The Best Kiki's Delivery Service Quotes, Every Line Verified

Kiki's Delivery Service is Miyazaki's 1989 film about a thirteen-year-old witch who moves to a new town and has to support herself, and its best lines are about work. Eight lines follow, each checked against Wikiquote's page for the film and tied to its scene. Several of them are wisecracks from Jiji, the cat, and that matters: ANN's reviewers describe the English Jiji as far more sarcastic than the Japanese one, and at least one line below was cut from later English releases.

“Excuse me, but would you like me to deliver it for you?” — Kiki

The founding of a business, offered as a favor. Osono has just seen a customer leave without her baby's pacifier, and Kiki volunteers to take it to her. Andrew Osmond's ANN review notes that a kind bakery owner gives Kiki a place to stay. The film's economy runs on this kind of exchange: a small job done well, then a room, then a reputation.

“You'd think they'd never seen a girl and a cat on a broomstick before.” — Jiji

The joke is that they haven't. Osmond's review describes the coastal city as one “whose people have never seen a witch before,” and Jiji's grumble treats their stares as bad manners rather than reasonable astonishment. A cat on a broom complaining about being noticed is the film's deadpan register in one sentence.

“If you wake up tomorrow and find a white cat, it’s me.” — Jiji

Said, according to the transcription's stage direction, with his paws covered in dust. It is a complaint about housekeeping, phrased as a warning about his own disappearance. Jiji meets every new arrangement in the film as an imposition on him personally.

“All right, first: don't panic! Second: don't panic! And third: did I mention not to panic?” — Jiji

A three-step plan with one step. This is the advice Jiji gives as they fly into a storm, and it comes with a footnote: Todd Ciolek's ANN review of Disney's Blu-ray says the “don't panic” rainstorm advice is gone from the revised dub used since 2010. That places this transcription in the 1998 Disney dub, where Phil Hartman voiced Jiji. Ciolek's guess is that such lines were cut because they did not exist in the Japanese dialogue. This one is funny, and it makes the cat the adult in the scene.

“Oh, great. Now I'm suddenly the flight attendant.” — Jiji

Kiki asks him to climb up and turn on the radio, and he takes the request as a demotion. Osmond calls the English Jiji an attempt to make the cat “much more patriarchal and sarcastic,” a supervising adult rather than a fellow traveler, and Ciolek describes the Japanese performance by Rei Sakuma as perky and childish. We have not confirmed which English release this particular line comes from.

“If I lose my magic, that means I've lost absolutely everything.” — Kiki

A thirteen-year-old's arithmetic, and the film disagrees with it. Kiki's sole talent is broom-flying, as ANN's encyclopedia synopsis puts it, so losing it feels total. The second half of the film is built to prove the sum wrong: the people who help her, Osono and Ursula among them, do not stop helping when the broom stops working.

“Flying used to be fun until I started doing it for a living.” — Kiki

The most adult sentence in a children's film. Osmond writes that the second half reflects on “the difference between a job and a true vocation,” and this is that idea compressed into a complaint anyone with a job could make. Turning a gift into a service changes how the gift feels, and Miyazaki lets that be true without making it tragic.

“Without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I'm trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it.” — Kiki

Self-consciousness as the actual curse. Nothing has been done to Kiki; she has simply started watching herself. Ciolek describes Ursula, the artist she spends time with, as someone who reminds her that “being special isn't as important as being honest with yourself,” and this line is the problem that advice is answering. Our ending explainer covers how the film resolves it.

Where these lines sit: the Kiki's Delivery Service ending explainer, the sub or dub guide on the Disney dub's changes, Spirited Away quotes, the cross-series shelf and our Miyazaki fact-check. Verification method, as always, at our notes.