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Lucretius

Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His major work is De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things, which is considered by some to be the greatest masterpiece of Latin verse.

De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
processit longe flammantia moenia mundi atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque.''
 * ''Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra
 * The living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe.
 * Book I, lines 72–74 (tr. H. A. J. Munro); of Epicurus.

opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo.''
 * ''Quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim
 * Superstition is now in her turn cast down and trampled underfoot, whilst we by the victory are exalted high as heaven.
 * Book I, lines 78–79 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse)

religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.''
 * ''Saepius illa
 * Again and again our foe, religion, has given birth to deeds sinful and unholy.
 * Book I, lines 82–83 (tr. C. Bailey)

 * Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
 * So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong.
 * Book I, line 101 (tr. Alicia Stallings)
 * H. A. J. Munro's translation:
 * So great the evils to which religion could prompt!
 * W. H. D. Rouse's translation:
 * So potent was Superstition in persuading to evil deeds.

 * Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.
 * Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power.
 * Book I, line 150 (tr. Munro)

de nihilo.''
 * ''Nil posse creari
 * Nothing can be produced from nothing.
 * Book I, lines 156–157 (tr. Munro)
 * Variant translations:
 * Nothing can be created from nothing.
 * Nothing can be created out of nothing.

 * Haud igitur redit ad nihilum res ulla.
 * A thing therefore never returns to nothing.
 * Book I, line 248 (tr. Munro)

 * Nequeunt oculis rerum primordia cerni.
 * The first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes.
 * Book I, line 268 (tr. Munro)

 * Stilicidi casus lapidem cavat.
 * The steady drip of water causes stone to hollow and yield.
 * Book I, line 313 (tr. Stallings)
 * Variant translation: Continual dropping wears away a stone.
 * Compare: "The soft droppes of rain pierce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks", John Lyly, Euphues, 1579 (Arber's reprint), p. 81

in rebus solido reperiri corpore posse. transit enim fulmen caeli per saepta domorum, clamor ut ad voces; flamen candescit in igni dissiliuntque ferre ferventi saxa vapore. tum labefactatus rigor auri solvitur aestu; tum glacies aeris flamma devicta liquescit; permanat calor argentum penetraleque frigus quando utrumque manu retinentes pocula rite sensimus infuso lympharum rore superne.'' in nature could stand revealed as solid matter. The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses, like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire; red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam; hard gold is softened and melted down by heat; chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid; heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold; by custom raising the cup, we feel them both as water is poured in, drop by drop, above.
 * ''Etsi difficiile esse videtur credere quicquam
 * And yet it is hard to believe that anything
 * Book I, lines 487–496 (Frank O. Copley)

 * Ita res accendent lumina rebus.
 * So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.
 * Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)

e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda voluptas, sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.''
 * ''Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
 * Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.
 * Book II, lines 1–4 (tr. Rouse)

edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, despicere unde queas alios passimque videre errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, noctes atque dies niti praestante labore ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.'' On high, serene and fortified with teachings of the wise, From which you may peer down upon the others as they stray This way and that, seeking the path of life, losing their way: The skirmishing of wits, the scramble for renown, the fight, Each striving harder than the next, and struggling day and night, To climb atop a heap of riches and lay claim to might.
 * ''Sed nihil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
 * But there is nothing sweeter than to dwell in towers that rise
 * Book II, lines 7–13 (tr. Stallings)

qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis degitur hoc aevi quod cumquest! nonne videre nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?''
 * ''O miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!
 * O pitiable minds of men, O blind intelligences! In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time! not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind, kept away from care and fear, enjoy a feeling of delight!
 * Book II, lines 14–19 (tr. Rouse)

 * Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.
 * Life is one long struggle in the dark.
 * Book II, line 54 (tr. Rouse)

in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest non radii solis neque lucida tela diei discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.''
 * ''Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
 * For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.
 * Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)

semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt. augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur, inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum et quasi cursores vitae lampada tradunt.''
 * ''Sic rerum summa novatur
 * Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.
 * Book II, line 75 (tr. Rouse)

exemplare dare et vestigia notitiae.''
 * ''Dum taxat, rerum magnarum parva potest res
 * So far as it goes, a small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.
 * Book II, lines 123–124 (tr. Rouse)

aeque ponderibus non aequis concita ferri.''
 * ''Omnia qua propter debent per inane quietum
 * All things must needs be borne on through the calm void moving at equal rate with unequal weights.
 * Book II, lines 238–239 (tr. Bailey)

ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti.''
 * ''Infidi maris insidis virisque dolumque
 * Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
 * Book II, lines 557–559 (tr. Rouse)

 * Caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi.
 * We are all sprung from a heavenly seed.
 * Book II, line 991 (tr. Munro)

in terras.''
 * ''Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,
 * What once sprung from earth sinks back into the earth.
 * Book II, lines 999–1000 (tr. Bailey)

Libera continuo, dominis privata superbis, ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers.''
 * ''Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur
 * If you well apprehend and keep in mind these things, nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods.
 * Book II, lines 1090–1092 (tr. Munro)

difficilis magis ad credendum constet, itemque nil adeo magnum neque tam mirabile quicquam, quod non paulatim minuant mirarier omnes.'' And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.
 * ''Sed neque tam facilis res ulla est, quin ea primum
 * For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight,
 * Book II, lines 1026–1029 (tr. Stallings)

expuere ex animo rationem, sed magis acri iudicio perpende, et si tibi vera videntur, dede manus, aut, si falsum est, accingere contra.''
 * ''Desine qua propter novitate exterritus ipsa
 * Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter.
 * Book II, lines 1040–1043 (tr. Munro)

convenit adversisque in rebus noscere qui sit; nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo eliciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res.''
 * ''Quo magis in dubiis hominem spectare periclis
 * So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
 * Book III, lines 55–58 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)

crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem. nam vel ut infirmo pueri teneroque vagantur corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenvis. inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus aetas, consilium quoque maius et auctior est animi vis. post ubi iam validis quassatum est viribus aevi corpus et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus, claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua labat mens, omnia deficiunt atque uno tempore desunt. ergo dissolui quoque convenit omnem animai naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aëris auras; quando quidem gigni pariter pariterque videmus crescere et, ut docui, simul aevo fessa fatisci.'' Along with body, with body grows and ages.''' For just as children totter round about With frames infirm and tender, so there follows A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, Where years have ripened into robust powers, Counsel is also greater, more increased The power of mind; thereafter, where already The body's shattered by master-powers of eld, And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers, Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way; All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time. Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved, Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air; Since we behold the same to being come Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught, Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.
 * ''Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una
 * Besides '''we feel that mind to being comes
 * Book III, lines 445–458 (tr. W. E. Leonard)

quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.''
 * ''Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
 * Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.
 * Book III, lines 830–831 (tr. Rouse)

distractast animi natura animaeque potestas, tamen est ad nos, qui comptu coniugioque corporis atque animae consistimus uniter apti. nec, si materiem nostram collegerit aetas post obitum rursumque redegerit ut sita nunc est, atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae, quicquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum, interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostri. et nunc nil ad nos de nobis attinet, ante qui fuimus, [neque] iam de illis nos adficit angor. nam cum respicias inmensi temporis omne praeteritum spatium, tum motus materiai quam sint, facile hoc adcredere possis, saepe in eodem, ut nunc sunt, ordine posta haec eadem, quibus e nunc nos sumus, ante fuisse. nec memori tamen id quimus reprehendere mente; inter enim iectast vitai pausa vageque deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes.'' The soul could feel in her divided state, What's that to us? for we are only we, While souls and bodies in one frame agree. Nay, though our atoms should revolve by chance, And matter leap into the former dance; Though time our life and motion could restore, And make our bodies what they were before, What gain to us would all this bustle bring? The new-made man would be another thing; When once an interrupting pause is made, That individual being is decayed. We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart, Which to that other mortal shall accrue, Whom of our matter, time shall mould anew. For backward if you look, on that long space Of ages past, and view the changing face Of matter, tossed and variously combined In sundry shapes, ’tis easy for the mind From thence t' infer that seeds of things have been In the same order as they now are seen: Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace, Because a pause of life, a gaping space Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead, And all the wandering motions from the sense are fled.
 * ''Et si iam nostro sentit de corpore postquam
 * Nay, even suppose when we have suffered fate,
 * Book III, lines 843–860 (tr. John Dryden)

aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem?''
 * ''Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis
 * Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?
 * Book III, lines 938–939 (tr. Bailey)

