For some reason I keep thinking that I heard in the movie:
"The atoms are rude, they will not part".
From the guy who kept trying to get through the wall and was "punishing" them with a sledgehammer. I don't know if this is accurate or not.
It's pretty close but that condences a lot of the dialogue in the scene. I'm not sure that Capt. Fairbanks actually calls them rude but he says very similar things. I know at one point he says he is punishing the atoms, teaching them a lesson- and yells at them calling them "independant snots" for not getting out of the way to let his atoms pass.
My favorite line in that scene is Kanes; "I think the problem may lie in the properties of the hammer. May I study it?"
The payoff comes later in the film when Capt. Fairbanks rises up out of a small pond and says "Water molecules have manners."
That scene had one of the best nonsense lines in the movie, when Captain Fairbanks is telling how something applies to everyone - "Everyone. Cops. People. People in Nashville."
shareI loved how that scene was both hilarious and disturbing. Especially when Fairbanks describes how "I failed ... horribly." I just picture him running face first into the wall, and I want to laugh. Then I see the intense look on his face, the fact he's holding a hammer, the fact that he looks psychotic ... great stuff.
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Truffaut: Do dreams have a bearing on your work?
Hitchcock: Daydreams, probably.