Sheldon Big Bang Theory Quotes

Oh gravity, thou art a heartless bitch.

What's life without whimsy?

What exactly does that expression mean, 'friends with benefits'? Does he provide her with health insurance?

I am a man of science, not someone's snuggle-bunny!

For the record, I do have genitals; and they are functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Sheldon: I wouldn't tell you the secret. Sssh! Leonard: What secret? Tell me the secret. Sheldon: Mom smokes in the car. Jesus is okay with it, but we can't tell dad. Leonard: Not that secret, the other secret. Sheldon: I'm Batman! Ssssh! #11

How about we make a date to do nothing but curl up together after school alone and Roku a Big Bang Theory marathon.” I grinned at him. “No one but me knows what a dork you truly are.” “I need to laugh, and Sheldon makes me laugh.

I won't say that all senior citizens who can't master technology should be publicly flogged, but if we made an example of one or two, it might give the others incentive to try harder.

I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested.

Sheldon completely loses it, and Parsons gives a performance so well executed, it is the singular moment most referenced among fans and TV critics.

Raj: I don't like bugs, okay. They freak me out.
 Sheldon: Interesting. You're afraid of insects and women. Ladybugs must render you catatonic. #12

we wanted to pay homage to TV producer-director-actor Sheldon Leonard [the Emmy-winning producer and director of shows like The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and more], so that’s where Sheldon and Leonard came from.

Wouldn’t it be funny if your name was Penny Penny Penny, and Sheldon knew the whole time and then everyone just started doing the knock, and then later he was like, ‘I knew that was your last name!’” But no, I kind of love that it was just Penny, and then Penny Hofstadter, which I thought was so cute.

The struggle that Jim creates, and the battle that Sheldon ultimately loses until he finally reclaims his spot is so fascinating to watch. Look at that struggle. That’s the whole character. He knows it’s rude to ask guests to move if they’ve seated themselves. He knows that. His mama raised him right. But he can’t do it. And that’s the struggle of that character encapsulated in a moment.

Amanda did exactly what was asked of her, and she did it beautifully. I certainly didn’t understand that despite Sheldon and Leonard’s intelligence, they were like children, and you couldn’t put a toxic character next to them like that. It broke your heart. And again, I was very much under the influence of Two and a Half Men, and thought that edgy humor would carry over to Big Bang. It did not. And I had a lot to learn because of that.

Our solution was the line, “I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested.” And that put it to rest. Mary took Sheldon to a general practitioner in East Texas in 1990 who said, “Oh, he’s fine! He’s peculiar, but he’s fine!” It was probably a doctor who was still smoking! I think not having a label gave Jim a great deal of more freedom to play the part as he wanted to play it, as opposed to how we might have been pressured to do for a very-real syndrome that can be difficult.

Throughout the years, Parsons was always asked if he learned anything about physics, or if he felt smarter as a result of playing Sheldon. Jim Parsons: I’ve always had a respect for science and a fascination with certain aspects of it, but I didn’t learn a goddamn thing, I’ll tell you that. Nothing stuck. [Laughs] [Professor] David [Saltzberg] definitely made it easier. He was really helpful in that he was able to usually tell me, “Here’s all you need to know.” For instance, “You’re going to point at this when you say that; you’re going to point at that when you say this.” He was the perfect combination of being scientifically brilliant and being able to talk to a science dodo bird like me. He understood the kind of paint-by-numbers aspect that was necessary for the acting to get to the comedy.

We wanted Penny to work somewhere that was pedestrian and wonderfully quotidian. Here are these guys who are trying to unravel the secrets of the universe, and Penny introduces herself by saying, “I work at The Cheesecake Factory.” The juxtaposition of scientists working in the quantum field, perhaps changing the world with their work, and “I work at The Cheesecake Factory” seemed to be a funny dichotomy. And the cheesecake is great! I personally really love their chocolate chip cheesecake. And the menu went on for days—it was like a book! There was a lot going for it, and the company was very gracious about letting us use their name. Surprisingly, the California Institute of Technology (abbreviated as Caltech) wasn’t as enthusiastic when it came to establishing Sheldon and Leonard’s workplace. Chuck Lorre: Caltech wasn’t keen on us using their name or likeness early on, so we obliged for a while, and then when the show took off, they communicated with us again and said something along the lines of, “Please feel free to use the word Caltech in your show,” because it was a good promotion for Caltech! [Laughs] Someone over there recognized that being associated with this burgeoning hit show was not going to damage their reputation.