 * Vitaque mancipio, nulli datur, omnibus usu.
 * To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.
 * Book III, line 971 (tr. R. E. Latham)

atque in eo semper durum sufferre laborem, hoc est adverso nixantem trudere monte saxa quod tamen e summo iam vertice rursum volvitur et plani raptim petit aequora campi.'' and for it to suffer hardship and endless pain: this is to heave and strain to push uphill a boulder, that still from the very top rolls back and bounds and bounces down to the bare, broad field.
 * ''Nam petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam,
 * Yes, to seek power that's vain and never granted
 * Book III, lines 998–1002 (tr. Frank O. Copley)

tempore de mortis nec delibare valemus.''
 * ''Nec prorsum vitam ducendo demimus hilum
 * By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
 * Book III, lines 1087–1088 (tr. Rouse)

 * Ut quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum.
 * What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
 * Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
 * Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2

surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat.''
 * ''Medio de fonte leporum
 * In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.
 * Book IV, lines 1133–1134 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
 * Variant translation: From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.
 * Compare: "Still from the fount of joy's delicious springs / Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto I, stanza 82

non ita difficile est quam captum retibus ipsis exire et validos Veneris perrumpere nodos.''
 * ''Vitare, plagas in amoris ne iaciamur,
 * To avoid falling into the toils of love is not so hard as, after you are caught, to get out of the nets you are in and to break through the strong meshes of Venus.
 * Book IV, lines 1146–1148 (tr. Munro)

nam leviter quamvis quod crebro tunditur ictu, vincitur in longo spatio tamen atque labascit. Nonne vides etiam guttas in saxa cadentis umoris longo in spatio pertundere saxa?''
 * ''Consuetudo concinnat amorem;
 * Custom renders love attractive; for that which is struck by oft-repeated blows however lightly, yet after long course of time is overpowered and gives way. See you not too that drops of water falling on rocks after long course of time scoop a hole through these rocks?
 * Book IV, lines 1283–1287 (tr. Munro)

cornua nata prius vitulo quam frontibus extent, illis iratus petit atque infestus inurget.''
 * ''Sentit enim vis quisque suas quoad possit abuti.
 * For every one feels to what purpose he can use his own powers. Before the horns of a calf appear and sprout from his forehead, he butts with them when angry, and pushes passionately.
 * Book V, lines 1033–1035 (tr. Bailey)

divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo aequo animo; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi.''
 * ''Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,
 * But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.
 * Book V, lines 1117–1119 (tr. Rouse)

 * Nam cupide conculcatur nimis ante metutum.
 * Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.
 * Book V, line 1140 (tr. Rouse)

atque, unde exortast, at eum plerumque revertit.''
 * ''Circumretit enim vis atque iniuria quemque,
 * Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.
 * Book V, lines 1152–1153 (tr. Rouse)

Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore.''
 * ''Sic volvenda aetas commutat tempora rerum.
 * So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.
 * Book V, lines 1276–1277 (tr. Bailey)

Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit; et ingens Arbor, homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit.''
 * ''Scilicet et fluvius qui visus maximus ei,
 * A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things—a tree, a man—anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.
 * Book VI, lines 674–677 (quoted in The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, tr. W. C. Hazlitt)

Misattributed

 * All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
 * As quoted in What Great Men Think of Religion (1972 [1945]) by Ira D. Cardiff, p. 245. Actually said by Edward Gibbonː "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776, Vol. I, Ch. II).

Quotes about Lucretius

 * The poem of Lucretius in six books, entitled "De Rerum Natura," was the first accurate statement of the Epicurean philosophy in the Latin language... no writer has in stronger terms controverted all the popular notions of heathenism, and even those fundamental points in all religions, the existence of a creative power, a providence, and the immortality of the soul. His language and versification partake of the rudeness of an early period of literature; and, in the argumentative parts of his works the poet is frequently scarce discernible. But where the subject admits of elevated sentiment or descriptive beauty, no poet, at least no Roman poet, has taken a loftier flight, or exhibited more spirit and sublimity. Nor is it only in detached passages that he has displayed the genius of a true poet: the same animated strain is supported almost throughout entire books, when he gets free from the trammels of his system.
 * John Aikin, William Enfield, General Biography; or, Lives, Critical and Historical, of the most eminent Persons of all Ages, Countries, Conditions, and Professions, Vol. VI (1807), p. 378

 * If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems.
 * Lord Byron, letter to J. Murray on Bowles' Strictures on Pope (7 February 1821), in The Works of Lord Byron, Complete in One Volume (1826), p. 689

 * If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing character of Lucretius (I mean of his soul and genius) is a certain kind of noble pride, and positive assertion of his opinions. He is every where confident of his own reason, and assuming an absolute command, not only over his vulgar reader, but even his patron Memmius. For he is always bidding him attend, as if he had the rod over him, and using a magisterial authority, while he instructs him. [...] He seems to disdain all manner of replies, and is so confident of his cause, that he is beforehand with his antagonists; urging for them whatever he imagined they could say, and leaving them, as he supposes, without an objection for the future; all this too, with so much scorn and indignation, as if he were assured of the triumph, before he entered into the lists. From this sublime and daring genius of his, it must of necessity come to pass, that his thoughts must be masculine, full of argumentation, and that sufficiently warm. From the same fiery temper proceeds the loftiness of his expressions, and the perpetual torrent of his verse, where the barrenness of his subject does not too much constrain the quickness of his fancy. For there is no doubt to be made, but that he could have been every where as poetical, as he is in his descriptions, and in the moral part of his philosophy, if he had not aimed more to instruct, in his system of nature, than to delight.
 * John Dryden, Preface to Sylvae (1685)

 * On the Nature of Things is not an easy read. Totaling 7,400 lines, it is written in hexameters, the standard unrhymed sixbeat lines in which Latin poets like Virgil and Ovid, imitating Homer's Greek, cast their epic poetry. Divided into six untitled books, the poem yokes together moments of intense lyrical beauty, philosophical meditations on religion, pleasure, and death, and complex theories of the physical world, the evolution of human societies, the perils and joys of sex, and the nature of disease. The language is often knotty and difficult, the syntax complex, and the overall intellectual ambition astoundingly high.
 * Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011), Ch. 8: 'The Way Things Are'

 * Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur: qui postea amatorio poculo in furorem versus, cum aliquot libros per intervalla insaniae conscripsisset, quos postea Cicero emendavit, propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis XLIV.
 * The poet Titus Lucretius is born. Later, having become insane by drinking a love potion, after writing during periods of remission several books, which Cicero later edited, he committed suicide at the age of forty-four.
 * Jerome, translation of Eusebius's Chronicon, Ol. 171.3 (94 BC), as reported in "Lucretius and the Symptomatology of Modernism" by Joseph Farrell, published in Lucretius and Modernity (2016), eds. J. Lezra and L. Blake, p. 53

 * [The Roman philosopher Lucretius] thought it a mistake to find the prospect of my death upsetting. Yes, as the deprivation account points out, after death we can't enjoy life's pleasures. But wait a minute, says Lucretius. The time after I die isn't the only period during which I won't exist. What about the period before my birth? If nonexistence is so bad, shouldn't I be upset by the eternity of nonexistence before I was born? But that's silly, right? Nobody is upset about that. So, he concludes, it doesn't make any sense to be upset about the eternity of nonexistence after you die, either.
 * Shelly Kagan, "Is Death Bad for You?", The Chronicle Review, May 13, 2012.

Exitio terras cum dabit una dies.'' Only when Earth has seen its final day.
 * ''Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,
 * Sublime Lucretius' poetry will pass away
 * Ovid, Amores, Book I, xv, lines 23–24 (tr. Len Krisak)

 * Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
 * Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Book I, Part III, Chapter XXVII: The Epicureans.

