text:
Shrek

Shrek is a 2001 animated film about an ogre who, in order to regain his swamp, travels along with a donkey in order to bring a princess to a scheming lord who wishes to become King.
 * Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Story by William Steig (book)

The greatest fairy tale never told. (taglines)

Shrek

 * What are you doing in my swamp?
 * Fiona? Are you alright?

Donkey

 * [gets cornered by Dragon] Oh, what large teeth you have! [Dragon roars] I-I-I-I...
 * [atop the dragon after she swallows Farquaad] All right, nobody move! I've got a dragon and I'm not afraid to use it! I'm a donkey on the edge!

Dialogue

 * [The angry mob stops. Warily they parts the bushes in front of them and we see that they are right outside Shrek's house. One steps forward determinedly]
 * Villager #1: [sotto] Think it's in here.
 * Villager #2: [sotto; intense] All right. Let's get it!
 * [Another villager looks alarmed and reaches out, grabbing the first and stopping him]
 * Chris: Whoa! Hold on! Do you know what that thing could do to you?
 * [A third villager pipes in]
 * Mike: [forboding] Yeah. It'll grind your bones for its bread.
 * [The other villagers all stare at him bewildered]
 * Shrek: [brightly, laughing] Yes. Well, actually, that would be a giant.
 * [The villagers hear the new voice and spin around. Shrek is standing nonchalantly behind them, he advances on them as he speaks, getting more intense and terrifying as he does. They back away frightened]
 * Villagers: No!
 * Shrek: [starts nonchalant and build] Now ogres-- Oh, they're much worse. They'll make a suit from your freshly peeled skin. They'll shave your liver, squeeze the jelly from your eyes! Actually, it's quite good on toast.
 * [Villager James leaps forward bravely waving the torch in front of him]
 * James: Back! Back, beast! Back! I warn ya!
 * [Shrek leans away, avoiding the torch and watching the man with casual indifference. When the Villager is done with waving, he holds the torch threateningly in front of him. Shrek moistens his thumb and forefinger and reaching forward, snuffs out the torch. The villagers stand stunned for a moment]
 * James: Right.
 * [Shrek huge long roar. Simultaneously the Villagers screw their eyes closed and scream for all they're worth. The villagers huge long scream. Their scream outlasts Shrek's roar and Shrek ponders them for a moments]
 * Shrek: [whispers] This is the part where you runs away.
 * [They all run as fast as they can. We cut in close of Shrek as he watches them go. He chuckles to himself]
 * Shrek: And stay out!
 * [Shrek suddenly notices a small flyer that the Villagers have left behind. He picks it up and reads it]
 * Shrek: "Wanted. Fairytale creatures."
 * [He tosses it into the ground and heads back into his house]

 * [There is a line of fairytale creatures. The head of the guard sits at a table paying people for bringing the fairytale creatures to him. There are cages all around. Some of the people in line are Peter Pan, who is carrying Tinkerbell in a cage, Geppetto who's carrying Pinocchio, and a farmer who is carrying the three little pigs]
 * Guard: All right. This one's full. Take it away! Move it along. Come on! Get up!
 * Captain: Next!
 * Guard: [taking the witch's broom] Give me that! Your flying days are over. [breaks the broom in half]
 * Captain: That's 20 pieces of silver for the witch. Next!
 * Guard: Get up! Come on!
 * Captain: Twenty pieces.
 * Little Bear: [crying] This cage is too small.
 * Donkey: Please, don't turn me in. I'll never be stubborn again. I can change. Please! Give me another chance!
 * Donkey's owner: Oh, shut up. [jerks his rope]
 * Donkey: Oh!
 * Captain: Next! What have you got?
 * Geppetto: This little wooden puppet.
 * Pinocchio: I'm not a puppet. I'm a real boy. [his nose grows]
 * Captain: Five shillings for the possessed toy. Take it away.
 * Pinocchio: Father, please! Don't let them do this! Help me!
 * [Geppetto takes the money and walks off. The old woman steps up to the table]
 * Captain: Next! What have you got?
 * Donkey's owner: Well, I've got a talking donkey.
 * Captain: Right. Well, that's good for ten shillings, if you can prove it.
 * Donkey's owner: Oh, go ahead, little fella.
 * [Donkey just looks up at her]
 * Captain: Well?
 * Donkey's owner: Oh, oh, he's just... he's just a little nervous. He's really quite a chatterbox. Talk, you boneheaded dolt...
 * Captain: That's it. I've heard enough. Guards!
 * Donkey's owner: No, no, he talks! He does. [pretends to be Donkey] I can talk. I love to talk! I'm the talkin'est damn thing you ever saw.
 * Captain: Get her outta my sight.
 * Owner: No, no! I swear! He can talk!

 * [after Shrek scares off the guards to save Donkey; he walks back home with Donkey following him]
 * Donkey: Can I say something to you? Listen, you was really, really somethin' back there. Incredible!
 * Shrek: [looks back, but sees nothing] Are you talking to... me?
 * Donkey: Yes, I was talkin' to you. Can I just tell you that you was really great back there? I mean, those guards. They thought they was all of that. Then you showed up, and bam! They was trippin' over themselves like babes in the woods. That really made me feel good to see that.
 * Shrek: Oh, that's great. Really.
 * Donkey: Man, it's good to be free.
 * Shrek: Now, why don't you go celebrate your freedom with your own friends? Hmm? [walks away]
 * Donkey: But, uh, I don't have any friends, and I'm not goin' out there by myself. [catches up to Shrek] Hey, wait a minute! I got a great idea! I'll stick with you. You're a mean, green, fightin' machine. Together, we'll scare the spit out of anybody that crosses us.
 * [Shrek roars at Donkey.]
 * Donkey: Oh, wow! That was really scary. And if you don't mind me sayin', if that don't work, your breath certainly will get the job done, 'cause you definitely need some Tic Tacs or something, 'cause your breath stinks!
 * [as Shrek continues walking, Donkey shows up again from the log on gap.]
 * Donkey: Man, you almost burned the hair out of my nose, just like the time... [Shrek muffles him] And then I ate some rotten berries. Man, I had strong gases eking out of my butt that day.
 * Shrek: [to Donkey] WHY are you following me?!
 * Donkey: I'll tell you why. [sings]  Cause I'm all alone. There's no one here beside me. My problems have all gone. There's no one to deride me. But ya gotta have friends...
 * Shrek: STOP SINGING! Well, it's no wonder you don't have any friends.
 * Donkey: Wow! Only a true friend would be that truly honest.
 * Shrek: Listen, little donkey. Take a look at me, what am I?
 * Donkey: Uh... [looks Shrek up and down] Really tall?
 * Shrek: No! I'm an ogre! Y’know, "Grab your torch and pitchforks!" Doesn't that bother you?
 * Donkey: [shakes his head happily] Nope.
 * Shrek: [surprised] Really?
 * Donkey: Really, really.
 * Shrek: Oh.
 * Donkey: Man, I like you. What's your name?
 * Shrek: Uh... Shrek. [continues walking]
 * Donkey: Shrek? Well, you know what I like about you? You got that kind of I-don't-care what-nobody-thinks-of-me thing. I like that. I respect that. You all right.

 * Donkey: [looks at a hovel] Whoa, look at that. Who'd wanna live in a place like that?
 * Shrek: That would be my home.
 * Donkey: Oh, and it is lovely! Y'know, you're really quite a decorator. It's amazing what you've done with such a modest budget. [looks at a boulder] I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder. [eyes the KEEP OUT signs surrounding Shrek's home] I guess you don't, uh, entertain much, do you?
 * Shrek: I like my privacy.
 * Donkey: Y'know, I do, too! That's another thing we have in common. Like I hate it when you've got someone in your face, you try to give 'em a hint and they won't leave, then there's that big awkward silence, you know... [silence ensues] ...Can I stay wit you?
 * Shrek: Uh, what?
 * Donkey: Can I stay wit you... please?
 * Shrek: [sarcastically] Of course!
 * Donkey: Really?
 * Shrek: No.
 * Donkey: Please! I don't wanna go back there! You don't know what it's like to be considered a freak, Shrek! [slight pauses; Shrek gives Donkey a look] Well, maybe you do. But that's why we gotta stick together! You gotta let me stay! Please, please!
 * Shrek: Okay! Okay. But one night only.
 * Donkey: Ah, thank you! [runs to the chair inside]
 * Shrek: Ahh! What are you doing?! No, no!
 * Donkey: This is gon' be fun. We can stay up late, swappin' manly stories, and in the mornin', [pauses for a few 2nds] I'm makin' waffles!
 * Shrek: Drrr'ohh!
 * Donkey: Where do, uh, I sleep?
 * Shrek: Outside!
 * Donkey: [pauses; shocked] Oh, well, I guess that's cool. I mean, I don't know you, and you don't know me, so I guess outside is best, you know.

 * [Shrek discovers the Seven Dwarfs have placed Snow White on his kitchen table knocking everything on it, off.]
 * Shrek: Oh, no, no, no, no! Dead broad off the table!
 * Dwarf: Well, where are we supposed to put her? The bed's taken!
 * Shrek: Huh?
 * [rushes over to his bed to find...]
 * Big Bad Wolf: What?
 * Shrek: [Carrying Big Bad Wolf by the scruff of his neck angrily] I live in a swamp! I put up signs! I'm a terrifying ogre! What do I have to do to get a little privacy?! Oh, no. Oh, no.

 * [Shrek, his swamp filled with fairytale creatures, angrily glares at Donkey]
 * Donkey: Hey, don't look at me, I didn't invite them!
 * Pinocchio: Oh, gosh, no one invited us.
 * Shrek: What?
 * Pinocchio: We were forced to come here.
 * Shrek: By who?!
 * Little Pig: Lord Farquaad! He hoofed und he poofed und he signed an eviction notice.
 * Shrek: All right. Who knows where is Farquaad guy is?
 * Donkey: Oh, I do. I know where he is.
 * Shrek: Does anyone else know where to find him?

