10 Quotes Proving Why Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski Deserve a Gold Medal in Olympic Banter

It’s no secret that retired pro figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir are the most intriguing Olympic pair since Tonya and Nancy — though this duo's drama has nothing to do with rivalry. The chatty BFFs, who have been wowing as NBC commentators this month, don’t hold back about their passions, whether they’re spewing witticisms about their outfits, their overpacking issues, or, oh yeah, the skills of the skaters. Maybe it’s because they’ve got that magic gay-guy–straight-girl couple formula down perfectly (mutual adoration balanced with fierce judgment of others), or maybe it’s because they’re just so damn cute. Either way, Weir, Lipinski, and their clever comments are shaping up to be the most entertaining part of Sochi. Here are 10 of their best quotes yet:

On being a team:
“Tara and I take our work seriously,” Weir, 29, told the New York Times. “She’s my work wife. And she’s a slave driver, so we sit up and study until she’s satisfied. We not only plan how we look, but we’re up until three in the morning looking at all the skaters’ backgrounds and biographies.” Lipinski, 31, added, for the Associated Press, "We want to be 80 and still commentating on figure skating with each other."

On what they packed for Sochi:
“Definitely, we’re overpacked,” Weir told the "Today" Show. “We have pounds and pounds and pounds of clothes. But we’re in this position where we’re the new kids on the block and we have to prove ourselves. You can’t wear the same black suit every day so we have to mix it up.” So what did they pack? Eight suitcases (“Three of mine are the size of Ford Focuses,” Weir said, “and three of Tara’s are the size of Audi S4s”), 22 pairs of shoes, 10 pounds of jewelry, 25 blazers, four fur coats (all Johnny’s), six pairs of leather pants, and nine high-end purses.

On their favorite ensembles so far:
“Our pink outfits were a lot of fun — the light pink/crazy hot pink was a great match," Lipinski told "Today." "I also love my Alice + Olivia peep-toes with hearts.” Weir added, “The most favorited one on Instagram so far is my sequin jacket and spiked Louboutins. But my favorite is the day I did leather — a leather jacket, white tux shirt, beautiful necklaces, black leather pants, and wedges. I thought I looked super slim and I felt good about it.”

On Weir's being openly gay in anti-gay Russia:
"Part of being afraid is not knowing, and I know Russia. I don't feel afraid," Weir told the Associated Press. (Weir has been married since 2012 to Victor Voronov, who is of Russian descent, and travels frequently to the country.) But he isn't wearing his wedding ring in Sochi, he admitted to the Wall Street Journal. "I didn't want to be provocative," he said. "They're with me, but I just don't wear them. My biggest stance is to be here, to wear my crazy clothes and to be me.”

On the less-than-stellar male skaters:
“He really reminds me of a hockey player that's also a really good dancer,” Johnny Weir noted about Czech skater Thomas Verner. Ouch. Also along those lines was this one from Weir: “When I was watching the men’s event the other night and nobody was skating as if they wanted to win the gold medal, I wanted to jump out of the booth. I kept poking Tara, and it was hard to watch.”

On U.S. coach Frank Carroll calling 15-year-old Russian skater Julia Lipnitskaia a “little girl”:
"Well, you’re asking the 15-year-old that won,” Lipinski, who garnered gold at Nagano in 1998 at that age, told USA Today. “Yes, she’s younger than everyone … but obviously everyone’s learning curve is different, and she’s on that fast track. … For her age, she’s appropriately skating up to a more advanced level of someone with the maturity of a 19-year-old.”

On 15-year-old female skaters in general:
“To win an Olympic medal, I don’t think so. It’s just so new,” Lipinski told Bob Costas on NBC, after he asked about whether 15-year-old American skater Polina Edmunds is ready to have her moment. “But at the same time, she has a great mix of athleticism, of beauty and also attack. You can see it in her eyes. When she steps on practice, she doesn’t see anything around her, she just does triple after triple after triple.” As for Lipnitskaia, Weir noted, “She’s always consistent, she’s always fabulous, and if [South Korean skater] Yuna Kim even for a second drops her guard, Julia Lipskaia will be right there to seize that gold medal.” That prompted Lipinski to issue a warning: “Yeah. Talk about 15-year-olds. Julia is ready, she is ready. Obviously she is the dark horse for that gold medal, but Yuna cannot make one mistake.”

On skater pairs:
“The pairs skaters have always been the cool kids,” Weir noted while commentating an event — a sentiment Lipinski strongly agreed with, even if she admitted she was never great at it because she hated not being in control. To that, Weir mischievously responded, “I enjoy being thrown.”

On the final-group women’s warmup Wednesday:
"It's the mall in Paramus at Christmas time," Weir noted in an awesome quip about the chaos on the ice.

On Weir's retiring from skating:
"It just got too hard, honestly," Weir told the Wall Street Journal. "I had the option of choosing a happy life or to be alone for more time and completely alienate everybody and all of my friends and family once again, to diet like crazy, to get yelled at every day. It is all worth it, but there comes a time in your life when you have to decide what's next. I feel inspired that I'm on a team now, and that's something that I never felt in figure skating.”