 * Lucretius was passionate, and much more in need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He committed suicide, and appears to have suffered from periodic insanity – brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the unintended effects of a love philtre.
 * Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Book I, Part III, Chapter XXVII: The Epicureans.

 * Docti furor arduus Lucreti.
 * The high frenzy of skilled Lucretius.
 * Statius, Silvae, Book II, vii, line 76 (tr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey)

 * Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
 * Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.
 * Virgil, Georgics, Book II, line 490 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough); possibly a reference to Lucretius.

 * The noblest descriptive poem extant.
 * Joseph Warton, of the Nature of Things, in An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Vol. I (1756), p. 51

 * The Persians, it is said, distinguish the different degrees of the strength of fancy in different poets, by calling them, painters or sculptors. Lucretius, from the force of his images, should be ranked among the latter. He is, in truth, a sculptor-poet. His images have a bold relief.
 * Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. II (1782), p. 165

title: Lucretius


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User talk:InsaneBastardsMonkeys

 * Please stop adding all these useless articles! You are just making more work for the editors here. I suspect you are the same user that we have previously tried to reign in (169.244.143.115 - please see User talk:169.244.143.115), and the arguments remain the same. Your best course of action is to simply add the titles you wish to see to the requested list and let someone else create them. Otherwise, please learn how to properly create pages. A number of us have tried to help you and explain how things work, but our patience is nearing an end. If you persist, I suspect you will experience some times of being blocked for continued disruptive editing. ~ UDScott 15:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

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title: User talk:InsaneBastardsMonkeys


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Disturbing Behavior

Disturbing Behavior is a 1998 film about the new kid in town who stumbles across something sinister about the town's method of transforming its unruly teens into upstanding citizens.
 * Directed by David Nutter. Written by Scott Rosenberg.

It doesn't matter if you're not perfect. You will be. taglines

Gavin Strick

 * Appropriate sparks are flying, somebody cue the power ballad.
 * Look at him, he's killing his hard-on.
 * The Yogurt Shoppe, Yogurt Shop-e, what the fuck's a Shop-e?
 * [sees Andy Effkin being talked to by police] Andy Effkin toasts with the most.
 * [Blue Ribbons circle around Steve] Ice Ice Baby.
 * It's not like you think. It's a whole new kind of cool. Everything's beautiful, man.

Steve Clark

 * I had no idea the evil was this pervasive.
 * [shouts] You signed me up for the program?
 * Be the ball.

Rachel Wagner

 * Sounds razor.
 * Who put the acid in my Spam?

Dorian Newberry

 * (after throwing Steve out of the boiler room) Wait! You like Kurt Vonnegut?
 * You'd be surprised how interesting people become when they think you're really stupid!
 * I'm getting rid of rats.
 * Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!

Lorna Longley

 * Treat yourself.
 * Bad wrong, wrong bad, bad wrong, wrong bad.
 * [Blood running down her face] I have to go home. I've got a big physics test tomorrow.

Others

 * Allen Clark: What're you doing, dipshit? Don't worry about the snakes in your garden when you've got spiders in your bed.
 * Betty Caldicott: Meet the musical little creatures that hide among the flowers.
 * U.V.: I bet you didn't know toast came in 3 flavors.
 * U.V.: Denial ain't just a river in Italy, bud!
 * U.V.: I've got like, two customers left! If this keeps up, I'm going to be the 7-11 guy!
 * Andy Effkin: [snaps Mary Joe's neck] Slut.
 * Dr. Caldicott: Science is God!

Dialogue

 * Gavin: Hello, Lorna. How are you doing today, my dear?
 * Lorna: Drop dead.
 * Gavin: Contact.

 * Gavin: It's a class system here at CB High, Stevie Boy. Check it out. [points to the car enthusiast students] There, you've got your motor heads, car jocks, all the world's a gasket and a lube job and a pack of Lucky's.  Music of choice: Posi-traction overdrive, classic rock, Skynyrd, The Allmans, Bruce. Drug of choice: Beer, Miller Genuine Draft. Keggers can't be choosers.
 * UV: Freaks that fix leaks.
 * Gavin: [points to the nerdy students] Over here you have your microgeeks... nerds, whiz kids and various other bottom feeders. Music of choice: The sound of an Apple PC booting up. Drug of choice: Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"... and a cup of jasmine tea on a Saturday night.
 * UV: Freaks that go squeak.
 * Gavin: [points to the hippie students] Over there you have your skaters. Riffin', raging kids and their ramp tramps. Baggy pants, Dickie wools, doing 50-50 grinds... with a gnarly grab finish on a homemade half-pipe in the woods. Music of choice: The whack of a hackysack. Drug of choice: Ecstasy, E-tab, baby; longer lovin' through science.
 * UV: Freaks in sneaks.
 * Gavin: Here's where it gets really... nasty. [points to the Blue Ribbons] Lorna runs with that group over there, the Blue Ribbons.
 * Steve: What's that?
 * Gavin: Community group. Good kids.  Have car washes and bake sales and kiss a lot of adult sphincter.
 * U.V.: Blue Robots.
 * Gavin: Hear, hear. Those three guys are Cradle Bay's answer to Manson, McVeigh and O.J.: Trent Whalen, Andy Effkin, Robby Stewart.
 * UV: Hey, I bet you didn't know that toast came in three flavors.
 * Gavin: Music of choice: the hum of perfection, the buzz of ambition. Drug of choice: life, the pursuit of clean living at the expense of all who sniffle at the hem of their gowns.
 * UV: Freaks so chic.
 * Gavin: The you've got kids like me and UV here, those who like their metal heavy, their Marlboro's light. Music of choice...
 * Gavin and UV: "Harvester of sorrow, language of the mad."
 * Gavin: Drug of choice: what have you got?
 * UV: Freaks all week!
 * [Bell rings]
 * Gavin: That's it. Lesson over.  Class dismembered.  Welcome to Cradle Bay High, Stevie Boy.  Welcome to my nightmare.

 * Steve: Tell me, Shannon, do you get yelled at when you talk about your dead grandfather?
 * Nathan: Steve...
 * Steve : 'Cause around here, people go crazy if you talk about a dead brother.

 * Gavin: Rachel, this is Stevie Boy-good man. Stevie Boy, this is Rachel-Cooks Ridge trash.
 * Rachel: [disgusted] Bite me.

 * Gavin: Hello Charles, cycle any anabolic goodies lately?
 * Chug: You're funny, Strick.
 * Gavin: Thanks, I'm here all week.
 * Chug: [to Rachel] Anyways Rachel, there's a couple of us guys going to the Yogurt Shoppe later if you wanna come by...
 * Gavin: The Yogurt Shoppe? Yeah! [to Steve] You wanna make an "active culture" joke here, Stevie Boy, or should I handle this one?

 * Steve: [after seeing Chug in a fight] What was that about?
 * Rachel: Toxic jock syndrome.

 * Gavin: No, it is not bullshit, and it wasn't steroids!
 * Rachel: [annoyed] Here we go...
 * Steve: What?
 * Rachel: Gavin thinks some sinister force has taken over the Cradle Bay meatheads.
 * Gavin: No, you know what it is! You know!
 * Steve: A sinister force?
 * Rachel: You know, evil. Nowhere to turn, no one to trust, altogether ooky.

 * Gavin: Mr. Newberry here has got the full-on Boo Radley, village idiot, Quasimoto thing going, don't you Mr. Newb?
 * Dorian: What?
 * Gavin: And he's currently involved in a war against the rodent population of Cradle Bay.

 * Dickie Atkinson the Mechanic: You had friends in Chicago?
 * Steve: [awkwardly] Yeah.
 * Lorna: You can have friends here.

 * Gavin: Look at this place: the Yogurt Shoppe... the Yogurt "Shop-e". What the fuck is a "Shop-e"?
 * Randi: Why don't you make like a tree and leave?
 * Gavin: Clever girl.

 * Chug: Will you go out with me?
 * Rachel: [laughs] You're kidding, right? [seriously] No, Chug, I won't.
 * Chug: WHY NOT?!