 * Shrek: [in an announcement -- and to the fairytale creatures and villagers] OK, fine. Attention all, fairytale things. Don't get comfortable. Your welcome is officially worn out. In fact, I'm gonna see this guy Farquaad right now, and get you all off my land and back where you came from.
 * [The fairytale creatures and villagers cheer happily]
 * Shrek: [to Donkey] You! You're comin' with me.

 * [A Masked Man is tortures the Gingerbread Man. He's continually dunking him in the Cow Milk Bottle of glass. Lord Farquaad enters, the torturer has his back to us]
 * Gingerbread Man: [off-screen] No!
 * Lord Farquaad: That's enough! He's ready to talk.
 * [The torturer spins around revealing he has been torturing a Gingerbread Man. Close on the table, as a Gingerbread Man is thrown down on a cooking tray. Gingerbread Man coughs and hacks. Farquaad strolls up to the executioner, revealing that he is only about four-and-a-half feet tail. He approaches a table in the center of the room, his hat just visible above the table. Farquaad laughing menacingly and clears throat. The table is lowered mechanically revealing Farquaad]
 * Lord Farquaad: "Run, run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!"
 * Gingerbread Man: You're a monster.
 * Lord Farquaad: I'm not the monster here! You are! You and the rest of that fairytale trash, poisoning my perfect world. [evilly crushes Gingerbread Man's legs to crumbs as he shines a light on him] Now, tell me! Where are the others?!
 * Gingerbread Man: Eat me!
 * [He spits milk in Farquaad's face. Farquaad slowly wipes it off and growls]
 * Lord Farquaad: [through clenched teeth] I've tried to be fair to you, creatures!? Now my patience has reached its end! Tell me... or I'll!
 * [Farquaad leans over, reaching for Gingerbread Man's buttons.]
 * Gingerbread Man: No, no, not the buttons! Not my gumdrop buttons!
 * Lord Farquaad: All right, then, who's hiding them?
 * Gingy: [broken] Okay. I'll tell you. Do you know the Muffin Man?
 * Farquaad: The Muffin Man?
 * Gingy: The Muffin Man.
 * Farquaad: Yes. I know the Muffin Man. Who-who lives on Drury Lane?
 * Gingy: Well, she's married to the Muffin Man.
 * Farquaad: The Muffin Man?
 * Gingy: [screams] THE MUFFIN MAN!!!!
 * Farquaad: She's married to the Muffin Man?
 * [The dungeon doors burst open suddenly and a guard approaches]
 * Captain: My lord! We found it.
 * Farquaad: [eagerly] Well, then what are you waiting for? Bring it in.
 * [Guards hang a shrouded figure from a chain. They pull the cover off, revealing an ornate, full-sized mirror. A terrified face appears in the mirror]
 * Gingy: Ohhh...
 * Farquaad: Magic Mirror.
 * Gingy: Don't tell him anything! [Farquaad drops in the trash can] No!
 * Farquaad: Evening. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, is this not the most perfect kingdom of them all?
 * Magic Mirror: Well, technically, you're not a king.
 * Farquaad: Uh, Thelonius?
 * [Thelonius the executioner smashes a small looking glass] You were saying?
 * Magic Mirror: [nervous] I mean you're not a king yet! But you can become one! All you have to do is marry a princess...
 * Farquaad: Go on.

 * [arriving at Duloc]
 * Shrek: [observing a giant building] So, that must be Lord Farquaad's castle...
 * Donkey: Uh-huh, that's the place.
 * Shrek: Do you think he's maybe compensating for something?

 * [Shrek enters the tournament]
 * Lord Farquaad: What is that? It's hideous!
 * Shrek: Well, that's not very nice. [gestures to Donkey] It's just a donkey.

 * [Donkey and Shrek are now walking through the field heading away from Duloc. Shrek is munching on an onion.]
 * Donkey: Okay, let me get this straight. You're gonna go fight a dragon and rescue a princess just so Farquaad’ll give you back your swamp which you only don't have because he filled it full of freaks in the first place. Is that about right?
 * Shrek: Y’know, maybe there's a good reason donkeys shouldn't talk.
 * Donkey: I don't get it, Shrek. Why didn’t you just pull some of that ogre stuff on him? Y'know, throttle him! Lay siege to his fortress! Grind his bones to make your bread! The whole ogre trip.
 * Shrek: Oh, I know what. Maybe I could have decapitated an entire village and put their heads on a pike, gotten a knife, cut open their spleen and drank their fluids. Does that sound good to you?
 * Donkey: Uh, no, not really, no.
 * Shrek: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.
 * Donkey: Example?
 * Shrek: Example? OK, uh... ogres are like onions!
 * [holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
 * Donkey: They stink?
 * Shrek: No!
 * Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
 * Shrek: No!
 * Donkey: Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun and they start turnin’ brown and start sproutin' little white hairs...
 * Shrek: [peels an onion] No! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have… Ogres have… You get it? We both have layers!
 * [frustratingly heaves a sigh and then angrily walks off]
 * Donkey: Oh! You both have layers! You know, not everybody like onions. Cake! Everybody loves cake! Cakes have layers!
 * Shrek: I don't care what everyone likes! Ogres are not like cakes!
 * Donkey: You know what else everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person and said, "Hey! Let's get some parfaits!” And they said, "Hell no! I don't like no parfaits!"? Parfaits are delicious!
 * Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
 * Donkey: Parfaits may be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet!
 * Shrek: Y’know, I think I preferred your humming.
 * Donkey: Do you have a tissue or somethin'? I'm makin' a mess. Just the word “parfait” make me start slobberin'.

 * [Shrek and Donkey are crossing a wooden bridge over a moat of lava]
 * Donkey: Don't look down, keep on movin', don't look down, don't look down, keep on movin', don't look down... [a board under Donkey breaks, prompting Donkey] Shrek, I'm lookin' down! [screams] Oh!

 * Donkey: [screams] Don't do that!
 * Shrek: Oh, I'm sorry. Do what? Oh, this? [rocks the bridge]
 * Donkey: Yes, that!
 * Shrek: Yes? Yes, do it? Okay. [continues rocking]
 * Donkey: [screams] No, Shrek! I'm gonna die. Shrek, I'm gonna die! [By Shrek shaking the bridge and walking towards him, it forces Donkey backwards towards the end] Oh.
 * Shrek: That'll do, Donkey. That'll do.
 * Donkey: Cool. So where is this fire-breathin' pain in the neck, anyway?
 * Shrek: Inside, waiting for us to rescue her.
 * Donkey: I was talkin' about the dragon, Shrek.

 * [Shrek and Donkey move through the spooky keep. Shrek's wary. Donkey's very nervous]
 * Donkey: [whispers; nervous] You afraid?
 * Shrek: [not whispering] No, but... Shh.
 * [Shrek walks away, Donkey suddenly notices he's gone and runs to catch up]
 * Donkey: Oh, good. Me neither. [gasps]
 * [Donkey catches up then hears a noise off-screen]
 * Donkey: 'Cause there's nothin' wrong with bein' afraid. Fear's a sensible response to an unfamiliar situation. Unfamiliar dangerous situation, I might add. With a dragon that breathes fire and eats knights and breathes fire, it sure doesn't mean you're a coward if you're a little scared. I sure as heck ain't no coward. I know that.
 * [Donkey falls suddenly into a pile of knight bones and armor. Donkey gasps. A helmet falls onto Donkey's head. Shrek removes the helmet and puts it on himself]
 * Shrek: Donkey, two things, okay? Shut... up. [points] Go over there and see if you can find any stairs.
 * Donkey: Stairs? I thought we was lookin' for the Princess.
 * Shrek: The Princess will be up the stairs in the highest room in the tallest tower.
 * Donkey: How do you know that?
 * Shrek: I read it in a book once.
 * [Shrek walks away]
 * Donkey: Cool! You handle the dragon, I'll handle the stairs!
 * [Shrek moves away, down a corridor. Donkey watches him go, then heads the other way]
 * Donkey: Oh, I'll find those stairs. I'll whip their butt too. That's right. Those stairs won't know which way they're goin'. [walks off]
 * [Donkey is still talking to himself as he looks around the room]
 * Donkey: I'm gonna take drastic steps. Kick it to the curb. Don't mess with me. I'm the stair master. I've mastered the stairs. I wish I had a step right here. I'd step all over it.
 * [On Shrek at other end of the corridor. Through a window, he can see a slender tower wrapped in a staircase and connected to the keep by a bridge]
 * Shrek: [to himself] Well, at least we know where the princess is. But where's the--?
 * [On Donkey, who finds himself eyeball to eyeball with the dragon. Donkey runs away]
 * Donkey: DRAGON! [screams and dodging Dragon's tail]
 * [Shrek turns to see Donkey headed for him at a gallop, a fireball right behind him. Donkey races past. Shrek follows]
 * Shrek: Donkey, look out!
 * [Donkey screams. Shrek grabs Donkey and jumps out of the fireball's way, saving Donkey. They run into the tall tower. A beat. They shoot out again, Donkey leading the way, another fireball chasing them. Shrek leaps to one side and lets the fireball rocket past, Donkey runs onto the bridge then flattens himself. The fireball passes over him, singeing the tuft of tail. On the Dragon roaring. It takes off after Donkey. Shrek leaps from the tower, landing on the dragon's huge tail]
 * Shrek: Got ya! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
 * [The dragon whips its tail, sending Shrek hurtling right through the wall of the tower. Shrek crashes through the stone wall and lands outside a bed chamber, semiconscious]

 * Fiona: Where are you going? The exit's over there!
 * Shrek: [going to save Donkey] Well, I have to save my ass.
 * Fiona: [shocked] What kind of knight are you?
 * Shrek: One of a kind.

