed his outlook and given him a new lease on life. Fran is a breath of fresh air in Baxter's otherwise limpid and uninspired existence, and he expresses this to her here.
"When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara."
Fran says this to Mr. Sheldrake on Christmas Eve, after confronting him about the fact that his secretary Ms. Olsen told her that he is a player in the office. Fran feels as though she has been used, and she feels naive to have expected Sheldrake to leave his wife for her. Sobbing, she playfully notes that she shouldn't wear mascara while dating a married man, because the situation was always bound to make her cry, thus making her mascara run.
"I've decided to become a mensch. You know what that means? A human being."
Baxter says this to Sheldrake after formally announcing his resignation from the company. In this moment, Baxter is finally choosing to follow his sense of what is right, and no longer feels comfortable loaning out his apartment to greedy and sexually irresponsible executives. He echoes Dr. Dreyfuss' encouragement from earlier in the film to "be a mensch." Even though Sheldrake has no idea what he's talking about, Baxter feels righteous and confident in his intention to become a "human being," someone who is more ethically responsible, emotionally connected, and invested in doing the right thing.
"Some people take, some people get took. And they know they're getting took and there's nothing they can do about it."
While she is recovering from her overdose at Baxter's apartment, Fran says this about Mr. Sheldrake. Looking at Sheldrake's irresponsible and unkind behavior, she makes this broader assessment about how the hierarchy of mankind works. In the dog-eat-dog corporate world that both she and Baxter work, there are inevitably people who "take"—i.e. are more selfish—and some people who get exploited. In this quote, Fran implies that she and Baxter are the kinds of people who get exploited rather than the kinds of people who enjoy power and influence.
"No, sir, it's very unfair... Especially to your wife."
When Sheldrake complains to Baxter about the fact that he thinks it's unfair that Fran expects him to divorce his wife and marry her, Baxter offers this subtly witty and ironic line. He slyly suggests that while Sheldrake thinks that Fran's expectation that he marry her is inconvenient to him, it is even more unfair to Mrs. Sheldrake, who doesn't even know that her husband is having an affair. In effect, Baxter is suggesting that it is hypocritical for Sheldrake to talk about unfairness, when he is the one who is being the most unfair by having an extramarital affair.
"Shut up and deal."
These are the final words in the movie. Baxter declares his love for Fran, after she has left Sheldrake and come to his apartment on New Years' Eve. She does not echo his words of his love, but instead says this. This leaves the ending somewhat open-ended. While we know what Baxter's feelings are towards Fran, we do not quite know how she feels about him, and she keeps it ambiguous in this moment. While the viewer might expect her to return his profession of love with an "I love you too," she instead tells him to "shut up and deal," referring to the game of gin rummy that she has initiated. The instruction is clearly affectionate rather than overtly hostile, but it keeps her perspective vague and unclear, which ends the film on an open-ended note. While we assume that the two lovers will come together in a relationship (she just ran to his house on New Years' Eve, after all), this inconclusive line keeps Baxter guessing, in a romantic and cute kind of way, that is.
"I just have this talent for falling in love with the wrong guy in wrong place at the wrong time."
Fran confides this to Baxter while she is recovering at his apartment, in reference to her disappointing affair with the unfeeling Sheldrake. With this line, she references a longer pattern in her life, the fact that she is often drawn and attracted to unavailable and unkind men who do not treat her well. We do not know that much about Fran, but here she exhibits a revealing self awareness, and references her own neuroses to her caretaker, Baxter, who will turn out to have many of the same neuroses.
"That's how it crumbles... you know, cookie-wise!"
When Sheldrake complains to Fran about the fact that Baxter resigned from his position at the company, she says this to him. It echoes something that Baxter said to earlier. When she wondered earlier why she could never fall in love with a nice guy like Baxter, Baxter said this exact line, a charming flub of a popular idiom. At the Chinese restaurant on New Years' Eve, Sheldrake reveals to Fran that Baxter didn't want Sheldrake to be with her, expecting her to be just as indignant as he is. Instead, the realization that Baxter really cares about her charms Fran and she says to Sheldrake what Baxter said to her earlier. With this line, Fran realizes that she cares about Baxter just like he cares about her.
"On November 1st, 1959, the population of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end, figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan. I know facts like this because I work for an insurance company—Consolidated Life of New York. We're one of the top five companies in the country. Our home office has 31,259 employees, which is more than the entire population of uhh... Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor. Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861."
This is the first line of the movie, and our introduction to the main character, Baxter. He zooms in on himself from the perspective of all of New York City, spouting exact numbers and populations of the vast and anonymous city. He zooms in from the population of New York down to the tiny desk where he works at every day at the insurance company. This shift in scale serves to contextualize where and when the film takes place, as well as revealing how small Baxter feels in relation to his home city and to the world at large. It highlights the alienation that a worker at a gigantic corporate office might feel, constantly reminded of his or her inconsequential-ness in relation to the wider world, so large and impersonal.