The alternative [to thinking ahead] would be to think backwards . . . and that’s just remembering. —Sheldon, the theoretical physicist on The Big Bang Theory

Your center can also be subtly benevolent or sympathetic: Two and a Half Men’s Charlie Harper is a perpetually drunk womanizer, but, with little hesitation, he opens his beach home to his newly divorced brother and nephew. On The Big Bang Theory, Leonard Hofstadter is a socially awkward scientist who has trouble communicating feelings, but he protects his roommate and best friend, the even more socially awkward and brilliant Sheldon Cooper. Some shows have no center at all. In 3rd Rock from the Sun, all the characters are eccentric and play off one another. In the beginning, the characters must be appealing and compelling. Networks want characters to be appealing all the time. But that’s ultimately terrible for storytelling, because there’s no journey. There’s no redemption if there’s no sin. There has to be some dimension. The challenge is in figuring out how to grow and nurture characters carefully so that the audience will continue to accept them.

Manny from Modern Family chats with Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Fergie talks to Kristen Stewart,

Let’s just assume that everything you have done up until now is wrong.” –  Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory

it was a fine line for me between making fun of my culture—which is a fine line I straddled the entire show—and just allowing it to be as silly and ridiculous as it is. How much can I get away saying without insulting, you know? I still get emails from people saying, “You really insulted your culture by saying this and that,” but that’s the nature of comedy. You’re never going to make everyone laugh, and someone’s going to be offended by all the colloquiums that you bring to light about your own cultures. So the dance sequence was one of those moments where I was like, Oh, this could go really badly, but it ended up being really fun. And there were certain things that I said on the show that I wish I could unsay now, given the current political climate, but it’s nothing so life-changing. It was a different time where people were not so sensitive to the divisiveness around us… and there was a lot more tolerance between people. We were not so offended by making fun of each other. Everything we said was not the end of the world. There’s only one line—and I don’t even remember it [entirely], but it was something about a prostitute—I wish I could take back. [Ed. note: It is “Madhuri Dixit is a l-leperous prostitute! ” in an exchange with Sheldon from season two, episode one, “The Bad Fish Paradigm.”] But even though Raj made fun of India, he was very [proud to be] Indian. He wore his culture on his sleeve. There’s a scene that rarely ever gets brought up, but it’s a very beautiful scene where Howard and Raj are sitting in a car together in front of a Hindu temple and talking about religion and science. Raj wants to show Howard how he can make an amalgamation between spirituality and science and what that means to him. I thought, Why don’t more people talk about that instead of him insulting his culture? But that’s just the nature of things.

In 2016, pop icon and actor Selena Gomez posted a photo on Instagram of herself in a dressing room watching The Big Bang Theory on her computer with the caption that read “The one thing that gets me going before anything… Sheldon Cooper—Big Bang Theory.” Molaro saw the post, which sparked an idea. Steve Molaro: After I had heard she liked the show, we approached Selena’s team a couple of times to have her on, but it never worked out due to scheduling reasons, etc. I’m a fan of hers and would have loved to have had her on. I never even got to pitch it to them, but I had kicked around an idea that Amy had been complaining about her awful stepsister and what a bitch she was. Which would be news because we didn’t even know she had one. This, of course, was before we established Amy’s dad and mom were still together. When we meet this stepsister, played by Selena, she’s beautiful and great and everyone loves her and Amy was just being jealous. It never got further than that. It would have been fun if it could have worked

It’s hard to explain how important Star Trek is to me. I think I went to my first Star Trek convention when I was fifteen. So to hear that Leonard Nimoy—Mr. Spock—was on the phone, I was not processing what he was saying. I could only focus on his amazing voice. I thought this was a phone call to see if he’d agree to do the part, but in his mind, he had already agreed to do it! He had one specific note on the script, which is that Mr. Spock doesn’t use contractions when he speaks. He says “cannot;” he doesn’t say “can’t.” And I remember just being chagrined that I hadn’t intervened and had allowed this to go on. I loved Spock so much, I used to sneak lines of Mr. Spock dialogue from the movies and TV shows into Big Bang Theory and give them to Sheldon. There’s an episode early on where Sheldon and Leonard are having a fight, and Penny asks, “Well, how do you feel?” And Sheldon replies, “I don’t understand the question.” That’s from the beginning of Star Trek IV where Spock has reunited with his mind and his body, and is being quizzed by a computer about his status. So Leonard Nimoy was just one of many fanboy moments. I once said to LeVar Burton, “If I could go back in time and tell my teenage self there would be a day where I would eventually talk to three crew members of the USS Enterprise, I’d fall over and die.

Jim Parsons: Even though I knew that obviously he was game for everything, some part of me felt so inappropriate about putting possibly the most intelligent human being on the planet at that time into a scene in our sitcom. I was really uncomfortable. I thought, “This is not right!” I had been faking how smart I was to play Sheldon by saying the lines other people wrote, but I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about, and now I’m face-to-face with possibly the smartest person on the planet! And even though I knew it wasn’t inappropriate that this was even happening, there was a part of me that felt it somehow was.