 * [Shrek looks up to where the chain is jammed and starts shaking it to try and free the pulley. The dragon purses her lips and comes in for a kiss... suddenly the pulley comes loose and Shrek falls, landing directly on Donkey and popping him through the dragon's coils. Shrek takes the kiss right on his butt. Surprised Shrek lets go of the chain which immediately reels upwards as the candelabra comes down. The dragon is even more surprised and rears up - pissed - just as the candelabra falls, collaring her. Shrek grabs Donkey and runs. The dragon takes chase with the chain unreeling behind her. As Shrek passes the Princess he picks her up too, while the dragon blasts fireballs behind them. Donkey looks up at the Princess. Princess gasps]
 * Donkey: Hi, Princess!
 * Fiona: [to Donkey] It talks!
 * Shrek: [good natured] Yeah, it's gettin' him to shut up that's the trick!
 * Donkey: Shrek!
 * [Shrek laughs as they begin to slide down the column. They hit a break in the column. Fiona screams]
 * Shrek: Oh!
 * [They land and run into the entrance hall. Shrek starts weaving in and out of the pillars as the dragon chases, causing the chain to weave a cat's cradle behind her. Shrek stops and puts Fiona and Donkey down]
 * Shrek: Okay, you two, head for the exit!
 * [Shrek grabs a sword form a nearby knight skeleton and looks determined]
 * Shrek: I'll take care of the dragon.
 * [Fiona and Donkey take off, leaving Shrek to face the dragon. As the chain passes by Shrek jams the sword through the links... and runs. Fiona and Donkey are waiting by the exit as Shrek rounds the corner]
 * Shrek: RUUUUUUUUUN!
 * [They all run across the bridge as a fireball sweeps after them, burning the bridge behind them as they cross. The bridge swings away to the other side and Fiona and Shrek hang on. Donkey can't get a grip and falls, Shrek catching him just in time. Suddenly the dragon bursts through the flames flying straight at them. They all scream but just then Shrek's plan kicks in, the chain pulls tight and she snaps back and out of sight. Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey all take a deep breath and start the climb to the top of the bridge which now resembles a rope ladder]

 * Fiona: The sooner we get to Duloc, the better!
 * Donkey: Oh, you gonna love it there, Princess, it's beautiful!
 * Fiona: And my groom-to-be Lord Farquaad, what's he like?
 * Shrek: Well, let me put it this way, Princess: men of his stature are in short supply. [chortles, washes his face]
 * Donkey: Yeah! There are those who think little of him!
 * [Shrek and Donkey laugh]
 * Fiona: Stop it. Stop it, both of you! Y'know, you're just jealous that you could never measure up to a great ruler like Lord Farquaad.
 * Shrek: [grins] Maybe. But I'll let you do the "measuring" when you see him tomorrow!
 * Fiona: [suddenly anxious] Tomorrow? Will it really take that long? Shouldn't we set up camp?
 * Shrek: No, that'll take longer.
 * Fiona: But there's... robbers in the woods!
 * Donkey: [tense] Whoa, time out, Shrek! Campin' sure is startin' to sound like a good idea 'round here!
 * Shrek: Hey, come on! I'm scarier than anything we're gonna see in this forest-
 * Fiona: [furious] I need to find somewhere to camp NOW!

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Donkey: Say, Shrek, what're we gonna do with our swamp, anyway?
 * Shrek: OUR swamp?
 * Donkey: Y'know, when we're through rescuin' the princess and all that...!
 * Shrek: Donkey...!? There's no "we", no "our". There's just ME and MY swamp! And once I get my swamp back, I am gonna build a 10-foot wall around my land!
 * [As Shrek says this, he says that he is building a ten-foot wall around his land when he gets it back. That is, so Donkey can never come back to his swamp ever again. Because Shrek wants to be rid of Donkey for good.]
 * Donkey: You cut me deep, Shrek. You cut me real deep just now... Y'know what, Shrek? I think this whole wall thing is to keep somebody out!
 * Shrek: [sarcastic] No! You think?
 * Donkey: Are you hidin' somethin'?
 * Shrek: Never mind, Donkey.
 * Donkey: Oh, this is one of those onion things, isn't it?
 * Shrek: No, it's one of those drop-it-and-leave-it-alone things.
 * Donkey: Why won't you talk about it?
 * Shrek: Why do you want to talk about it?
 * Donkey: Why are you blocking?
 * Shrek: I'm not blockin'!
 * Donkey: Oh, yes, you are.
 * Shrek: Donkey, I'm warnin' you.
 * Donkey: Who are you tryna keep out? Just tell me that, Shrek. Who?
 * Shrek: Everyone, OK?!
 * Donkey: Oh, now we're gettin' somewhere!
 * Shrek: Oh, for the love of Pete!
 * Donkey: Hey, what's your problem, Shrek, what you got against the whole world anyway, huh?
 * Shrek: Look, I'm not the 1 with the problem, okay? It's the world that seems to have a problem with me! People take one look at me and go, "Aargh! Help! Run! A big stupid ugly ogre!" They judge me before they even know me - that's why I'm better off alone...
 * Donkey: Y'know, Shrek... when we first met, I didn't think you were a big, stupid, ugly ogre.
 * Shrek: Yeah, I know.

<hr width="50%"/>
 * [Shrek has been hit by an arrow fired by one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men that ricocheted off of a tree]
 * Fiona: Oh, oh, this is all my fault...
 * Donkey: Why, what's wrong?
 * Fiona: Shrek's hurt!
 * Donkey: Shrek's hurt? Shrek's hurt? Oh, no, Shrek's gonna die!
 * Shrek: Donkey, I'm okay!
 * Donkey: You can't do this to me, Shrek, I'm too young for you to die! Keep your feet elevated! Turn your head and cough! Does anybody know the Heimlich...?
 * Fiona: Donkey, calm down! If you wanna help Shrek, run into the woods and find me a blue flower with red thorns.
 * Donkey: Blue flower, red thorns. OK, I'm on it. Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. Don't die, Shrek, and if you see any long tunnels, stay away from the light!
 * Both: Donkey!
 * Donkey: Oh, yeah! Right. Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns.
 * Shrek: What are the flowers for?
 * Fiona: For getting rid of Donkey.
 * Shrek : Ah.
 * Fiona: Now you hold still, and I'll yank this thing out.
 * [Fiona gives the arrow a little yank]
 * Shrek: [jumps away] Ow! Hey! Easy with the yankin'.
 * Fiona : I'm sorry, but it has to come out.
 * Shrek: No, it's tender.
 * Fiona: Now, hold on.
 * Shrek: What you're doing is the opposite of help.
 * Fiona: Don't move.
 * Shrek: Look, time out.
 * Fiona: OK. What do you propose we do?
 * [Elsewhere]
 * Donkey: Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. Blue flower, red thorns. This would be so much easier if I wasn't color-blind! Blue flower, red thorns.
 * Shrek: [distantly] OW!
 * Donkey: Hold on, Shrek! I'm coming!
 * [Donkey bites off a blue flower with red thorns from a bush. Meanwhile, with Shrek]
 * Shrek: Ow! Not good.
 * Fiona: Okay. Okay. I can nearly see the head. [Grunts] It's just about...
 * Shrek: Ow! Ohh!
 * Donkey: [he sees Fiona on top of Shrek] Ahem.
 * Shrek: Nothing happened.
 * [Fiona falls off]
 * Shrek: We were just, uh-
 * Donkey: Look, if you wanted to be alone, all you had to do was ask. OK?
 * Shrek: Oh, come on! That's the last thing on my mind. The princess here was just trying to help.
 * [Fiona yanks the arrow out]
 * Shrek: Ugh!
 * [he turns to look at Fiona who holds up the arrow with a smile]
 * Shrek: [hoarsely] Ow!
 * Donkey: Hey, what's that? [nervous chuckle] Is that blood?
 * [Donkey faints]

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 * Donkey: Man, isn't this romanic? Just look at that sunset.

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 * Donkey: [goes into the old windmill] Princess! Princess Fiona? Princess, where are you?

<hr width="50%"/>
 * [early dawn while Donkey sleeps, Fiona stays in the windmill and picks a sunflower's petals 1 by 1, decides weather or not to tell Shrek about her secret curse]
 * Fiona: I tell him. I tell him not. I tell him. I tell him not. [signs] I tell him. [goes outside] Shrek! Shrek? There's something I want...
 * [Fiona doesn't see Shrek around, then notices the sun rise. She shuts her eyes from the sunlight, as she transforms back to her human self]

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 * [after Fiona rides with Farquaad and his knights back to Duloc]
 * Donkey: Shrek, what are you doin'? You're lettin' her get away!
 * Shrek: Yeah, so what?
 * Donkey: Shrek, there's somethin' about her you don't know. Look, I talked to her last night, she's...
 * Shrek: I know you talked to her last night! You're great pals, aren't ya? Now, if you two are such good friends, why didn't you follow her home?!
 * Donkey: Shrek, I... I wanna go wit you.
 * Shrek: Hey, I told you, didn't I?! You're not comin' home with me! I live alone! MY swamp! Me! Nobody else, understand?! NOBODY!!! Especially useless, pathetic, annoying, TALKING DONKEYS!!!!!
 * Donkey: But... I thought...
 * Shrek: [starts storming off] Yeah, well, you know what?! You thought wrong!
 * Donkey: [visibly hurt by what Shrek said] Shrek...