 * Rachel: Just tell me you have a really razor plan?
 * Steve: I am making this shit up as I go.

 * Dorian: Evening, Officer!
 * Officer Cox: What are you doing?
 * Dorian: Oh, I'm getting rid of rats! The pink-eyed vermin can't see for spit!

 * [after Steve begs for the family to head back to Chicago, Dr. Caldicott steps inside the Clark house]
 * Dr. Caldicott: Steven, you are home. Cradle Bay is where you belong, here with your family.
 * Steve: [realizing he's been betrayed by his mother and father] You signed me up for the program?
 * Cynthia: We want what's best for you.
 * Steve: [screaming] What about what I want??!!
 * Dr. Caldicott: Steven, do you really like the way you feel?
 * Steve: Oh, shut the fuck up! [to his parents] You sold me out.
 * Cynthia: No, we didn't! We just want you back!
 * Nathan: Steven, please...
 * Steve: [shouting] "Steve!" My name is "Steve", OK?! Nobody calls me "Steven" except for them!

 * [U.V. isn't sure if Steve Clark is now one of the Blue Ribbons]
 * U.V.: Hey, man, not so fast! What's the capital of North Dakota?
 * Steve: How the fuck should I know?
 * U.V.: All right, you're cool.

 * Steve: What're you doing?
 * Dorian: We can't very well let these shitbirds go off and graduate into the world, can we?
 * Steve: Maybe they can be helped!
 * Dorian: No, they can't... And neither can I! [shows the gunshot wound to his stomach] Do good things, lunch boy.

 * Steve: It's over, you son of a bitch. It's finished.
 * Dr. Caldicott: "Finished"? There'll always be other towns. Other troubled teens. Other troubled parents. Science is God!

 * [U.V. shoots Gavin to prevent him from shooting Rachel and Steve]
 * Gavin: [falls to the ground, bleeding] Three times? You had to shoot me three times?
 * U.V.: [voice breaking] Sorry, man.
 * Gavin: Wow. I get to say to my twisted family... I guess this diminishes my chances of ever meeting Trent Reznor...Wow, I guess I'm finally coming around...
 * Note: This was a deleted scene.

 * Rachel: What happened?
 * Steve: We're the only ones left.
 * Rachel: So what do we do now?
 * Steve: We go home.
 * Rachel: Where's that?
 * Steve: Wherever. Wherever we are.

Taglines

 * It doesn't matter if you're not perfect. You will be.
 * You'll never be the same.
 * In Cradle Bay... there's nothing more frightening than perfection.

Cast

 * James Marsden - Steve Clark
 * Katie Holmes - Rachel Wagner
 * Nick Stahl - Gavin Strick
 * Steve Railsback - Officer Cox
 * Bruce Greenwood - Dr. Edgar Caldicott
 * William Sadler - Dorian Newberry
 * Chad Donella - U.V.
 * Ethan Embry - Allen Clark
 * Katharine Isabelle - Lindsay Clark
 * A.J. Buckley - Charles 'Chug' Roman
 * Crystal Cass - Lorna Longley
 * Tygh Runyan - Dickie Atkinson
 * Tobias Mehler - Andy Effkin
 * Derek Hamilton - Trent Whalen
 * P.J. Prinsloo - Robby Stewart

title: Disturbing Behavior


text:
User talk:161.97.202.101

~ UDScott 19:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC) This is a public school computer's address. Boulder High School, Boulder, CO. Because of this, a large percentage of edits coming from this address will be questionable.

title: User talk:161.97.202.101


text:
Talk:Battle of Badr

Whenever possible I've tried to go for shorter hadiths (three relevant lines is always better than two mostly irrelevant paragraphs), but sometimes that is impossible. Please bear with me. Palm dogg 19:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Battle of Badr


text:
User talk:Frentos~enwikiquote

Welcome
~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Japanese proverbs reorganization
I got your email, although a little belatedly (my computer has been giving me problems). When you talk about "undoing the section delete", do you mean going back to the page version before the delete, editing it, and saving it? If so, I'm afraid that would also lose all the other changes since then. (If you mean something else, please explain.) The quickest way I can think of to restore the "Other" section is to edit the last version that included it, copy into your clipboard the entire "Other" section, cancel the edit, then edit the current article and paste your clipboard text into an appropriate place. Then you can start your reorganization as mentioned at Talk:Japanese proverbs. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding anything. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Frentos. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Frentos~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:22, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:47, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Frentos~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:71.64.204.172

~ UDScott 21:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:71.64.204.172


text:
User talk:209.106.171.118

~ UDScott 22:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:209.106.171.118


text:
User talk:217.132.239.98

~ UDScott 22:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:217.132.239.98


text:
Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Franco-Czech novelist born in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic).

Quotes

 * Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
 * Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven (Viking, 1988, ISBN 0-14-008500-9), pp. 217-218

 * A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
 * "The Novel and Europe" New York Review of Books (19 July 1984)

 * The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
 * From The Art of the Novel, as quoted in "Here Be Dragons" The Daily Telegraph (4 June 1988)

 * Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.
 * As quoted in The Canine Hiker's Bible (2000) by Doug Gelbert, p. 8

 * Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.
 * Testaments Betrayed (1995), p. 7

 * True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
 * The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), as quoted in Milan Kundera (2003) by Harold Bloom, [//books.google.it/books?id=SXDojRJFMPIC&pg=PA91 p. 91]

The Joke (1967)

 * Optimism is the opium of the people.

 * Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

 * Žádné pocínání není samo o sobe dohré ani zlé. Teprve jeho místo v rádu ciní je dobrým ci zlým.
 * No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.

 * No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)

 * Viking, ISBN 0-14-009693-0, trans. Michael Henry Heim

 * The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten. In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life.
 * Part I: Lost Letters (p. 7)

 * People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten.
 * Part I: Lost Letters (p. 22)

 * The proliferation of mass graphomania among politicians, cab drivers, women on the delivery table, mistresses, murderers, criminals, prostitutes, police chiefs, doctors, and patients proves to me that every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself and that all mankind has every right to rush out into the streets with a cry of "We are all writers!" The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late. Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.
 * Part Four: Lost Letters (p. 106)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

 * As translated by Michael Henry Heim

Part One: Lightness and Weight

 * "...[O]f a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, [...] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted."

 * In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia.

 * In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

 * And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

 * We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

 * Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

 * To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.

 * A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

 * He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realised that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them.

 * For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

 * Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

Part Two: Soul and Body

 * When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

 * But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?

 * Chance and chance alone has a message for us... Only chance can speak to us.

 * Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.

 * If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

 * It was the call of all those fortuities... which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate.

 * It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

 * For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.

 * Early in the novel [Anna Karenina], Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition — the same motif appears at the beginning and the end — may seem quite “novelistic” to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as “fictive,” “fabricated,” and “untrue to life” into the word “novelistic.” Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven’s music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life. Anna could have chosen another way to take her life. But the motif of death and the railway station, unforgettably bound to the birth of love, enticed her in her hour of despair with its dark beauty. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences. … But it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

 * Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo.

 * No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

 * Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

 * But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Part Three: Words Misunderstood

 * Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

 * "Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. "Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

 * "Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end."

 * The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.
 * Ch. 10

Part Four: Soul and Body

 * The moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.

Part Five: Lightness and Weight

 * What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

 * The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

 * Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

 * Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

 * Love is our freedom.

 * When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

 * Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

 * Sabina’s initial inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in character. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear — in other words, Communist kitsch.

 * Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.”

 * We can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.

 * In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.

 * What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.

Part Six: The Grand March

 * Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

 * The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. … The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. … Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

Slowness (1995)

 * As translated by Linda Asher

 * Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.

Identity (1998)

 * I can't shake off the idea that after death you keep being alive. That to be dead is to live an endless nightmare.

 * This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared.

 * It is always that way: between the moment he meets her again and the moment he recognizes her for the woman he loves, he has some distance to go.

 * How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?

 * You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more.

 * The eye... the point where a person's identity is concentrated.

 * You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.

 * Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

 * Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.

 * No love can survive muteness.

 * Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.

 * He felt as if she no longer existed for him, had gone off somewhere, into some other life where, if he should meet her, he would no longer recognize her.

 * As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

 * Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.

 * She said: "I get scared when my eye blinks. Scared that during that second when my gaze is switched off, a snake or a rat or another man could slip into your place."

Quotes about Milan Kundera

 * (For Milan Kundera, "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting". Are we losing this battle?) NG: One of the most truthful and profound insights ever made.
 * Nadine Gordimer interview (2004)

 * Kundera sees writers and artists as vital witnesses of the twentieth century as an age marked by tyranny, saying: 'People regard those days as an era of political trials, persecutions, forbidden books and legalised murder. But we who remember must bear witness; it was not only an epoch of terror, but also an epoch of lyricism, ruled hand in hand by the hangman and the poet.'
 * Nadine Gordimer "When Art Meets Politics" (1999)

 * To remember, if my Latin is correct, actually means to put the parts together. So that implies there are ways of losing parts. Kundera talks about this aspect of storytelling, too. In fact, he says that history, which is another kind of story, is often deliberately falsified in order to make a people forget who they are or who they were. He calls that "the method of organizing forgetting."
 * 1994 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * He writes about his prick too much. Excuse me, boys. (What do you mean by that?) I happen to like The Book of Laughter and Forgetting very much. But this last book (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), it's really, it's as though he's been consumed by Western concerns. I think it's a corrupt book, I really do. I mean I really read it with great hopes because I really liked Laughter and Forgetting, I thought it was great. But I'm so disgusted. I mean who the fuck does he think he is? It's not that I don't think that a person can write about sexual obsession. I think there's not much more interesting than that in a way. I'm all for it. But it's so egocentrical and false, admiring her so much for this idiotic loyalty. (At the same time he's trying to use sex as a political metaphor.) Yeah, but so obviously. But I still like the other book.
 * 1985 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley

title: Milan Kundera


text:
User:Gunblade~enwikiquote

de:User:gunblade tr:User:gunblade fr:User:gunblade es:User:gunblade als:User:gunblade simple:User:gunblade

title: User:Gunblade~enwikiquote


text:
The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, is a classic in children's literature. The story is a modern-day fairy tale about a bored boy named Milo who drives through a magic tollbooth and into a new and very different world.

Quotes

 * It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time.

 * Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now the toy is quite rusty.

 * There are no wrong roads to anywhere. Except the that leads you to a car crash.

 * Well, since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

 * Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.

 * Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.
 * Time is a gift.

 * The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.

 * There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye.

 * If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.

 * Many of the things which can never be, often are.

 * You know that it's there, but you just don't know where - but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.

 * Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else.

 * But it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn at all that matters.

 * What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.

 * So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.

 * You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you learn from them.

 * "I can hardly see a thing," said Milo, taking hold of Tock's tail as a sticky mist engulfed the moon. "Perhaps we should wait until morning." "They'll be mourning for you soon enough," came a reply from directly above, and this was followed by a hideous cackling laugh very much like someone choking on a fishbone. "I don't think you understand," said Milo timidly as the watchdog growled a warning. "We're looking for a place to spend the night." "It's not yours to spend," the bird shrieked again, and followed it with the same horrible laugh. "That doesn't make any sense, you see--" he started to explain. "Dollars or cents, it's still not yours to spend," the bird replied haughtily. "But I didn't mean--" insisted Milo. "Of course you're mean," interrupted the bird, closing the eye that had been open and opening the one that had been closed. "Anyone who'd spend a night that doesn't belong to him is very mean." "Well, I thought that by--" he tried again desperately. "That's a different story," interjected the bird a bit more amiably. "If you want to buy, I'm sure I can arrange to sell, but with what you're doing you'll probably end up in a cell anyway." "That doesn't seem right," said Milo helplessly, for, with the bird taking everything the wrong way, he hardly knew what he was saying. "Agreed," said the bird, with a sharp click of his beak, "but neither is it left, although if I were you I would have left a long time ago." "Let me try once more," he said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now."

 * "Oh, this won't take a minute," the man assured them. "I'm the official Senses Taker, and I must have some information before I can take your senses. Now, if you'll just tell me when you were born, where you were born, why you were born, how old you are now, how old you were then, how old you'll be in a little while, your mother's name, your father's name, your aunt's name, your uncle's name, your cousin's name, where you live, how long you've lived there, the schools you've attended, the schools you haven't attended, your hobbies, your telephone number, your shoe size, shirt size, collar size, hat size, and the names and addresses of six people who can verify all this information, we'll get started. One at a time, please; stand in line; and no pushing, no talking, no peeking."

title: The Phantom Tollbooth


text:
All About Eve

All About Eve is a 1950 film about an apparent ingenue who insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends to establish herself as an actress.
 * Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, from the story The Wisdom of Eve, by Mary Orr.

It's all about women---and their men!

Margo Channing

 * Everybody has a heart - except some people.

 * Autograph fiends, they're not people. Those are little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes...They're nobody's fans. They're juvenile delinquents, they're mental defectives, they're nobody's audience. They never see a play or a movie even. They're never indoors long enough.

 * Suddenly, I've developed a big protective feeling for her. A lamb loose in our big stone jungle.

 * Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.
 * Note: ranked #9 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

 * Enchanté to you, too!

 * I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off my guest list. What are you doing here?

 * So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.

 * Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman.

 * Lloyd, I am not twenty-ish. I am not thirty-ish. Three months ago, I was forty years old. Forty. Four oh - That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.

 * Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.

 * [to Bill] This is my house, not a theater. In my house, you're a guest, not a director.

 * [responding to Karen's disbelief] In this rat race, everybody's guilty till they're proved innocent!

 * The little witch must have sent out Indian runners, snatching critics out of bars and steam rooms and museums, or wherever they holed up. Well, she won't get away with it, nor will Addison De Witt and his poison pen. If Equity or my lawyer can't or won't do anything about it, I shall personally stuff that pathetic little lost lamb down Mr. De Witt's ugly throat.

 * Never have I been so happy...I'm forgiving tonight, even Eve, I forgive Eve...Do you know what I'm going to be?...A married lady...No more make believe off stage or on. Remember, Lloyd? I mean it now...I don't want to play Cora...It isn't the part. It's a great part in a fine play. But not for me anymore. Not for a four-square, upright, downright, forthright married lady...It means I finally got a life to live. I don't have to play parts I'm too old for, just because I've got nothing to do with my nights.

 * Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

Eve Harrington

 * I've seen every performance...I'd like anything Miss Channing played in...I think that part of Miss Channing's greatness lies in her ability to pick the best plays.

 * But somehow, acting and make believe began to fill up my life more and more. It got so I couldn't tell the real from the unreal. Except that the unreal seemed more real to me.

 * When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make-believe you're anything else. Everything is beer.

 * And there were theaters in San Francisco. And then one night, Margo Channing came to play in Remembrance and I went to see it. Well, here I am.

 * If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights and wrapping you up.

 * I'll never forget this night as long as I live, and I'll never forget you for making it possible.

 * Lloyd Richards. He's going to leave Karen. We're going to be married...Lloyd loves me, I love him...I'm in love with Lloyd...Oh Addison, won't it be just perfect? Lloyd and I - there's no telling how far we can go. He'll write great plays for me, I'll make them great.

Addison DeWitt

 * The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you. It has been spared the sensational and commercial publicity that attends such questionable 'honors' as the Pulitzer Prize - and those awards presented annually by that film society. This is the dining hall of the Sarah Siddons Society. The occasion is its annual banquet and presentation of the highest honor our theater knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement...The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director [playwright Lloyd Richards and director Bill Sampson are briefly viewed] since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington. Eve. But more of Eve later, all about Eve, in fact.
 * [At the time of the film's making, the Sarah Siddons Awards were fictitious, but the screenplay's reference inspired their creation in 1952 for theatrical productions in Chicago.]

 * To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs or know anything of the world in which you live - it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison De Witt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater.

 * She is the wife of a playwright, therefore of the theater by marriage. Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center. However, during her senior year at Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on the drama. The following year, Karen became Mrs. Lloyd Richards.

