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Julie: Half the time I regret it.
Jamie: Then why do you do it?
Julie: Because half the time I dont regret it.
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Dorothea: What is that?
Abbie: It's The Raincoats.
Dorothea: Can't things just be pretty?
Jamie: Pretty music is used to hide how unfair and corrupt society is.
Dorothea: Ah, okay so... they're not very good, and they know that, right?
Abbie: Yeah, it's like they've got this feeling, and they don't have any skill, and they don't want skill, because it's really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that's raw. Isn't it great?
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Dorothea: Wondering if you're happy is a great shortcut to just being depressed.
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Dorothea: Men always feel that they have to fix things for women, but they're not doing anything. Some things just can't be fixed. Just be there, somehow that's hard for all of you.
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Abbie: Whatever you think your life is going to be like, just know, it's not gonna be anything like that.
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Abbie: I gave him beer, and then I taught him how to verbally seduce women. Then we drove drunk, but I stopped that, and then he kissed Trish, and then we walked home.
Dorothea: Ah.
Abbie: You're not mad? You're mad.
Dorothea: You get to see him out in the world, as a person. I never will.
Abbie: [pulls a photo of Jamie from a stack of Polaroids] Just... there.
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Dorothea: [Treats bruises on Jamie's face] So what was the fight about?
Jamie: Clitoral stimulation.
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Jamie: What's it like? For girls.
Julie: What? Sex?
Jamie: Orgasms.
Julie: Do you really wanna know what it's like?
Jamie: Yeah.
Julie: I don't have them.
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Jamie: Why are you fine being sad and alone?
Dorothea: I, uh... I... you... you can't talk to me like that.
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Julie: Don't you need a man to raise a man?
Dorothea: No, I don't think so.
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Julie: [talking about the cigarettes] Can I have one?
Dorothea: No, they're really bad for you.
Julie: You smoke all the time.
Dorothea: You know when I started, they weren't bad for you, they were just stylish, sort of edgy, so... It's different for me.
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Abbie: You *cannot* let her *sleep* here if she's not having *sex* with you. It's disempowering.
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Dorothea: He could write with his left hand and scratch my back with his right.
William: And that's it?
Dorothea: I love that.
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Jamie: Mom, I'm dealing with everything, right now. *You* are dealing with nothing.
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Julie: I think that I'm too close to you... to have sex with you.
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[William and Abbie come to pay Dorothea's bail]
Dorothea: These people have no sense of humor.
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Dorothea: Julie is... pretty complicated woman. It's a lot to take on. And I'm impressed in a way.
Jamie: Whatever.
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Jamie: But people from her time never admit anything went wrong.
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Dorothea: Having your heart broken is a tremendous way to learn about the world.
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Dorothea: I know him less every day.He said it was just a game.You breathe real hard and another kid.He said you're supposed to come to a few seconds later. But it took Jamie almost a half an hour to wake up.
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Dorothea: I think history has been tough on men.I mean, they can't be what they were,and they can't figure out what's next.
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Julie: Love is supposed to be a feeling that you feel.People say that they're falling in love, but they're not actually falling in love.It's a fake connection that you feel with someone and marriage should never happen.
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Dorothea: You got birds?
Abbie: They're a boy and a girl, and that they're monogamous for life, so if one of them dies, then the other one will die like a week later.
Dorothea: Wow. Well how 'bout Maximilian and Carlotta? You know, they deserve something grand if they're gonna be monogamous their whole lives.
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Julie: I think being strong is the most important quality. It's not being vulnerable, it's not being sensitive. It's not even. Honestly, it's not even being happy. It's about strength and your durability against the other emotions.
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Julie: Home birth actually stunts the baby's growth personality.
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William: And who knows what it means for a newborn to see wood walls and carpeted floor and to smell real human smells and to feel wool and cotton and flannel clothes instead of starchy, white, deodorized, dot, dot, dot.
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Jamie: Age is a bourgeois construct.
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Jamie: Interested in others.And I think, intelligent.All I ask is to get to know people and to have them interested in knowing me.I doubt whether I would marry again and live that close to another individual,but I remain invisible.Don't pretend for a minute as you look at me,that I am not as alive as you are,and I do not suffer from the category to which you are forcing me.I think, stripped down, I look more attractive than my ex-husband but I am sexually and socially obsolete and he is not.I have a capacity now for taking people as they are,which I lacked at 20.I reach orgasm in half the time and I know how to please,yet I do not even dare show a man that I find him attractive.If I do, he may react as if I have insulted him.I'm supposed to fulfill my small functions and vanish. It Hurts To Be Alive And Obsolete: The Aging Woman by Zoe Moss 1970
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Julie: I don't wanna just have sex with you.I want you.But it's your version of me.It's not me.It would be a lot better if you just wanted sex.You are exactly like the other guys.You just seem like you're all modern.