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Donkey: Donkey? What are you doing?
 * Donkey: [gathering branches] I would think you of all people would recognize a wall when you see one!
 * Shrek: Well, yeah... but the wall's supposed to go around my swamp, not through it!
 * Donkey: It is around your swamp! That's your half and this is my half!
 * Shrek: Oh, your half! Hmmm.
 * Donkey: My half! I helped rescue the Princess! I did half the work, I get half the booty! Now hand over that big rock, the one that looks like your head!
 * [Shrek angrily removes the stick and Donkey stops him from moving]
 * Shrek: Back off!
 * Donkey: No! You back off!
 * Shrek: This is my swamp!
 * Donkey: Our swamp!
 * Shrek: Let go, Donkey!
 * Donkey: You let go!
 * Shrek: Stubborn jackass!
 * Donkey: Smelly ogre!
 * Shrek: Fine!
 * Donkey: Hey, hey, hey, come back here! I'm not through with you yet!
 * Shrek: Well, I'm through with you! (And I am, period!)
 * Donkey: Uh-uh. You know with you, it's always "me, me, me". Well, guess what?! Now it's my turn! So you just shut up and pay attention! You are mean to me, you insult me and you don't appreciate anything that I do! You're always pushin' me around or pushin' me away!
 * Shrek: Oh, yeah? Well, if I treated you so bad, how come you came back?
 * Donkey: Because that's what friends do! THEY FORGIVE EACH OTHER!
 * Shrek: [in a fake friendly tone] Oh, yeah. You're right, Donkey. I forgive you. [then in a mean voice] FOR STABBIN' ME IN THE BACK!?
 * [Shrek enters his outhouse and slams the door behind Donkey in rage.]
 * Donkey: [groans in exasperation] You're so wrapped up in layers, onion boy, you're afraid of your own feelin's!
 * Shrek: [from inside his outhouse] Go away!
 * Donkey: See? There you are, doin' it again just like you did to Fiona, and all she ever did was like you. Maybe even love you.
 * Shrek: [from inside his outhouse] Love me?! She said I was ugly! A hideous creature! I heard the two of you talking!
 * Donkey: She wasn't talkin' about you. She was talkin' about...er, somebody else.
 * Shrek: [comes out of his outhouse] She wasn't talking about me? Well then, who was she talking about?
 * Donkey: Uh-uh, no way. I ain't sayin' anything. You don't wanna listen to me, right? Right?!
 * Shrek: [tries to talk to Donkey] Donkey?
 * Donkey: [enraged] No!
 * Shrek: OK, look. I'm sorry, all right? [Donkey just lets out a soft hmph as if to say, "Not buying it. Try again."] I'm sorry. I guess I am just a big, stupid, ugly ogre. Can you forgive me?
 * Donkey: Hey, that's what friends are for, right?
 * Shrek: Right. Friends?
 * Donkey: Friends.
 * [He and Donkey shake hands]
 * Shrek: So, um, what did Fiona say about me?
 * Donkey: What are you askin' me for? Why don't you go ask her?
 * Shrek: [remembers, in shock] The wedding! We'll never make it in time!
 * Donkey: Ha-ha-ha! Never fear, for where, there's a will, there's a way and I have a way. [whistles]
 * [Dragon enters the swamp, flying]
 * Shrek: Donkey?!
 * Donkey: I guess it's just my animal magnetism.
 * Shrek: Aw, come here, you.
 * Donkey: Alright, alright. Don't get all slobbery. No one likes a kiss ass. Alright, hop on and hold on tight. [Dragon gets Shrek on her back] I haven't had a chance to install the seat belts yet.
 * [They all fly off back to Duloc]

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Fiona: [Shrek interrupts her and Farquaad's wedding] What are you doing here?
 * Lord Farquaad: Really, it's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but showing up uninvited to a wedding...
 * Shrek: Fiona! I need to talk to you.
 * Fiona: Oh, now you wanna talk? Well, it's a little late for that, so if you'll excuse me...
 * Shrek: [stopping Fiona from marrying Farquaad and confesses his feelings to her] But you can't marry him.
 * Fiona: Why not?
 * Shrek: Because he's just marrying you so he can be king.
 * Lord Farquaad: Outrageous! Fiona, don't listen to him.
 * Shrek: He's not your true love.
 * Fiona: And what do you know about true love?
 * Shrek: Well, I... uh... I mean...
 * Lord Farquaad: Oh, this is precious.[chuckling] The ogre has fallen in love with the princess! Oh, good Lord.[signaling his guards, Thelonius holds up a cue card reading "Laugh", and the attendees roar with laughter] An ogre and a princess!
 * Fiona: Shrek, is this true?
 * Lord Farquaad: Who cares? It's preposterous! Fiona, my love, we're but a kiss away from our happily ever after. Now kiss me! [Farquaad puckers up for a kiss]
 * [Fiona notices the sunset]
 * Fiona: "By day one way, by night another." [to Shrek] I wanted to show you before.
 * [Fiona walks backwards towards the window, smiles sheepishly before closing her eyes. She then transforms back into an ogre, whispering: "True love's kiss, and then take love's true form." When she reveals her ogre form, the audiences gasps and one faints. Fiona opens her eyes and smiles to Shrek]
 * Shrek: [surprised, but amused] Well, uh… that explains a lot.
 * Lord Farquaad: [enraged] Urgh! It's disgusting! Guards! Guards! I order you to get them out of my sight! Now! Get them! Get them both!

<hr width="50%"/>
 * [Fiona looks at herself, and sees she is still an ogre]
 * Fiona: Yes. But, I don't understand. I'm supposed to be beautiful.
 * Shrek: But you are beautiful.
 * Fiona: Really?
 * Shrek: Really, really.
 * Donkey: I was hopin' this would be a happy ending.
 * [Shrek and Fiona kiss]

Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party
TBA

Taglines

 * The greatest fairy tale never told.
 * The Prince isn't charming. The Princess isn't sleeping. The sidekick isn't helping. The ogre is the hero. Fairy tales will never be the same again.

Cast

 * Mike Myers — Shrek, Blind Mouse #2
 * Eddie Murphy — Donkey
 * Cameron Diaz — Princess Fiona
 * John Lithgow — Lord Farquaad
 * Chris Miller — Geppetto, Magic Mirror
 * Cody Cameron — Pinocchio, Three Pigs
 * Chris Knights — Blind Mouse #1, Thelonious
 * Simon J. Smith — Blind Mouse #3
 * Conrad Vernon — Gingerbread Man
 * Aron Warner — Big Bad Wolf (uncredited)
 * Frank Welker — Dragon (uncredited)

title: Shrek


text:
L.A. Confidential (film)

L.A. Confidential is a 1997 film about a group of LAPD officers in the 1950s, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity.
 * ''Directed by Curtis Hanson. Written by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson. Based on the 1990 novel of the same title by James Ellroy.

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush... (taglines)

Edmund "Ed" Exley

 * (At the end of an interrogation session) You know, I'm talking about the gas chamber, and you haven't even asked me what this is about. You've got a big "Guilty" sign around your neck.

Captain Dudley Smith

 * You may well reap the benefit, Edmund, but are you truly prepared to be despised within the department?
 * Wendell, I'd like full and docile co-operation on every topic...
 * Go back to Jersey, sonny. This is the city of the angels and you haven't got any wings.
 * (after Bud sees pictures of Ed with Lynn) I wouldn't trade places with Edmund Exley right now for all the whiskey in Ireland.
 * Don't start trying to do the right thing, boyo. You haven't had the practice.
 * (to a person he has just fatally shot) Have you a valediction, boyo?

Lynn

 * It would be easier for you if there was an angle wouldn't it? You're afraid of Bud because you can't figure out how to play him. He doesn't follow the same rules of politics as you do. It makes him dangerous. I see Bud because I want to I see Bud because he can't hide the good inside of him. I see Bud because he makes me feel like Lynn Bracken and not some Veronica Lake look-alike who fucks for money.  I see Bud because he doesn't know how to disguise who he is. I see Bud for all the ways he's different from you.

Dialogue

 * [Bud White catches a parolee beating his wife up. He lures the man out by pulling his Santa's sleigh decorations off the roof]
 * Wife-beater: Who in the hell are you?!
 * Wendell "Bud" White: Ghost of Christmas Past. Why don't you dance with a man for a change?
 * Wife-beater: What are you, some kind of smart ass?
 * [tries to throw a punch at Bud. Bud beats him and handcuffs him to his porch]
 * Wendell "Bud" White: You'll be out in a year and a half. I'll get cozy with your parole officer. You touch her again, I'll have you violated on a kiddie raper beef. [grabs wife beater by the head] You know what they do to kiddie-rapers in Quentin.

 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
 * Sgt. Ed Exley: Dudley, we've been over this.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Yes or no, Edmund?
 * Sgt. Ed Exley: No.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
 * Sgt. Ed Exley: No.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some...lawyer...
 * Sgt. Ed Exley: No.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have to make those kinds of choices.

 * [Bud goes to question Lynn Bracken and encounters a client in his underwear who refuses to leave]
 * Man: Everything all right, doll? Want me to get rid of him?
 * Bud: Hit the road, pal.
 * Man: [stepping closer] Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.
 * Bud: [showing his badge] LAPD, shitbird. Get the fuck outta here or I'll call your wife to come get you.
 * [The man stares blankly for a moment, collects his clothes, and leaves]
 * Man: [nods] Officer.
 * Bud: [nods] Councilman.

 * [Lying in bed, Lynn notices a scar on Bud's shoulder]
 * Lynn: Where'd this come from?
 * Bud: When I was twelve, my old man went after my mother with a bottle. I got in the way.
 * Lynn: So you saved her.
 * Bud: Not for long.
 * Lynn: I'm sorry, it's none of my business.
 * Bud: He tied me to the radiator. I watched him beat my mother to death with a tire iron. And he left me there. Three days before a truant officer found us. They never found the old man.

 * Jack: Why in the world do you want to go digging any deeper into the Nite Owl Killings, Lieutenant?
 * Ed: Rollo Tomasi.
 * Jack: Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?
 * Ed: Rollo… was a purse snatcher. My father ran into him off duty, and he shot my father six times and got away clean. No one even knew who he was. I just made the name up to give him some personality. Rollo Tomasi's the reason I became a cop. I wanted to catch the guys who thought they could get away with it.  It was supposed to be about justice. Then somewhere along the way I lost sight of that. Why'd you become a cop?
 * Jack:[long pause] I don't remember.

