Dawson’s Creek: 10 Quotes We’ll Always Remember

When Dawson’s Creek premiered in 1998, it ushered in a new era of teen dramas. Without the series, shows like One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, and even Riverdale wouldn’t have become the juggernauts of teen television they are. Dawson’s Creek shows that teens could experience all the highs and lows of growing up while still being wise beyond their years but naive to the world.

The characters that lived in the fictional Capeside, Massachusetts were known for their advanced vocabulary and waves of introspection. While some critics found their words unrealistic, fans found them meaningful and something they’d never forget.

10 “High Maintenance Is Just Another Way Of Saying High Quality.”

Though the series is, arguably, Dawson’s story of growing up, Pacey is the one who experiences the most growth – and the most relationships. When Charlie asks him in season five just how he ended up dating so many “high maintenance” women, this is his response.

Unlike other men in the series, Pacey doesn’t see women like Audrey or Joey as high maintenance. He loves them for their good qualities as much as their flaws, even when they aren’t dating. Pacey sees the good in women that other male characters in the show tend to write off as hostile.

9 “Let’s Save Judgment For Someone Much More Experienced Than You.”

When Grams first begins her time on the show, she is one character full of judgment. She doesn’t understand Jen’s attitudes, but she comes to know her granddaughter much better.

When Jen and Jack become friends, Grams accepts Jack for who he is, despite the judgments she might have held when the series begins. The boy Grams wants Jen to date, however, doesn’t have the same open mind, and Grams immediately sours on him as a result, giving him a speech about judgment to make her views clear.

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8 “I Don’t Believe In Perfect Love. But I Do Believe There Are People Whose Lives Are Inextricably Intertwined.”

One of the running themes in Dawson’s Creek is that the most important love in someone’s life doesn’t have to be romantic. Dawson and Joey don’t end up together, but they consider one another soul mates. Jack and Jen aren’t romantic either, but they love each other more than anyone else until her dying day.

Jack understands better than most that love doesn’t always turn out the way you expect, and he’s okay with that. 

7 “Edge Is Fleeting. Heart Lasts Forever.”

Dawson spends the series incredibly earnest, talking about growing up more than actually growing up. He gets called out for his “Peter Pan syndrome” several times by his closest friends. Dawson doesn’t see his unwillingness to grow up as that, but as him embracing his innocence to be creative.

He doesn’t think edge and darkness are the key to bringing stories to people. People, after all, want happy endings. Dawson uses what the audience sees as his naïveté to bring the stories he has in his head to life.

6 “Letting Go Isn’t A One Time Thing. It’s Something You Do Everyday, Over And Over Again.”

Andie McPhee knows a lot about both holding on and letting go. She loses her brother and her mother – though both in different ways. When she makes this statement in the series, it’s more in relation to her love life than it is to grief, but it holds the same meaning either way.

Andie knows that it isn’t easy to just ignore your past and move on, and she treats her own growth like a slow climb where you make a new step everyday. 

5 “You Know You Love Someone When You Can Spend The Entire Night Just Sitting By The Fire Watching Them Sleep.”

Dawson’s Creek spends a lot of time focusing on the dramatic speeches and the grand gestures made by characters in relationships. Smaller gestures of love in the series can sometimes be overlooked. This is one of them.

Grams tells a love story when everyone gets together to act as guests at the Potter Bed And Breakfast. In her story, true love is found in those smaller gestures and quiet moments than it is in drastic moments of passion. After listening to her story, Pacey spends the night in the Potter living room, watching Joey sleep, foreshadowing the two’s long running relationship.

4 “Relationships Are Messy. That’s Their Nature. They Start Messy, And They End Messy, And If You Ever Want To Have Another Relationship In Your Life, You Better Just Stop Worrying About The Mess.”

Audrey is painted as a party girl who really just wants to have a good time out of the confining life her family built for her. She’s not quite that shallow, however, and she has a lot of great lines about really experiencing life.

Audrey is one of the few people who understands right away that Joey simply avoids her own feelings whenever possible. She’s also the one who encourages Joey to cut loose and step outside of her structured life – especially when it comes to relationships. 

3 “Be Sure To Make Mistakes. Make A Lot Of Them, Because There’s No Better Way To Learn And To Grow.”

The series finale sees Jen dying from a rare heart condition. In her final days, she returns to Capeside with her infant daughter to reunite with her friends. She also makes a video for her daughter, telling Amy all of the things she hopes her daughter gets to experience.

One of those is proof that Jen doesn’t look back on the bad things in her life with embarrassment or sorrow. Jen understands that all of the mistakes she made turned her into the person she is, and she doesn’t want her daughter to lose out on experiences because she’s afraid of making the same mistakes. 

2 “If We Are Truly Meant To Be Then We’ll Find Our Way Back To Each Other.”

In addition to Dawson embracing everything that makes others see him as immature, he’s also got a lot of faith in fate. Dawson really believes in the movie experience of love, including two people who are fated to be together finding their way back into one another’s lives.

In Dawson’s case, he and Joey aren’t meant to end up together, but they do always find their way back into one another’s lives after falling out of touch. Their friendship never ends, just finds new paths.

1 “I Can’t Swear This Is Exactly How It Happened. But This Is Exactly How It Felt.”

When Joey looks back fondly on her time in Capeside with her friends, she admits that some of her stories might have been embellished, but that they capture exactly how she felt at the time.

Joey’s line might as well have been series creator Kevin Williamson talking about his work on the series. He uses a lot of his own teen years as inspiration for Dawson’s Creek’ssix seasons, as he recounts in DVD commentary tracks. Williamson captures the feeling of the teen years perfectly.

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