 * There are in general two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck.

 * Margo Channing is a Star of the Theater. She made her first stage appearance, at the age of four, in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered - quite unexpectedly - stark naked. She has been a Star ever since. Margo is a great Star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

 * We know her humility, her devotion, her loyalty to her art, her love, her deep and abiding love for us, for what we are and what we do, the theater. She has had one wish, one prayer, one dream - to belong to us. Tonight, her dream has come true. And henceforth, we shall dream the same of her. Eve. Eve the Golden Girl, the Cover Girl, the Girl Next Door, the Girl on the Moon. Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's the profiled, covered, revealed, reported. What she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was, and when and where she's going. Eve. You all know all about Eve. What can there be to know that you don't know?

 * Dear Margo. You were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon.

 * Every now and then some elder statesman of the theater or cinema assures the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks. Ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public is their complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings.

 * I have lived in the theater as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world; no other life - and once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another...there are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them.

 * We all have abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; We are the original displaced personalities.

 * [confronting Eve] I had lunch with Karen not three hours ago. As always with women who try to find out things, she told more than she learned. Now do you want to change your story about Lloyd beating at your door the other night? ... That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability, but that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition - and talent. We deserve each other...and you realize and you agree how completely you belong to me?

 * Your name is not Eve Harrington. It is Gertrude Slescynski... It is also true that you worked in a brewery, But life in the brewery was not as dull as you pictured it. As a matter of fact it got less and less dull - until your boss's wife had your boss followed by detectives! The five hundred dollars you got to get out of town brought you straight to New York. Fourth. There was no Eddie - no pilot - and you've never been married! That was not only a lie, but an insult to dead heroes and to the women who love them... Fifth, San Francisco has no Shubert Theatre. You've never been to San Francisco! That was a stupid lie and easy to expose. Eve cries and admits she had to do something, to say something, be somebody to make her like me. [Margo Channing]

Karen Richards

 * Then stop being a star. And stop treating your guests as your supporting cast...It's about time Margo realized that what's attractive on stage need not necessarily be attractive off.

 * [to Eve, who is upset] The reason is Margo, and don't try to figure it out. Einstein couldn't.

 * Newton, they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. And the man who invented the steam engine - he was watching a tea kettle. Not me. My big idea came to me just sitting on a couch. That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows she had one coming. From me, from Lloyd, from Eve, Bill, Max, and so on. We'd all felt those size 5's of hers often enough. But how? The answer was buzzing around me like a fly. I had it. But I let it go. Screaming and calling names is one thing, but this could mean...Why not? Why, I said to myself, not? It would all seem perfectly legitimate. And there were only two people in the world who would know. Also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all concerned. And after all, it was no more than a perfectly harmless joke that Margo herself would be the first to enjoy. And no reason why she shouldn't be told about it - in time.

 * That cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys.

 * Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello.

 * Lloyd never got around somehow to asking whether it was all right with me for Eve to play Cora. Bill, oddly enough, refused to direct the play at first - with Eve in it. Lloyd and Max finally won him over. Margo never came to rehearsal. Too much to do around the house, she said. I'd never known Bill and Lloyd to fight as bitterly and often and always over some business for Eve, or a move, or the way she read a speech. But then I'd never known Lloyd to meddle as much with Bill's directing, as far as it affected Eve, that is. Somehow Eve kept them going. Bill stuck it out. Lloyd seemed happy. And I thought it might be best if I skipped rehearsals from then on. It seemed to me I had known always that it would happen, and here it was. I felt helpless, that helplessness you feel when you have no talent to offer - outside of loving your husband. How could I compete? Everything Lloyd loved about me, he had gotten used to long ago.

Lloyd Richards

 * [about Eve] I like that girl, that quality of quiet graciousness.

 * It's Addison from start to finish. It drips with his brand of venom. Taking advantage of a kid like that, twisting her words, making her say what he wanted her to say.

 * There are very few moments in life as good as this. Let's remember it. To each of us and all of us, never have we been more close, may we never be farther apart.

 * The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish...what has, or is about to, happen?

 * She can play Peck's Bad Boy all she wants and who's to stop her? Who's to give her that boot in the rear she needs and deserves?

Birdie Coonan

 * I haven't got a union. I'm slave labor.

 * I'll tell ya how, like, like she's studyin' you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints. How you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep.

 * The bed looks like a dead animal act.

 * MARGO: [graciously] And this is my good friend and companion, Miss Birdie Coonan.

 * BIRDIE: Oh, brother.

 * MARGO: Miss Coonan...

 * LLOYD: [to Birdie] Oh brother what?

 * BIRDIE: When she gets like this... all of a sudden she's playin' Hamlet's mother...

 * MARGO: I'm quite sure you must have things to do in the bathroom, Birdie dear.

 * BIRDIE: If I haven't, I'll find something 'til you get normal.

 * MARGO: Dear Birdie. Won't you sit down, Miss Worthington?

 * KAREN: Harrington.

 * MARGO: Oh, I'm so sorry... Harrington. Won't you sit down?

 * EVE: Thank you.

 * MARGO: There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house - and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect! [to Eve] I want to apologize for Birdie's-

 * BIRDIE: You don't have to apologize for me! [to Eve] I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, kid. It's just my way of talkin'...

 * EVE: You didn't hurt my feelings, Miss Coonan...

 * BIRDIE: Call me Birdie. [to Margo] And as for bein' fifth-rate - I closed the first half for eleven years an' you know it!

 * BIRDIE: You all put together?

 * MARGO: My back's open. Did the extra help get here?

 * BIRDIE: There's some loose characters dressed like maids and butlers. Who'd you call - the William Morris Agency?

 * MARGO: You're not being funny, I could get actors for less. What about the food?

 * BIRDIE: The caterer had to go back for the hors d'oeuvres [she zips up Margo’s dress and sweeps her shoulders with a flourish]

). Et voila.

 * MARGO: That French ventriloquist taught you a lot, didn't he?

 * BIRDIE: There was nothing he didn't know. There's a message from the bartender. Does Miss Channing know that she ordered domestic gin by mistake?

 * MARGO: The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. [Birdie laughs] They're domestic, too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns...

 * BIRDIE: I haven't got a union. I'm slave labor.

 * MARGO: Well?

 * BIRDIE: But the wardrobe women have got one. And next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business-

 * MARGO: Oh-oh.

 * BIRDIE: She's got two things to do - carry clothes an' press 'em wrong - an' don' let anybody try'ta muscle in...

Others

 * Bill Sampson: Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me.

 * Bill Sampson: The theatah, the theatAh - what book of rules says the theater exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London, Paris, or Vienna? Listen, junior. And learn. Want to know what the theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band - all theater. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience - there's theater. Donald Duck, Ibsen, and the Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford, Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable, Rex the Wild Horse, Eleanora Duse - they're all theater. You don't understand them, you don't like them all - why should you? The theater's for everybody - you included, but not exclusively - so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theater, but it's theater for somebody, somewhere...It's just that there's so much bourgeois in this ivory green room they call the theater. Sometimes it gets up around my chin.

 * Max Fabian: She loves me like a father. Also, she's loaded.

 * Old Actor: [about Eve] We know her humility, her devotion, her loyalty to her art, her love, her deep and abiding love for us, for what we are and what we do, the theater. She has had one wish, one prayer, one dream - to belong to us. Tonight, her dream has come true. And henceforth, we shall dream the same of her.

Dialogue

 * Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.
 * Margo: There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house - and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect!

 * Margo: Bill, don't get stuck on some glamour-puss.
 * Bill: I'll try.
 * Margo: You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited, and thoughtless and messy.
 * Bill: Well, everybody can't be Gregory Peck.
 * Margo: You're a set-up for some gorgeous, wide-eyed young bait.
 * Bill: How childish are you going to get before you stop it?
 * Margo: I don't want to be childish. I'll settle for a few years.
 * Bill: Then cut that out right now.
 * Margo: Am I going to lose you, Bill? Am I?
 * Bill: As of this moment, you're six years old.