 * [Bud has just found Buzz Meeks's decaying remains in Hilda Lefferts' crawl space. He is visibly disgusted as he climbs out.]
 * Hilda Lefferts: Was it a rat?
 * Bud White: Yeah. A great big one.

 * Jack: Do you remember Buzz Meeks, Dudley?
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: A disgrace as a police officer. Straight-D fitness reports from every CEO he ever served under. What about him?
 * Jack: 12 years ago he was on a Vice rouse with Dick Stensland. They questioned Pierce Patchett about a blackmail scam. Patchett had Sid Hudgens photographing prominent businessmen with hookers. Anyway, charges were dropped, insufficient evidence. You were the supervising officer on that case and I was wondering if you remember anything about it.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: What's this all about, boyo?
 * Jack: Part of it has to do with a murder, I've been working with Ed Exley on it.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: You're in Narco, Jack, not Homicide. Since when do you work with Edmund Exley?
 * Jack: Well, it's a private investigation. I messed something up. I'm trying to make amends.
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Don't start trying to do the right thing, boyo. You haven't had the practice. [He turns to the stove and prepares a cup of tea for Jack] Buzz Meeks and Dick Stensland. So, uh, what does Exley make of all of this?
 * Jack: I haven't told him yet. I just came straight from the record to you. ''[Dudley suddenly turns to Jack with a pistol and shoots him once in the chest; a shocked Jack struggles to breathe as he looks up at Dudley]
 * Capt. Dudley Smith: Have you a valediction, boyo?
 * Jack: [in a strained whisper, on the verge of death] Rollo... Tomasi.

 * Johnny: You want an autograph? Write to MGM.
 * Ed: Since when do two-bit hoods and hookers give out autographs?
 * Johnny: What'd you say to me?
 * Ed: LAPD. Sit down.
 * Woman: Who in the hell do you think you are?
 * Jack: Ed...
 * Ed: Take a walk, honey, before I haul your ass downtown.
 * Johnny: You are making a large mistake.
 * Woman: Get away from our table.
 * Ed: Shut up! [leans in] A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker.
 * Johnny: Hey!
 * Ed: She just looks like Lana Turner.
 * Jack: [grinning] She is Lana Turner.
 * Ed: What?
 * Jack: She is Lana Turner.
 * [Lana throws a drink in Ed's face]

 * [Exley and White question Ellis Loew, who refuses to cooperate and goes to the bathroom. Exley and White share a look, and White enters the bathroom where Loew is preparing for a press conference]
 * Loew: Unless you're here to wipe my ass, I believe we're through.
 * [White approaches Loew, who is freshening up in front of a mirror]
 * Loew: C'mon, don't pull that good-cop bad-cop crap. I practically invented it. So what if some homo actor is dead, huh? Boys, girls, ten of them get off the bus to L.A. every day-
 * [White smashes Loew's face into the mirror twice and then dunks his head into the toilet while Exley calmly watches. Bud briefly lifts Loew's head out of the toilet.]
 * Loew: Pull him off me, Exley!
 * Exley: [calmly] I don't know how.
 * [White dunks Loew's head back into the toilet and then lifts it up]
 * White: Now I know you think you're D.A. number one hot-shot, but here's the juice: if I take you out, ten more lawyers will take your place tomorrow. They just won't come on the bus, that's all.

 * Ed: All I ever wanted was to measure up to my father.
 * Bud: Here's your chance. He died in the line of duty, didn't he?

 * Detective: Do you think you can talk your way out of this, Lieutenant?
 * Ed: No... but I think I can tell the truth.

Taglines

 * Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush...
 * Everything is suspect...everyone is for sale...and nothing is what it seems.
 * It's a crime saga that will shock you. It's a mystery that will keep you guessing. It's a thriller that will keep you riveted.

Cast

 * Guy Pearce - Det. Lt. Edmund Exley
 * Russell Crowe - Bud White
 * Kim Basinger - Lynn Bracken
 * Kevin Spacey - Jack Vincennes
 * James Cromwell - Capt. Dudley Smith
 * Danny DeVito - Sid Hudgens
 * David Strathairn - Pierce Patchett

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: L.A. Confidential (film)


text:
Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet.

Quotes

 * Ô mes petites amoureuses, Que je vous hais !
 * Oh my little mistresses, How I hate you!
 * Poésies (1871), "Mes petites amoureuses"

 * J'allais sous le ciel, Muse! et j'étais ton féal.
 * I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.
 * Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 1

 * Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse. Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
 * My tavern was the Big Bear. My stars in the sky rustled softly.
 * Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2

 * Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.
 * My sad heart foams at the stern.
 * Le Coeur Volé (The Stolen Heart, st. 1

 * A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles, Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes !
 * Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels, Someday I shall recount your latent births.
 * Voyelles (Vowels (1871)

 * Elle est retrouvée, Quoi ? — L'Éternité. C'est la mer allée Avec le soleil.
 * It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea Gone with the sun.
 * L'Éternité (1872)
 * Variant translation: It has been recovered. What? — Eternity. It is the sea escaping With the sun.

 * ''O saisons, ô châteaux, Quelle âme est sans défauts ?
 * O seasons, O castles, What soul is without flaws?
 * Bonheur (Happiness)

 * J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été.
 * I have embraced the summer dawn.
 * Illuminations. Aube (Dawn) (1874)
 * Variant translation: I have kissed the summer dawn.

 * Il pleut doucement sur la ville.
 * It rains softly on the town.
 * From a lost poem

Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

 * Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots.
 * Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
 * St. 4

 * ''Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin.
 * Sweeter than apples to children The green water spurted through my pine-wood hull.
 * St. 5

 * Je me suis baigné dans le Poème De la Mer... Dévorant les azurs verts.
 * I have bathed in the Poem Of the Sea... Devouring the green azures.
 * St. 6

 * J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques.
 * I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors, Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms, Like actors in ancient plays.
 * St. 9

 * J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ?
 * I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager: Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile, A million golden birds, O future Vigor?
 * St. 25

Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) (1873)

 * Un soir, j'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux. - Et je l'ai trouvée amère. - Et je l'ai injuriée.
 * One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap. — And I found her bitter. — And I cursed her.

 * Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine.
 * I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

 * La vie est la farce à mener par tous.
 * Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

 * Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
 * Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

 * Je suis esclave de mon baptême.
 * Baptism enslaved me.

 * La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe.
 * Old poetics played a large part in my alchemy of the word.

 * L'amour est à réinventer, on le sait.
 * Love is to be reinvented, that is clear.

 * Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol.
 * I! I who fashioned myself a sorcerer or an angel, who dispensed with all morality, I have come back to earth.

 * Il faut être absolument moderne.
 * One must be absolutely modern.

 * Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis.
 * I believe I am in Hell, and so I am there.

Letters

 * Je est un autre.
 * I is an other.
 * Letter to Georges Izambard; Charleville, 13 May 1871

 * Je dis qu'il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.
 * I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.
 * Letter to Paul Demeny (May 15, 1871)

About Arthur Rimbaud

 * Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever.
 * Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin by Shirley Kumove (2005)

 * What Rimbaud did for language, and not merely for poetry, is only beginning to be understood. And this more by readers than by writers, I feel. At least, in our country. Nearly all the modern French poets have been influenced by him. Indeed, one might say that contemporary French poetry owes everything to Rimbaud. Thus far, however, none have gone beyond him — in daring or invention.
 * Henry Miller, (1984). The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud. London: Quartet Books.

title: Arthur Rimbaud


text:
Jean Genet

Jean Genet (19 December 1910 – 15 April 1986) was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist.

The Thief's Journal (1949)

 * This violence is a calm that disturbs you.

 * But I would adore that thief who is my mother.

 * If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!

 * I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face.

 * By remaining inaccessible, he became the epitome of those whom I have named and who stagger me. I was therefore chaste.

 * Fierce and pure, I was the theater of a fairyland restored to life.

 * To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

 * Yet, what is their violence compared to mine, which was to accept theirs, to make it mine, to wish it for myself, to intercept it, to utilize it, to force it upon myself, to know it, to premeditate it, to discern and assume its perils? But what was mine, willed and necessary for my defense, my toughness, my rigor, compared to the violence they underwent like a malediction, risen from an inner fire simultaneously with an outer light which sets them ablaze and illuminates us?

 * But--criminals are remote from you--as in love, they turn away and turn me away from the world and its laws. Thiers smells of sweat, sperm, and blood. In short, to my body and my thristy soul it offers devotion. It was because their world contains these erotic conditions that I was bent on evil.

 * With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable.
 * In reference to the French Gestapo

 * Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. I wondered at its perfect coherence, which rejected me.

The Balcony (1956)

 * So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility.

Edmund White's preface to Prisoner of Love

 * The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side.

Quotes about Jean Genet

 * There has been talk about (The Blacks) revival. Angelou comments: "It was a very important play. It still is an important play. It implies that, come the revolution, Blacks will be as bad and as greedy as Whites have been. What goes around comes around, which is a very Black statement, an African statement, too. "Working for me as a young woman, with the cast of The Blacks, was an incredible experience. The original cast included Cecily (sic) Tyson, James Earl Jones, Raymond St. Jacques, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lou Gossett, Charles Gordone, Helen Martin, Cynthia Belgrave, Jay Flash Riley, Lex Monson, Godfrey Cambridge, Ethel Ayler, and me. It was the thing to go into; if you were out of a job, go try out for The Blacks. It was wonderful to break down the play together. Obviously it fed all our artistic growth. "It would be interesting to see it today with some new people. All the [original] actors have done so many things since [that they] would bring so much other equipment to it now. Just like the time-instead of 1960-61, 1977 has its own rhythm and its own impetus.
 * 1977 interview in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)

title: Jean Genet


text:
LGBT

 or GLBT is an that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexuality, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay in reference to the beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. Activists believed that the term  did not accurately represent all those to whom it referred.

 are considered human rights by the Amnesty International and civil rights by some.