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Dorothea: What he likes is making bowls. He doesn't smell like oil and grease. His hands don't look like dumb mechanics hands.
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Dorothea: That was my husband's Ford Galaxy. We drove Jamie home from the hospital in that car.
Jamie: My mom was forty when she had me. Everyone told her she was too old to be a mother.
Dorothea: I put my hand through the little window, and he'd squeeze my finger, and I'd tell him life was very big... and unknown.
Jamie: And she told me that there were animals, and sky, and cities...
Dorothea: ...music, movies. He'd fall in love, have his own children, have passions, have meaning, have his mom and dad.
Jamie: When they got divorced, my father moved back east and left the car with us. He calls on birthdays and Christmas. Last time I felt close to him was on my birthday in 1974. He bought me mirrored sunglasses. I saw the president fall down the stairs and I threw up on the carpet.
Dorothea: Since then it's just been us.
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Dorothea: Actually, it was, it was built in 1905, and the same family had it forever, but they lost all their money during the war, and then there was a fire and... You should've been here for that. Anyway, so, it was just a mess. They let it fall apart. Then a bohemian inherited it in the '60s, then a bunch of free spirits moved in, and they lost it to the bank.
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Jamie: My mom was born in 1924. When she was my age people drove in sad cars to sad houses with old phones, no money, or food, or televisions... but people were real. When she was sixteen, the war broke out and she had to leave school. Her dream was to be a pilot in the Air Force. She actually went to flight school. But the war ended before she was done. She became the first woman to work in the Continental Can Company drafting room. Then she met my dad... and I came. Then they got divorced. But people from her time never admit anything went wrong.
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Dorothea: My son was born in 1964. He grew up with a meaningless war, with protests, with Nixon, with nice cars and nice houses, computers, drugs, boredom. I know him less every day.
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Abbie: So I had this new idea for my photography that I was gonna take a picture of everything that I owned so it's a self-portrait of myself through the stuff that I have. Can I show you? So... bra, birth control, um, photography by Susan Sontag, shoes, underwear, a picture of a picture of my mom. I'm gonna do a bunch of 'em.
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Jamie: Mom, I'm not "all men." Okay? I'm just me.
Dorothea: Well, yes and no.
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Dorothea: It's 1979, I'm fifty-five years old, this is what my son believes in. These people with this hair and these clothes making these gestures, making these sounds. It's 1979, I'm 55 years old and in 1999 I will die of cancer from the smoking. They don't know this is the end of punk. They don't know that Reagan's coming. It's impossible to imagine that kids will stop dreaming about nuclear war, and have nightmares about the weather. It's impossible to imagine HIV, what will happen with skateboard tricks, the Internet. Before I die, I will prepare for Y2K. I put canned food and water in the garage. I put 16 000 dollars' worth of gold coins into a safe deposit box at the Bank of Montecito. I died before the new year. Dolphin shaped balloons floated over my head. They were playing Louis Armstrong on a boom box.
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President Carter: As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government, for schools, the news media and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance. But it is the truth and it is a warning. It is a crisis of confidence. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself involved in a search for freedom. We are at a turning point in our history. The path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom. It is a certain route to failure. Thank you and good night.
Dorothea's Dinner Guest: Wow. He is so screwed.
Dorothea's Dinner Guest: No shit.
Dorothea's Dinner Guest: It's over for him.
Dorothea: I thought that was beautiful.
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Jamie: I thought that was just the beginning of a new relationship with her, where she'd really tell me stuff. But maybe it was never really like that again. Maybe that was it.
Dorothea: In March of 1999, I'll start to feel tired and confused. When I finally go to the doctor, he will say that the cancer in my lungs had already travelled to my breast and brain. I'll try to teach Jamie what to do with my stocks, but my instructions will be impossible to understand.
Julie: Abbie will take me to Planned Parenthood. And I will go on the pill. I will go to NYU and lose touch with Jamie and Dorothea, and I will stop talking to my mom, I will fall in love with Nicholas, we will move to Paris, and choose not to have children.
Abbie: I will stay in Santa Barbara. In just two years, I'll marry Dave. A month after I get married Carlotta will die. A week later, Max will die too. I will work out of my garage and show in local galleries. Against my doctor's advice, I will get pregnant, and by the time I'm thirty I'll have two boys.
William: I'll live with Dorothea for another year. Then I'll open a pottery store in Sedona Arizona. I will marry Laurie, a singer-songwriter. We'll get divorced in a year. Then I'll meet Sandy, we will marry, and I will continue to do my pottery.
Jamie: My mom will meet Jim in 1983, they'll be a couple until she dies. On her birthday each year, he will buy her a trip on a biplane. Years after she's gone I'll finally get married and have a son. I'll try to explain to him what his grandmother was like - but it will be impossible.
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Jamie: [to his mom] You know, when the firemen come... people don't usually invite them for dinner.
20th Century Women Quotes
Extended Reading