 * Margo: You bought the new girdles a size smaller. I can feel it.
 * Birdie: Somethin' maybe grew a size larger.
 * Margo: When we get home, you're going to get into one of those girdles and act for two and a half hours.
 * Birdie: I couldn't get into the girdle in two and a half hours. [Margo laughs]

 * Bill: We started talking. She wanted to know about Hollywood. She seemed so interested.
 * Margo: She's a girl of so many interests.
 * Bill: A pretty rare quality these days.
 * Margo: A girl of so many rare qualities.
 * Bill: So she seems.
 * Margo: So you've pointed out so often. So many qualities so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, and affection, and so young. So young and so fair.
 * Bill: I can't believe you're making this up. It sounds like something out of an old Clyde Fitch play.
 * Margo: Clyde Fitch--though you may not think so--was well before my time.
 * Bill: I've always denied the legend that you were in "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was shot.
 * Margo: I don't think that's funny.
 * Bill: Of course it's funny. This is all too laughable to be anything else. You know what I feel about this age obsession of yours. And now this ridiculous attempt to whip yourself up into a jealous froth because I spent ten minutes with a stage-struck kid.
 * Margo: Twenty.
 * Bill: Thirty minutes, forty minutes, what of it?
 * Margo: Stage-struck kid! She's a young lady of qualities. And I'll have you know I'm fed up with both the young lady and her qualities. Studying me as if I were a play or a blueprint, how I walk, talk, think, act, sleep...
 * Bill: Now, how can you take offense at a kid trying in every way to be as much like her ideal as possible?
 * Margo: Stop calling her a kid! As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
 * Bill: For instance what?
 * Margo: For instance you.
 * Bill: This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to. I'm too mad...
 * Margo: [interrupting] Guilty.
 * Bill: ...Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous onstage and off. I love you for some of them in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp, all right. But I will not have you sharpen them on me - or on Eve.
 * Margo: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
 * Bill: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it. Eve Harrington has never by a word, a look, or a suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me. It spells out paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of.
 * Margo: Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

 * Karen: Margo, nothing you've ever done has made me as happy as your taking Eve in.
 * Margo: I'm so happy you're happy.

 * Eve: I'm afraid Mr. De Witt would find me boring before too long.
 * Miss Casswell: You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk.

 * De Witt: Do you see that man? That's Max Fabian, the producer. Now go and do yourself some good.
 * Miss Casswell: Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?
 * De Witt: Because that's what they are. Now go and make him happy.

 * Bill: Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
 * Margo: It hasn't been laid out. We haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.
 * Bill: Wouldn't it be more natural for you to be taking a bow?

 * Miss Casswell: Now there's something a girl could make sacrifices for.
 * Bill: And probably has.
 * Miss Casswell: Sable.
 * Max Fabian: Sable? Did she say sable or Gable?
 * Miss Casswell: Either one.

 * De Witt: Every so often some elder statesman of the theatre reminds the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks, completely ignoring the fact thath their whole attraction is their complete lack of resemblance to ordinary human beings. We all have that abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk. We are the original displaced personalities.
 * Bill: [To Eve] You won't have to read his column tomorrow kid, you just heard it. I don't agree, Addison.
 * De Witt: That happens to be your particular abnormality.
 * Miss Casswell: [interrupting] Oh, waiter!
 * De Witt: That isn't a waiter, my dear. That's a butler.
 * Miss Casswell: Well, I can't yell, 'Oh, butler!' can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler.
 * De Witt: You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.
 * Miss Casswell: I don't want to make trouble. All I want is a drink.
 * Max: Leave it to me. I'll get you one.
 * Miss Caswell: [smiling] Thank you, Mr. Fabian.
 * De Witt: Well done. I can see your career rising in the east like the sun. You were saying.
 * Bill: I'll admit there's a screwball element in the theatre. It's got splotlights on it and a brass band but it isn't basic. To be a good actor or actress or anything else in the theatre means wanting to be that more than anything else in the world.
 * Eve: [softly] Yes, yes it does.
 * Bill: It means concentration of desire or ambition, and sacrifice such as no other profession demands. And I'll agree that the man or woman who accepts those terms can't be ordinary, can't be just someone. To give so much for almost always so little.
 * Eve: So little. So little, did you say? Why, if there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like, like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine. To know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, and their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.

 * Margo: [to Eve] Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the Queen-Mother.
 * Eve: I'm sorry, I didn't...
 * Bill: Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would hardly be considered either queenly or motherly.
 * Margo: You're in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey, day and night. [To Eve] Aren't we, honey?
 * Karen: Margo, really.
 * Margo: Please don't play governess, Karen. I haven't your unyielding good taste. I wish I could have gone to Radcliffe too, but father wouldn't hear of it. He needed help behind the notions counter. I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?
 * De Witt: You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent.
 * Lloyd: How about calling it a night?
 * Margo: And you pose as a playwright, a situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.

 * Margo: [to Bill] You be host. It's your party. Happy birthday, welcome home, and we who are about to die salute you.
 * De Witt: Too bad, we'll miss the third act. They're going to play it off stage.

 * De Witt: [about Eve] It wasn't a reading. It was a performance. Brilliant, vivid, something made of music and fire.
 * Margo: How nice.
 * De Witt: In time, she'll be what you are.
 * Margo: A mass of music and fire? That's me.

 * Miss Casswell: Now what?
 * De Witt: Your next move, it seems to me, should be towards television.
 * Miss Casswell: Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?
 * De Witt: That's, uh, all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.

 * Margo: All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years!
 * Lloyd: That would solve none of their problems, because actresses never die. The stars never die and never change.
 * Margo: You may change this star any time you want for a new and fresh and exciting one, fully equipped with fire and music. Anytime you want, starting with tonight's performance!
 * Max: This is for lawyers to talk about! This concerns a run-of-the-play contract that you cannot rewrite or ad-lib!
 * Margo: Are you threatening me with legal action, Mr. Fabian?
 * Max: Are you breaking the contract?
 * Margo: Answer my question.
 * Max: [muttering angrily] Who am I to threaten? I'm a dying man.
 * Margo: I don't hear you.
 * Max: I said 'I'm a dying man!'
 * Margo: Not until the last drugstore has sold its last pill.
 * Lloyd: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're her words she's saying and her thoughts she's expressing?
 * Margo: Usually at the point when she has to rewrite and rethink them to keep the audience from leaving the theater.
 * Lloyd: It's about time the piano realize it has not written the concerto!
 * Margo: And you, I take it, are the Paderewski who plays his concerto on me, the piano?

 * Bill: The gong rang, the fight's over. Calm down.
 * Margo: I will not calm down.
 * Bill: Don't calm down.
 * Margo: You're being terribly tolerant, aren't you?
 * Bill: I'm trying terribly hard.
 * Margo: But you needn't be. I will not be tolerated and I will not be plotted against.
 * Bill: Here we go.
 * Margo: Such nonsense. What do you all take me for - Little Nell from the country? Been my understudy for over a week without my knowing it, carefully hidden no doubt.
 * Bill: I am sick and tired of these paranoiac outbursts
 * Margo: Paranoiac!
 * Bill: For the last time, I'll tell it to you. You've got to stop hurting yourself and me and the two of us by these paranoiac tantrums.
 * Margo: Oh that word again, I don't even know what it means.
 * Bill: Well it's about time you found out. I love you.
 * Margo: Ha!
 * Bill: I love you! You're a beautiful and an intelligent woman ...
 * Margo: A body with a voice!
 * Bill: A beautiful and an intelligent woman and a great actress. A great actress at the peak of her career. You have every reason for happiness.
 * Margo: Except happiness!
 * 'Bill: But due to some strange, uncontrollable, unconscious drive, you permit the slightest action of a kid ...
 * Margo: [Sneering] A kid.
 * Bill: ... of a kid like Eve to turn you into an hysterical, screaming harpy. Now, once and for all, stop it!
 * Margo: It's obvious you're not a woman.
 * Bill: I've been aware of that for some time.
 * Margo: Well I am.
 * Bill: I'll say.
 * Margo: Don't be condescending.
 * Bill: C'mon, get up. I'll buy you a drink.
 * Margo: I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

 * Margo: So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
 * Karen: You're Margo, just Margo.
 * Margo: And what is that besides something spelled out in lightbulbs, I mean, besides something called a temperament which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice. Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave. They'd get drunk if they knew how, when they can't have what they want. When they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.