 * Alphabetized by author or source
 * A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

B

 * ...Trans persons should have the right to access legal and safe healthcare which includes medical procedures, surgeries, and hormones without discrimination. Folks who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and two-spirit should not be forced into conversion therapy and should have the right to engage in sexual relationships without violations towards their bodily autonomy....
 * Shahzi Bokhari, What Bodily Autonomy Means - Raise the Hammer May 29, 2019

C

 * The terrorist in Orlando targeted LGBT Americans out of hatred and bigotry, and an attack on any American is an attack on all Americans.
 * Hillary Clinton, speech in Cleveland, Ohio after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (June 13, 2016)

 * We will defend all our rights – civil rights, human rights and voting rights… women's rights and workers' rights… LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities!
 * Hillary Clinton,, transcript by  (July 28, 2016)

F

 * One crucial reason why LGBT people have cause to organize together politically is that, even though we see ourselves as distinct tribes, the rest of society has tended to conflate us. Or as one trans person succinctly put it: we are all beaten up by the same people. This shared oppression, both historic and current, drives – indeed, necessitates – solidarity between lesbians, gay men, bi people and trans people. In an era of growing right-wing populism in the United States and the UK alike, accompanied by an alarming rise in visible street fascism, there is more need than ever for unity across the four different letters (as well as queer, asexual, intersex and other groups). It is in the interests of those who hate us all for us to be at war with one another.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six

 * Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being ‘unnatural’: homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from a prejudice that a person’s stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their ‘natural’ role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women’s reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.
 * Shon Faye, Chapter Six

G

 * At a time when Americans are increasingly supportive of equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people, a growing percentage of Americans identify themselves as LGBT. With younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBT, that growth should continue
 * Gallup survey "Gen Z Says It’s America’s Queerest Generation Yet" (February 24, 2021)

H

 * Queer people exist. Choosing not to accept them is not an option.
 * Dan Howell, Basically I'm Gay, 13 June, 2019

K

 * Gay and lesbian Americans cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.
 * Brett Kavanaugh, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 U.S. ___ (2020) (dissenting), reported in Dawn Ennis, "Supreme Court To Gay And Transgender Workers: You’re Equal", Forbes (June 15, 2020).

M

 * [Talking with young students today], I play the part of concerned older gent, because when I was their age [an older generation of public LGBTQA individuals] didn’t exist.
 * Ian McKellen in “In new documentary, Ian McKellen reflects on Magneto, Gandalf”, by Nathan Mattise, Ars Technica, (7/8/2018).

R

 * Like other marginalized groups, LGBTQ people are over-represented in sex work. Discrimination, rejection and abuse - both at home and in wider communities - increase their precarity and vulnerability in a homophobic and transphobic society, leaving prostitution as one of the remaining viable routes out of destitution. Trans women in particular often find that formal employment is out of reach. Increased school drop-out rates, lack of family support, and lack of access to adequate healthcare (including the means to finance gender-affirming treatment) leave them exposed to poverty, illness, and homelessness.
 * Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights (2018)

S

 * At the 2008 Lambda Literary Awards (the awards the LGBT community gives to books ignored by straight book awards) not a single lesbian book nominated for best novel was published by a mainstream press. Our literature is disappearing at the same time we are being told we are winning our rights. How can we be equal citizens if our stories are not allowed to be part of our nation's story?
 * Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 151

T

 * Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community. They have been through something that nobody could ever experience. This is a very dark moment in America’s history. A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation.
 * Donald Trump, speech after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (transcript) (June 13, 2016)

V

 * The reality is that LGBTQ+ people face challenges at disproportionally higher rates than their straight counterparts - drug use, sex work, and financial instability can be an unfortunate result. My privilege as a young cis white man whose parents weren't going to let me drown afforded me the ability to make those mistakes and live to talk about it.
 * Jonathan Van Ness, Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love (2019), p. 117/118

title: LGBT


text:
Edward Said

Edward Wadie Said (November 1, 1935 – September 24, 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual involved in founding the critical-theory field of postcolonialism.

Quotes

 * When one learns something one first performs an act of will, because only by willing to learn can one learn.
 * "Vico: Autodidact and Humanist," The Centennial Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer 1967), p. 340

 * [An elaborated culture has a] density, complexity, and historical-semantic value that is so strong as to make politics possible... Gramsci's insight is to have recognised that subordination, fracturing, diffusion, reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding, are necessary aspects of elaboration.
 * Quoted in Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-335-15275-9 ), p. 248

 * The central fact for me is, I think, that the [role of the] intellectual ... cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.
 * Representation of the Intellectual (1994)

 * I retain my faith in the humanist tradition, that it’s possible to deal with discrepant experiences truthfully without resolving into simple things like only women should write about women, only Chicanos should write about Chicanos, only Latinos should write about Latinos… I think that’s the most damaging crime, and misapprehension of what I’m saying. That’s why they debate all these things and they trace them back to me and people say ‘you did that!’ Absolutely not. I’m talking from a universalistic, if you like cosmopolitan point of view to which I adhere and which is the only way the world makes sense to me. I don’t believe in the politics of identity, although in many ways paradoxically I seem to be the father of identity politics, but it’s a thing I totally disbelieve in because I realise the damage that identities have done.
 * Interview with Michaël Zeeman for Leven en Werken

 * I’ve always been interested in what gets left out. That’s why I’m interested in the figure from the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the “silent form” that “dost tease us out of thought.” That’s why I’m interested in Raymond Williams’s discussion of the country house poems, where the representation of the country house necessarily excludes the silence of the peasants who have been driven off the land; or the fields that have been manicured to produce the beautiful spaces that Jane Austen exploits in her novels, where livelihood is transformed into property. I’m interested in the tension between what is represented and what isn’t represented, between the articulate and the silent. For me, it has a very particular background in the questioning of the document. What does the document include? What doesn’t it include? That’s why I have been very interested in attempts of the Subaltern Studies Collective, and others, to talk about excluded voices.
 * "An Interview with Edward W. Said" (New York, July–August 1999), The Edward Said Reader (2000) edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, PART IV : Spoken Words, Ch. 17

 * Where cruelty and injustice are concerned, hopelessness is submission, which I believe is immoral.
 * quoted in "Internal Exile" by Pankaj Mishra in The New Yorker, 2021

Orientalism (1978)

 * Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.

 * The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.
 * It isn't at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation.
 * Preface to 25th anniversary edition of Orientalism (1994), p. xv

 * Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.
 * "Preface (2003)"

 * Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.
 * p. 3.

 * In the most compelling part of Black Athena, Bernal goes on to show how with the growth of European, and in particular German, nationalism, the original mixed portrait of Attic Greece that obtained into the eighteenth century was gradually expunged of all its non-Aryan elements, just as many years later the Nazis decided to burn all books and ban all authors who were considered non-German, non-Aryan. So from being the product of an invasion from the South (i.e., Africa), as in reality it really was, classical Greece was progressively transformed into the product of an invasion from the Aryan North. Purged of its troublesome non-European elements, Greece thereafter has stood in the Western self-definition—an expedient one, to be sure—as its fons et origo, its source of sweetness and light. The principle underlined by Bernal is the extent to which pedigrees, dynasties, lineages, predecessors are changed to suit the political needs of a later time. Of the unfortunate results this produced in the case of a self-created white Aryan European civilization none of us here need to be convinced.
 * Said, Edward W. (2003), "The Clash of Definitions," in The New Crusades, Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells (eds.), New York: Columbia University Press.

The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983)

 * The prevailing situation of criticism ... has given rise to a cult of professional expertise whose effect in general is pernicious. For the intellectual class, expertise has usually been a service rendered, and sold, to the central authority of society. This is the trahison des clercs of which Julien Benda spoke in the 1920s. Expertise in foreign affairs, for example, has usually meant the legitimization of the conduct of foreign policy and, what is more to the point, a sustained investment in revalidating the role of experts in foreign affairs. The same sort of thing is true of literary critics and professional humanists, except that their expertise is based upon noninterference in what Vico grandly calls the world of nations but which prosaically might just as well be called “the world.” We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all these things take place. ... Humanists and intellectuals accept the idea that ... cultural types are not supposed to interfere in matters for which the social system has not certified them.
 * (pp. 2-3)

 * The intellectual origins of literary theory in Europe were, I think it is accurate to say, insurrectionary. The traditional university, the hegemony of determinism and positivism, the reification of ideological bourgeois “humanism,” the rigid barriers between academic specialties: it was powerful responses to all these that linked together such influential progenitors of today's literary theorist as Saussure, Lukács, Bataille, Lévi-Strauss, Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx. Theory proposed itself as a synthesis overriding the petty fiefdoms within the world of intellectual production, and it was manifestly to be hoped as a result that all the domains of human activity could be seen, and lived, as a unity. ... Literary theory, whether of the Left or the Right, has turned its back on these things. This can be considered, I think, the triumph of the ethic of professionalism. But it is no accident that the emergence of so narrowly defined a philosophy of pure textuality and critical noninterference has coincided with the ascendancy of Reaganism.
 * (pp. 3-4)

Culture and Imperialism (1993)

 * Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.
 * Chap 4, Sect 2

 * The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.
 * Chap 4, Sect 2

Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures

 * The intellectual's spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts.
 * p. 83

 * There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to them. How does the intellectual address authority: as a professional supplicant or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?
 * p. 83

 * As a way of maintaining relative intellectual independence, having the attitude of an amateur instead of a professional is a better course.
 * p. 87

