The Best Skinner Quotes

Skinner: Toasting your success, eh, Linguini? Good for you.
Linguini: [indicating his wine glass] Oh, I just took it to be polite. I don't really drink, you know.
Skinner: Oh, of course you don't. I wouldn't either if I was drinking *that*. But you would have to be an idiot of elephantine proportions not to appreciate this '61 Château Latour, and you, Monsieur Linguini, are no idiot. Let us toast your non-idiocy!

Skinner: [on Linguini] Look at him out there, pretending to be an idiot! He's toying with my mind like a cat with a ball... of something!
Lawyer: String?
Skinner: Yes! Playing dumb, taunting me with that RAT!
Lawyer: [confused] Rat?
Skinner: Yes! He's consorting with it, deliberately trying to make me think it's important!
Lawyer: The... rat?
Skinner: EXACTLY!
Lawyer: Is the rat important?
Skinner: [pause] Of course not! He just wants me to THINK that it is! O-ho, I see the theatricality of it! A rat appears on the boy's first night, I order him to kill it, and now he wants me to see it everywhere!
Skinner: [high voice] Ooooh! It's here! No it isn't it's here! Am I seeing things, am I crazy, is there a phantom rat or is there not, but oh, no! I refuse to be sucked into his little game... of...
Lawyer: Should I be concerned about this? About you?

Larousse: Hey, boss, look who it is! Alfredo Linguini! Renata's little boy! All grown up, eh? You remember Renata. Gusteau's old flame?
Skinner: Ah, yes. How are you, uh...
Larousse: Linguini.
Skinner: Yes, Linguini, so nice of you to visit. How is, uh...?
Linguini: My mother?
Skinner: Yes...
Larousse: Renata.
Skinner: Yes, Renata. How is she?
Linguini: Good... well, not... good... She's been better. She's, uh... she...
Horst: She died.
Skinner: [attempting to care] Oh, uh, I'm sorry.
Linguini: Well, don't be. She believed in Heaven, so she's covered... you know, afterlife-wise? Uh...
[clumsily gives Skinner a letter]
Skinner: What is this?
Linguini: She left it for you. I think she hoped it would help... me. You know, get a job... Here?

Skinner: [interrogating Linguini after plying him with wine] Have you ever had a pet rat?
Linguini: No.
Skinner: Did you work in a lab with rats?
Linguini: Nooope.
Skinner: Perhaps you lived in squalor at some point?
Linguini: Nopity, nopity noo.

Skinner: Surely you don't expect me to believe this is your first time cooking?
Linguini: It's not.
Skinner: I KNEW IT!
Linguini: It's my... second, third, fourth, fifth time. Monday was my first time. But I've taken out the garbage lots of times before that...
Skinner: Yes, yes, yes, have some more wine.

Lawyer: Well, the will stipulates that if after two years from the date of death, no heir appears, Gusteau's business will pass on to his sous-chef, you.
Skinner: I know what the will stipulates! What I want to know, is if this letter - if this *boy* changes anything!
[the lawyer looks at Linguini through the window, comparing it to Gusteau's picture on the wall]
Lawyer: There's not much resemblance.
Skinner: There's NO resemblance at all! He's not Gusteau's son, Gusteau had no children! And what of the timing of all this? The deadline in the will expires in less than a month! Suddenly some boy arrives with a letter from his recently deceased mother claiming Gusteau is his father? Highly suspect!
Lawyer: [about a chef's toque in a glass container] ... This was Gusteau's?
Skinner: Yes.
Lawyer: May I?
Skinner: Of course, of course.
[the lawyer takes a hair out of the toque]
Lawyer: But, the boy does not know?
Skinner: She claims she never told him, or Gusteau, and asks that I not tell!
Lawyer: Why you? What does she want?
Skinner: A job, for the boy.
Lawyer: Only a job? Well, then this is easy. If he works here, you can keep an eye on him while I do a little digging, find out how much of this is real. I'll need you to collect some DNA samples from the boy, hair maybe...
Skinner: Mark my words, the whole thing is *highly* suspect. He knows... something.
Lawyer: Relax, he's a garbage boy. I think you can handle him.

Mustafa: [panicked] Someone has asked what is new!
Horst: New?
Mustafa: Yes! What do I tell them?
Horst: Well, what *did* you tell them?
Mustafa: I told them I would ask!
Skinner: What are you blathering about?
Horst: Customers are asking what is new!
Mustafa: What should I tell them?
Skinner: What *did* you tell them?
Mustafa: [exasperated] I TOLD THEM I WOULD ASK!
Skinner: This is simple. Just pull out an old Gusteau recipe, something we haven't made in a while...
Mustafa: They know about the old stuff. They like Linguini's soup.
Skinner: They are asking for food from LINGUINI?

Skinner: [seeing a ladle in Linguini's hand] You are COOKING? How DARE you cook in MY kitchen! Where do get the gall to attempt something so monumentally idiotic? I should have you drawn and quartered! I'll do it! I think the law is on my side! Larousse, draw and quarter this man! *After* you put him in the duck press to squeeze the fat out of his head!
[as he's shouting, Lalo ladles some soup into a tureen and brings it to the waiter]
Linguini: Oh no no no, OH NO, don't let them, don't eat...
Skinner: What are you blathering about?
Linguini: ...the soup!
Skinner: [sees the soup going out runs to stop it] Soup? Stop that soup! Noooooooo!
[bursts into the dining room to the stares of the diners, retreats back into the kitchen and watches through the window as the waiter serves the soup]
Solene: [tasting the soup] Waiter!
Skinner: [gasps] Linguini! You're fired! F-I-R-E-D! Fired!
Mustafa: She wants to see the chef.
Mustafa: [scared] B-but he...
[clears his throat and goes to speak to the customer; Colette tastes the soup; Skinner re-enters]
Colette: What did the customer say?
Mustafa: It was not a customer. It was a critic.
Colette: Ego?
Skinner: Solene LeClaire.
Colette: LeClaire. What did she say?
Mustafa: She likes the soup.

Skinner: [to Linguini] Welcome to Hell.
Skinner: Now recreate the soup.

Skinner: You know something about rats, you know you do!
Linguini: You know who know, do, whacka-do. Ratta-tatta - Hey, why do they call it that?
Skinner: What?
Linguini: Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat patootie! Which does not sound delicious.
[holds out his glass for more wine]
Skinner: [growling] Regrettably, we are all... out... of wine.