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 * Margo: Bill's in love with Margo Channing. He's fought with her, worked with her, and loved her. But ten years from now, Margo Channing will have ceased to exist. And what's left will be - what?
 * Karen: Margo, Bill is all of eight years younger than you.
 * Margo: Those years stretch as the years go on. I've seen it happen too often.
 * Karen: Not to you, not to Bill.
 * Margo: Isn't that what they always say?...About Eve, I've acted pretty disgracefully toward her too.
 * Karen: Well,...
 * Margo: Don't fumble for excuses, not here and now with my hair down. At best, let's say I've been oversensitive to her...to the fact that she's so young, so feminine and so helpless, too so many things I want to be for Bill. Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a - a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The End.

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 * Bill: ...you did it. With work and patience, you'll be a good actress if that's what you want to be.
 * Eve: [purring] Is that what you want me to be?
 * Bill: I'm talking about you and what you want.
 * Eve: So am I.
 * Bill: What have I got to do with it?
 * Eve: Everything.
 * Bill: Names I've been called, but never Svengali. Good luck.
 * Eve: Don't run away, Bill.
 * Bill: From what would I be running?
 * Eve: You're always after truth on the stage. What about off?
 * Bill: I'm for it.
 * Eve: Then face it. I have. Ever since that first night here in this dressing room.
 * Bill: When I told you what every young actress should know?
 * Eve: When you told me that whatever I became it would be because of you...
 * Bill: Makeup's a little heavy.
 * Eve: ...and for you.
 * Bill: You're quite a girl.
 * Eve: You think?
 * Bill: I'm in love with Margo. Hadn't you heard?
 * Eve: You hear all kinds of things.
 * Bill: I'm only human, rumors to the contrary. And I'm as curious as the next man.
 * Eve: Find out.
 * Bill: The only thing - what I go after, I want to go after. I don't want it to come after me. Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass.

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 * De Witt: But if I may make a suggestion...I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly.
 * Eve: I don't think I have anything to sound off about.
 * De Witt: We all come into this world with our little egos, equipped with individual horns. Now if we don't blow them, who else will?
 * Eve: Even so, one pretty good performance by an understudy - it'll be forgotten by tomorrow.
 * De Witt: It needn't be.

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 * Eve: You take charge.
 * De Witt: I believe I will.

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 * Lloyd: For once to write something and have it realized completely. For once not to compromise.
 * Karen: Lloyd Richards! You are not to consider giving that contemptible little worm the part of Cora.
 * Lloyd: Now just a minute.
 * Karen: Margo Channing's not been exactly a compromise all these years. Why, half the playwrights in the world would give their shirts for that particular compromise.
 * Lloyd: Now just a minute.
 * Karen: It strikes me that Eve's disloyalty and ingratitude must be contagious.
 * Lloyd: All this fuss and hysteria because an impulsive kid got carried away by excitement and the conniving of a professional manure-slinger named De Witt. She apologized, didn't she?
 * Karen: On her knees, I've no doubt. Very touching. Very Academy of Dramatic Arts.
 * Lloyd: That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe.
 * Karen: That cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys.

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 * Bill: The so-called art of acting is not one for which I have a particularly-high regard...But you may quote me as follows. Quote: 'Tonight, Miss Margo Channing gave a performance in your cockamamie play the like of which I have never seen before and expect rarely to see again.' Unquote....I shall propose the toast. Without wit. With all my heart. To Margo. To my bride-to-be.
 * Margo: Glory, Hallelujah.

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 * Margo: Encore du champagne.
 * Waiter: More champagne, Miss Channing?
 * Margo: That's what I said, bub.

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 * Eve: If you told him [Lloyd] so, he'd give me the part. He said he would...It's my part now...Cora is my part. You've got to tell Lloyd it's for me...Addison wants me to play it...Addison knows how Margo happened to miss that performance, how I happened to know she'd miss it in time to call him and notify every paper in town...If I play Cora, Addison will never tell what happened, in or out of print. A simple exchange of favors. I'm so happy I can do something for you at long last. Your friendship with Margo - your deep, close friendship. What would happen to it, do you think, if she knew the cheap trick you played on her for my benefit? You and Lloyd. How long, even in the theater, before people forgot what happened and trusted you again? No, it would be so much easier for everyone concerned if I would play Cora. So much better theater too.
 * Karen: You'd do all that just for a part in a play?
 * Eve: I'd do much more for a part that good.

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 * De Witt: And tomorrow morning, you will have won your beachhead on the shores of immortality.
 * Eve: Stop rehearsing your column. Isn't it strange, Addison? I thought I'd be panic-stricken, want to run away or something. Instead, I can't wait for tonight to come, to come and go.
 * De Witt: Are you that sure of tomorrow?
 * Eve: Aren't you?
 * De Witt: Frankly, yes.
 * Eve: It will be a night to remember. It will bring me everything I've ever wanted. The end of an old road. The beginning of a new one.
 * De Witt: All paved with diamonds and gold?
 * Eve: You know me better than that.
 * De Witt: It's paved with what, then?
 * Eve: Stars...Plenty of time for a nice long nap. We rehearsed most of last night.
 * De Witt: You could sleep now, couldn't you?
 * Eve: Why not?
 * De Witt: The mark of a true killer. Sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting.
 * Eve: Why did you call me a killer?
 * De Witt: Oh, did I say killer? I meant champion. I get my boxing terms mixed.

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 * Eve: The setting wasn't romantic, but Lloyd was. He woke me up at three o'clock in the morning banging on my door. He couldn't sleep, he said. He'd left Karen. Couldn't go on with the play or anything else until I promised to marry him. We sat and talked until it was light. He never went home.
 * De Witt: You 'sat and talked' until it was light?
 * Eve: We 'sat and talked' Addison. I want a run-of-the-play contract.
 * De Witt: There never was and there never will be another like you...[rising] What do you take me for?
 * Eve: I don't know that I'd take you for anything.
 * De Witt: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on? That you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?...Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison De Witt. I am nobody's fool. Least of all - yours.
 * Eve: I never intended you to be.
 * De Witt: Yes you did and you still do...It's important right now that we talk - killer to killer.
 * Eve: Champion to champion.
 * De Witt: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.
 * Eve: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out so I can take my nap.
 * De Witt: Very well. Plainly and distinctly...Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.
 * Eve: What do you mean by that?
 * De Witt: More plainly and more distinctly? I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I've come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd or anyone else for that matter because I will not permit it.
 * Eve: What have you got to do with it?
 * De Witt: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.
 * Eve: Belong to you? I can't believe my ears.
 * De Witt: What a dull cliched.
 * Eve: Belong to you? That sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama.
 * De Witt: So does the history of the world for the past five hundred years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this, I assumed you'd take it for granted that you and I ...
 * Eve: That you and I ... [laughs bitterly]
 * [De Witt slaps her sharply across the face]
 * De Witt: Now remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me. At anything or anyone else, but never at me.

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 * De Witt: San Francisco has no Shubert Theater. You've never been to San Francisco! That was a stupid lie, easy to expose, not worthy of you.
 * Eve: I had to get in to meet Margo! I had to say something, be somebody, make her like me!

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 * Phoebe: I call myself Phoebe.
 * De Witt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?
 * Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.
 * De Witt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.

Cast

 * Bette Davis - Margo Channing
 * Anne Baxter - Eve Harrington
 * George Sanders - Addison DeWitt
 * Celeste Holm - Karen Richards
 * Gary Merrill - Bill Sampson
 * Hugh Marlowe - Lloyd Richards
 * Gregory Ratoff - Max Fabian
 * Barbara Bates - Phoebe
 * Marilyn Monroe - Miss Caswell
 * Thelma Ritter - Birdie Coonan

title: All About Eve