 * In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in.
 * p. 88

 * Everything I have written in these lectures underlines the importance to the intellectual of passionate engagement, risk, exposure, commitment to principles, vulnerability in debating and being involved in worldly causes. For example, the difference I drew earlier between a professional and an amateur intellectual rests precisely on this, that the professional claims detachment on the basis of a profession and pretends to objectivity, whereas the amateur is moved neither by reward nor by the fulfillment of an immediate career plan but by a committed engagement with ideas and values in the public sphere.
 * p. 109

From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map (2004)

 * When will the Israelis realize—as some already have—that a sustained racist brutality against Arabs, in a Middle East where Israel is surrounded by 300 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims, will bring the Jewish state neither normalcy nor security?
 * "Palestinians Under Siege" (2000)

 * Palestinian officials signed the agreement to partition Hebron, they signed many other agreements without getting prior assurances that the settlements would end (and at least not be increased) and that all signs of military occupation would be effaced. They must now explain publicly what they thought they were doing and why they did it. Then they must let us express our views on their actions and their future. And for once they must listen and try to put the general interest before their own, despite the millions of dollars they have either squandered or squirreled away in Paris apartments and valuable real estate and lucrative business deals with Israel. Enough is enough.
 * "The Tragedy Deepens" (2000)

 * Remember that CNN, Time Warner, Disney, NBC, Fox News, and the rest are part of the same ideological system, serve the same clientele, and are owned by the same relatively tiny group of people whose interest is to keep things as they are. Memory is an inhibition, a possible threat to their hegemony, just as it is very dangerous for a critic to keep making connections between supposedly un- or nonpolitical institutions like the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and on the other hand, base commercial interests.
 * "American Elections: System or Farce?" (2000)

 * There are two contradictory realities on the ground on which Clinton’s Washington talks will founder. One is that the energies released by the intifada are not easily containable in any available form for the foreseeable future: Palestinian protest at what Oslo has wrought is a protest against all aspects of the status quo. The second reality is that whether we like it or not, historical Palestine is now a binational reality suffering the devastation of apartheid. That must end and an era of freedom for Arabs and Jews must soon begin. It falls to us to try now to provide the signposts for a new era. Otherwise it is easy to foresee years more of fruitless and costly struggle.
 * "Trying Again and Again" (2001)

 * So long as they believe in the miracle of an Israel separated from its circumstances and environment—a bizarre notion that Sharon’s election campaign has encouraged—Israeli Jews resemble members of a cult rather than citizens of a modern secular state. And in some ways, it is true that Israel’s early history as a pioneering new state was that of a utopian cult, sustained by people much of whose energy was in shutting out their surroundings while they lived the fantasy of a heroic and pure enterprise. How damaging and how tragic this collective delusion has been is more evident with the passing of each day, and which the coming to power of so anachronistic and ill-suited a figure as the discredited Sharon brings to a garish, bizarre new light. How long will the awakening take, and how much more pain will have to be felt, before the opening of eyes is fully accomplished?
 * "Where Is Israel Going?" (2001)

 * Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are locked in Sartre’s vision of hell, that of “other people.” There is no escape. Separation can’t work in so tiny a land, any more than apartheid did. Israeli military and economic power insulates Israelis from having to face reality. This is the meaning of Sharon’s election, an antediluvian war criminal summoned out of the mists of time to do what: put the Arabs in their place? Hopeless. Therefore it is up to us to provide the answer that power and paranoia cannot. It isn’t enough to speak generally of peace. One must provide the concrete grounds for it, and those can only come from moral vision, and neither from “pragmatism” nor “practicality.” If we are all to live—this is our imperative—we must capture the imagination not just of our people but of our oppressors. And we have to abide by humane democratic values. Is the current Palestinian leadership listening? Can it suggest anything better than this, given its abysmal record in a “peace process” that has led to the present horrors?
 * "The Only Alternative" (2001)

 * The Israeli military causes immense damage to Palestinians day after day: more innocent people are killed, their land destroyed or confiscated, their houses bombed and demolished, their movements circumscribed or stopped entirely. Thousands of civilians cannot find work, go to school, or receive medical treatment as a result of these Israeli actions. Such arrogance and suicidal rage against the Palestinians will bring no results except more suffering and more hatred, which is why in the end Sharon has always failed and resorted to useless murder and pillage. For our own sakes, we must rise above Zionism’s bankruptcy and continue to articulate our own message of peace with justice. If the way seems difficult, it cannot be abandoned. When any of us is stopped, ten others can take his or her place. That is the genuine hallmark of our struggle, and neither censorship nor base complicity with it can prevent its success.
 * "Freud, Zionism, and Vienna" (2001)

 * In a globalized world, in which politics and information are virtually equivalent, Palestinians can no longer afford to shirk a task that, alas, the leadership is simply incapable of comprehending. It must be done if the loss of life and property is to be stopped, and if liberation, not unending servitude to Israel, is the real goal. The irony is that truth and justice are on the Palestinian side, but until Palestinians themselves make that readily apparent—to the world in general, to themselves, to Israelis and Americans in particular—neither truth nor justice can prevail. For a people that has already endured a century’s injustice, surely a proper politics of information is quite possible. What is needed is a redirected and refocused will to victory over military occupation and ethnically and religiously based dispossession.
 * "Time to Turn to the Other Front" (2001)

 * Simply to make a temporary security agreement now is both futile and immoral. Besides, no such agreement can last, so long as Israeli settlements are still being constructed while Palestinians remain locked up in their collective prison. The only negotiations worth anything now must be about the terms of an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967. Anything else is a waste of our time as a people.
 * "Thinking About Israel" (2001)

 * I shall conclude with a concrete example of what I mean. Amid all the din about normalization, I have noticed one startling absence, namely, the current status of the Palestinian refugees living in every major Arab country, whose condition everywhere—there are no exceptions—is unacceptably miserable. Wherever there are Palestinians in the Arab world, there are rules and regulations forbidding them full status as residents, forbidding them work and travel, requiring them to register with the police on a monthly basis, and so on. It’s not only Israel that treats Palestinians badly, it is the Arab countries who do so also. Now see if there is a sustained campaign by Arab intellectuals against this invidious local treatment of the Palestinian refugees: you won’t see or hear one. What excuse is there for the horrible refugee camps in which so many of them live, even in places like Gaza and the West Bank; what right do local mokhabarat forces have to harass them and generally make their lives miserable? And why is there no protracted press campaign to end this appalling state of affairs? Why, because it is much easier (and less risky) to rail against normalization and Hebrew translations than it is to dramatize the unacceptable condition of Palestinian refugees in the Arab world, who are always being told that they cannot be “normalized” because it would implement Israel’s design. What rubbish!
 * "Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma" (2001)

 * As the Arab world spins into further incoherence and shame, it is up to every one of us to speak up against these terrible abuses of power. No one is safe unless every citizen protests what in effect is a reversion to medieval practices of autocracy. If we accuse Israel of what it has done to the Palestinians, we must be willing to apply exactly the same standards of behavior to our own countries. This norm is as true for the American as for the Arab and the Israeli intellectual, who must criticize human rights abuses from a universal point of view, not simply when they occur within the domain of an officially designated enemy. Our own cause is strengthened when we take positions that can be applied to all situations, without conditions such as saying “I disagree with his views, but” as a way of lessening the difficulty and the onus of speaking out. The truth is that, as Arabs, all we have left now is the power of speaking out, and unless we exercise that right, the slide into terminal degeneration cannot ever be stopped. The hour is very late . ..
 * "Enemies of the State" (2001)

 * Never has the media been so influential in determining the course of war as during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which, as far as the Western media are concerned, has essentially become a battle over images and ideas. Israel has already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into what in Hebrew is called hasbara, or information for the outside world (hence, propaganda). This has included an entire range of efforts: lunches and free trips for influential journalists; seminars for Jewish university students who, over a week in a secluded country estate, can be primed to “defend” Israel on the campus; bombarding congressmen and women with invitations and visits; pamphlets and, most important, money for election campaigns; directing (or, as the case requires, harassing) photographers and writers of the current intifada into producing certain images and not others; lecture and concert tours by prominent Israelis; training commentators to make frequent references to the Holocaust and Israel’s predicament today; many advertisements in the newspapers attacking Arabs and praising Israel; and on and on. Because so many powerful people in the media and publishing business are strong supporters of Israel, the task is made vastly easier.
 * "Propaganda and War" (2001)

 * Whatever the case, the publication of “What Are American Values?” augurs a new and degraded era in the production of intellectual discourse. For when the intellectuals of the most powerful country in the history of the world align themselves so flagrantly with that power, pressing that power’s case instead of urging restraint, reflection, genuine communication, and understanding, we are back to the bad old days of the intellectual war against communism, which we now know brought far too many compromises, collaborations, and fabrications on the part of intellectuals and artists who should have played an altogether different role. Subsidized and underwritten by the government (the CIA especially, which went so far as to provide for the subvention of magazines like Encounter, underwrote scholarly research, travel, and concerts as well as artistic exhibitions), those militantly unreflective and uncritical intellectuals and artists in the 1950s and 1960s brought the whole notion of intellectual honesty and complicity a new and disastrous dimension. For along with that effort went also the domestic campaign to stifle debate, intimidate critics, and restrict thought. For many Americans, like myself, this is a shameful episode in our history, and we must be on our guard against and resist its return.
 * "Thoughts About America" (2002)