While Raj is being the ultimate showman, no one is impressed with his antics—except for Sheldon—who has the look of sheer childlike delight on his face. Jim Parsons: The word gift is what comes to mind, because I loved that the writers allowed this crotchety, stuck-in-his-way character to have these little moments. For it to be Sheldon who had the attitude of Oh! This is wonderful!… that is just the best type of craft work in writing and characters that you can have.

Mayim Bialik: A lot of people said that seeing someone like Sheldon find and receive love was something they never imagined for their child, or even seeing a couple like that was giving people hope for their kids. I’ve also heard that from some friends of mine who have kids either on the spectrum or who struggle socially, so it was a really interesting source of comfort without laughing at this character who was the kind of character who would often be teased.

And Johnny and Molaro put up the little picture of her on the refrigerator in Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment, which remained until the very end of the series. Steve Molaro: We wanted her to be in every episode from then on, so we knew Sheldon and Leonard’s refrigerator was the best place to do that. Simon Helberg: I would look at it often, and it was nice to have a little piece of her there. It was also kind of funny because no one knew what she looked like, and so you could get away with putting that picture of her up there. It felt like a secret nod we had as a group.

Steve Holland: There was one version of it where they were all walking up the stairs after having gotten back from the airport and their trip to Stockholm, and just as they got to the fourth floor, the elevator would ding and it would open. There was a talk about a moment in which Sheldon and Amy say, “It’s crazy; we won the Nobel Prize and in some ways, everything’s exactly the same,” and then the elevator opens, and that would have been the end of the show. The tag would have still been them sitting on the couch, but as we were breaking the story, we thought about two things: the moment where Sheldon was freaking out because Amy had gotten the haircut; and the Nobel Prize, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. So it seemed right for the elevator to open then, and also, I just thought it would be much less expected to have it happen so much earlier in the episode.

Although the reveal goes against Penny’s wishes not to have kids, the writers chose to have her get pregnant as a way to pay off the line from the pilot where Leonard, in a moment of wishful—and maybe delusional—thinking, says to Sheldon, “Our babies will be smart and beautiful.” But many viewers and critics had a problem with Penny’s surprise pregnancy, including Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk who wrote at the time (May 17, 2019), “There are several reasons why this makes me want to rip my hair out… This was always Leonard’s vision, but never Penny’s,” and “In an otherwise heartwarming finale… it’s infuriating and unfortunate that The Big Bang Theory would essentially erase a woman’s right to choose from her own narrative.

In fact, on October 8, 2019, some five months after Big Bang’s finale aired, the Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Goran Hannson, praised the show during the announcement for the real-life Nobel prize winners in physics. He said The Big Bang Theory was “a fantastic achievement” for bringing “the world of science to laptops and living rooms around the world,” and name-checked Sheldon and Amy, as well as quoted the show’s theme song.

Mary T. Quigley: I incorporated Penny Blossoms in Penny’s dress… slightly hidden in the cummerbund, if you will—in that hot pink sash. It’s a secret that Kaley and I knew. We both got teary when we were in the fitting, because we got to do Penny Blossoms again. And everybody else had adjustments in their clothes as their lives moved forward, but not Sheldon. He was in the tux in the finale, and wore Flash socks even though nobody saw them. I knew that’s what Sheldon would do.

Penny could get away with things, the same way Sheldon could get away with things. There were things that were earned, and Penny earned those moments. She earned ribbing him, she earned the “Ugh, he wore me down” moments. And it’s cute and it’s funny, and I think the audience knew what she meant. Penny was completely in love with him.

Obviously Sheldon had a complicated relationship with his dad, but one of the things Molaro has talked about a lot with Young Sheldon is that as you get older and hit those adult milestones, you’re able to look back on your parents and see them in a different, more human light.

Mary T. Quigley: The wedding dress was a challenge. In the story, Sheldon [comments] how she looks like a pile of swans, so for me, that meant a lot of layers and feathers and lightness. Amy’s dress needed to be something that was overdone, but not funny. It needed to stay romantic. So that was a big challenge. I took a bunch of different wedding dresses apart to make that dress.

I remember someone at the high school talking about the school’s handbook of rules and guidelines, and laughing about how they used to have one but no one would ever read it. I remember thinking, I know exactly who would read it, which would be Sheldon. And that’s a big part of the pilot where Sheldon was ratting people out for not following the rules.

Steve Holland: Their son is named for both Leonard Hofstadter and Leonard Nimoy, but more so Hofstadter. Steve reached out to Mayim and she said, “Absolutely!” Sheldon had already said via a voice-over on Young Sheldon that he and Amy had kids as he talked about the things he wished he had said to his dad and thinks about now, because he has his own kids. And in this weird, sort of small way, we realized we kind of get to keep telling the story of Big Bang Theory in these little asides.

Sheldon,

She’d expected Emerson Knight to look like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.