 * Israel is now waging a war against civilians, pure and simple, although you will never hear it put that way in the United States. This is a racist war and, in its strategy and tactics, a colonial one as well. People are being killed and made to suffer disproportionately because they are not Jews. What an irony! Yet CNN never refers to “occupied” territories (always rather to “violence in Israel,” as if the main battlefields were the concert halls and cafés of Tel Aviv and not in fact the ghettos and besieged refugee camps of Palestine that have already been surrounded by no less than 150 illegal Israeli settlements). For the past ten years, the great fraud of Oslo was foisted on the world by the United States, with hardly an awareness that only 18 percent of the West Bank was given up, and 60 percent of Gaza. No one knows geography, and it’s better not to know, since the reality on the ground is so astonishing, considering the verbal hoopla and self-congratulation. And that pseudo-pundit—the insufferably conceited Thomas Friedman—still has the gall to say that “Arab TV” shows one-sided pictures, as if “Arab TV” should be showing things from Israel’s point of view the way CNN does, with “Mideast violence” the catchall word for the ethnic cleansing that Israel is wreaking on the Palestinians in their ghettos and camps. Has Friedman (or CNN, for that matter) ever tried to point out the difference between an attacking army fighting a colonial war on the territory of the people it has occupied for thirty-five years, and the people defending against that butchery? Of course not, for indeed why should Friedman ever bother to say honestly that there is no Palestinian occupation, there are no Palestinian F-16s, no Apache helicopters, no gunboats, no Merkava tanks, in short, no Palestinian occupation of Israel. So much for Friedman’s credentials as an honest commentator and reporter, who has utterly failed in unadorned terms both to explain the U.S. view and to understand the Arab and Palestinian cause. Can he not see that he and his writings are part of the problem, that in their maundering selfjustifications and their dishonesty, showing no sign of the self-criticism he keeps hectoringly expecting of others, he actually aggravates the ignorance and the misperceptions rather than reducing them? Poor journalist and educator, he.
 * "What Price Oslo?" (2002)

 * Whether they want to or not, the Arab people today face a wholesale attack on their future by an imperial power, America, that acts in concert with Israel to pacify, subdue, and finally reduce us to a bunch of warring fiefdoms whose first loyalty is not to their people but to the great superpower (and its local surrogate) itself. Not to understand that this is the conflict that will shape our area for decades to come is willingly to blind oneself. What is now needed is a breaking of the iron bands that tie Arab societies into sullen knots of disaffected people, insecure leaders, and alienated intellectuals. This is an unprecedented crisis. Unprecedented means are therefore required to confront it. The first step then is to realize the scope of the problem, and then go on to overcome what reduces us to helpless rage and marginalized reaction, a condition by no means to be accepted willingly. The alternative to such an unattractive condition promises a great deal more hope.
 * "The Arab Condition" (2003)

Interviews with Edward W. Said (2004)

 * Culture can be used as a screen between the members of that culture and some of the horrid practices that occur, sometimes in the name of culture. Culture can become a way of disguising the reality, so that one can say "Well we're not just a people who flayed all these buggers and niggers out there, we're a people who produced Titian and we produced Michelangelo." And Arnold, I think, meant it that way. For him culture was a way of stemming the tide of rebellion. It was a way of pacifying, of mystifying.
 * p. 97

Quotes about Said

 * In alphabetical order by author or source.

 * Early on, I was informed by theorists such as Cixous, Said, Spivak, Gates and mostly postcolonial and feminist theorists.
 * Marilyn Chin Interview with Asian Review of Books (2020)

 * As an Egyptian of Palestinian origin teaching English literature at an American university, who had built his scholarly career on a Polish sailor that became an English writer (Joseph Conrad), Said's assertion that western orientalists could not comprehend the East and easterners because they were born into a different culture, seems somewhat bizarre.
 * Yoav Gelber, Nation and History: Israeli Historiography between Zionism and Post-Zionism (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011), p. 56

 * (MM: Is the writer "the one who belongs nowhere"?) NG: Edward Said wrote, in his wonderful autobiography Out of Place, that to be so in the world may be a way to better understanding between individuals and nations, an open state of being attained against the monolithic cages of nationalism, religion and closed cultures.
 * Nadine Gordimer interview (2004)

 * Lewis was an Orientalist before Edward Said made that a term of abuse. Said was not a scholar of the Middle East, but a polemicist from the Middle East. He was also an intellectual impostor. Ever since Orientalism came out in 1978, proper historians have concluded that it would be a masterpiece, if only it were true. The only people who take Edward Said’s books seriously are, in no particular order of irrelevance, academic poseurs, chippy lefties, and the legions of chippy academic lefty poseurs churned out by the departments of Middle Eastern Studies.
 * Dominic Green "Bernard Lewis was right about 'the return of Islam'" The Spectator (May 22, 2018)

 * I am a medievalist, but [Said] hates the Middle Ages. Altogether he loathes the past, he does not have the ability to enter into the spirit of other ages. He lies about European novelists and twists their words; I am myself a novelist with great sympathy for some of those whom he denounces in his book [Orientalism]. Finally, I am an orientalist, too, and his book is a long and persevering polemic against my subject, so I need to ask: is there anything at all to like in Said's book? – No. It is written far too quickly and carelessly. It abounds with misprints and mis-spelled names. It is an extremely polemic book, and throughout time many polemic books for or against Islam and the Muslim world have been written, but none have been taken seriously in the same way as Said. ... The fact is that researchers cannot build anything on Said's thoughts-dead-end. [...] He has made it difficult for Westerners to say anything critical about Islam and the Muslim world. You cannot do that because then you run the risk of getting denounced as an orientalist, i.e. a racist, an imperialist and other terrible things.
 * Robert Irwin, as quoted by Flemming Rose: Forsvar for en profession [Defence of a profession], interview with Prof. Robert Irwin, Jyllands-Posten, 12 April 2008, section 1, page 17 (accessed via Infomedia.dk)

 * To set my cards out on the table at this early stage, that book seems to me a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations.
 * Robert Irwin in his history of Orientalism, The Lust of Knowledge. Quoted from     Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012), Chapter: The case for Orientalism

 * The ruling intellectual paradigm in academic area studies is called "post-colonial theory."  Post-colonial theory was founded by  Edward Said.  Said is famous for equating professors who support American foreign policy with the 19th century European intellectuals  who propped up racist colonial empires.  The core premise of post-colonial theory is that it is immoral for a scholar to put his knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American power. Said has condemned the United States as a nation with "a history of reducing whole peoples, countries, and even continents to ruin by nothing short of holocaust." Said has actively urged his readers to replace their naive belief in America as the defender of liberty and democracy with his supposedly more accurate picture of America as a habitual perpetrator of genocide. Indeed, Said has dismissed the very idea of American democracy as a farce.  Yet Edward Said is the most honored and influential theorist in academic area studies today. Recently, the Title VI-funded Middle East Study Center at the University of California Santa Barbara sponsored an outreach workshop for K through 12 teachers in which only the writings of Edward Said and his like-minded colleagues were used to explain "why they hate us."  Many of the authors assigned in that workshop have been widely condemned, even by liberal and left-leaning commentators, as holding an "anti-American perspective."Yet I do not argue that only material that praises American foreign policy should be assigned in programs sponsored by Title VI.  I do argue, however, that our Title VI centers, as currently constituted, purvey an extreme and one-sided perspective which almost invariably criticizes American foreign policy. What is needed is a restoration of intellectual and political balance to our area studies programs.  In my written testimony, I refer to other examples of bias at Title VI centers. Title VI-funded professors take Edward Said's condemnation of scholars who cooperate with the American Government very seriously.
 * Stanley Kurtz (2003), testimony given at Hearing Before the Subcommitee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, 108th Congress

 * A historian of science is not expected to be a scientist, but he is expected to have some basic knowledge of the scientific alphabet. Similarly, a historian of Orientalism—that is to say, the work of historians and philologists—should have at least some acquaintance with the history and philology with which they were concerned. Mr. Said shows astonishing blind spots. He asserts [in his book Orientalism] that “Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on [sic]” (p. 17)—that is, when the Ottoman Turks who ruled the eastern Mediterranean were just leaving Austria and Hungary. This rearrangement of history is necessary for Mr. Said's thesis; others are apparently due to unpolemical ignorance—for example his belief that Muslim armies conquered Turkey before North Africa (p. 59)—that is to say, that the eleventh century came before, the seventh, and that Egypt was “annexed” by England (p. 35). Egypt was indeed occupied and dominated, but was never annexed or directly administered. In another remarkable passage, he chides the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel because, even after he “had practically renounced his Orientalism, he still held that Sanskrit and Persian on the one hand and Greek and German on the other had more affinities with each other than with the Semitic, Chinese, American, or African languages” (p. 98). Mr. Said seems to object to this view—which would not be challenged by any serious philologist—and regards it as a pernicious residue of Schlegel's former Orientalism
 * Bernard Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism", The New York Review of Books, 24 June 1982

 * Just before the United States decided to invade Iraq, I read an essay by Edward Said in which he noted how, for the first time in history, mass protests were taking place against a war before war was declared. It gave him him great hope. He wrote: "Mass action and mass protest on the basis of human community and human sustainability are still formidable tools of human resistance. Call them weapons of the weak..." In this site of "human community," as Said called those with whom we share common cause, our anger and fear are no longer privatized.
 * Cherríe Moraga A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (2011)

 * Because of the attitudes surrounding me, the aesthetic ideology with which I grew up, I came into my twenties believing in poetry, in all art, as the expression of a higher world view, what the critic Edward Said has termed "a quasi-religious wonder, instead of a human sign to be understood in secular and social terms."
 * Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1986)

 * There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in U.S. government policy come from American citizens. When the rest of the world wants to know what the U.S. government is up to, we turn to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum, and Anthony Arnove to tell us what's really going on.
 * Arundhati Roy War Talk (2003)

 * “The Arab has been on the receiving end not of benign Zionism—which has been restricted to Jews,” Edward Said wrote in The Question of Palestine, “but of an essentially discriminatory and powerful culture, of which, in Palestine, Zionism has been the agent.”
 * Adam Serwer "Don’t Equate Anti-Zionism With Anti-Semitism" (November 2023)

title: Edward Said