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Pearl: You'll live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to.
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Eve: You spoke to my analyst about this behind my back? How could you! This is humiliating!
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Joey: Renata, Renata! All I hear about is Renata!
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Renata: We never see Marion and Gail. I don't understand. You used to like them!
Frederick: I can't stand them. They're so enthusiastic. College kids. I get embarrassed!
Renata: Oh, well, don't get embarrassed. Don't come. Stay home, drink yourself unconscious. That's one of the cliches of being a novelist you've had no problem with.
Frederick: Yeah, I sure can drink.
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Mike: I love you, Joey.
Joey: Why do you stick with me? I give you nothing but grief!
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[repeated line]
Eve: I think it's exquisite.
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Pearl: I prefer a warmer climate. I even lived in Australia for a year with my sister Faye, when Adam died, but I went nuts! It's dead there.
Mike: I was in Sydney, Australia, once.
Pearl: Was I lying? Did you like it?
Mike: Well it was just a vacation you know. I was only there a coupla days.
Pearl: Lucky. It's like a morgue. Nothing to do at night; no pizzazz. I couldn't take that.
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Pearl: You only live once, and once is enough if you play your cards right.
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Joey: I feel the need to express something, but I don't know what it is I want to express. Or how to express it.
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Joey: She's a vulgarian!
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Renata: I can't seem to shake the real implication of dying. It's terrifying. The intimacy of it embarrasses me.
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Joey: Mother, is that you? You shouldn't be here, not tonight. I'll take you home. You look so strange and tired. I feel like we're in a dream together. Please don't look so sad. It makes me feel so guilty, so consumed with guilt. It's ironic, because I've cared for you so, and you have nothing but disdain for me, and yet I feel guilty. I think you're really too perfect to live in this world. I mean, all the beautifully furnished rooms, carefully designed interiors, everything's so controlled. There wasn't any room for any real feelings. None, between any of us. Except Renata, who never gave you the time of day. You worship Renata. You worship talent. Well, what happens to those of us who can't create? What do we do? What do *I* do when I'm overwhelmed with feelings about life? How do I get them out? I feel such rage toward you! Oh mother, don't you see, you're not just a sick woman. That would be too easy. The truth is, there's been perverseness, and willfulness of attitude in many of the things you've done. At the center of a sick psyche there is a sick spirit. But, I love you. And we have no other choice, but to forgive each other.
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Eve: [spoken to Joey with tense emotion] Will you please not breathe so hard?
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[first lines]
Arthur: I had dropped out of law school when I met Eve. She was very beautiful, very pale and cool in her black dress with never anything more than a single strand of pearls. And distant. Always poised and distant. At the time the girls were born it was all so perfect, so ordered. Looking back, of course, it was rigid. The truth is she created a world around us that we existed in, where everything had its place, where there was always a kind of harmony. Great dignity. I will say, it was like an ice palace. Then suddenly one day, out of nowhere, an enormous abyss opened up beneath our feet and I was staring into a face I didn't recognize.
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Mike: Basic popularity and appeal of Mao for so-called American Marxists. This is supposed to go in under the sequence in reel two about South Africa. What we want to do is get to examples. But the idea is, Mao's style was Marxist-Leninist, but that he was accessible to the lower classes because of his use of homilies. The example would be, "The hardest thing is to act properly throughout one's whole life." What the hell does that mean?
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Joey: I love that suit.
Eve: It's a unique color. Renata calls it ice-gray.
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Renata: My impotence set in a year ago. My paralysis. I suddenly found I couldn't bring myself to write anymore. I shouldn't say "suddenly." Actually, it started happening last winter. Increasing thoughts about death just seemed to come over me. These... A preoccupation with my own mortality. These feelings of futility in relation to my work. Just what am I striving to create, anyway? To what end? For what purpose, what goal? I mean, do I really care if some of my poems are read after I'm gone forever?
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Mike: Why don't you work with me?
Joey: Because political activity is not my interest. I'm too self-centered for that.
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Renata: Frederick, you know Flyn likes you. And don't behave condescendingly. She senses that you talk down to her.
Frederick: I don't talk down to Flyn. I love hearing about her hair, her weight, the latest TV junk she's done.
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Frederick: Flyn suffers from the same thing my last book suffered from. She's a perfect example of form without any content.
Renata: That's very profound. You haven't even started drinking yet.
Frederick: Yeah, I am profound. And I'm not the award-winning writer. You're the one who's supposed to be giving me insights into sex and other world-shattering phenomenon.
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Joey: We gotta go.
Renata: Really? We hardly had any chance to speak.
Joey: I know.
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Frederick: I'm not in the mood for your lesbian friends and a lot of vacuous gossip about New York poetesses.
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Renata: She has all the anguish and anxiety of the artistic personality without any of the talent.
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Joey: It's absurd. How could we have a kid? I don't even know where my life is going.
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Pearl: How many ruins can you see? But that hot sand, that blue water, that's for me.
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Pearl: First time I went to Europe with my first husband, many years ago, all we saw was churches, one cathedral after another. Don't misunderstand. They were beautiful. But so you see two or three, then enough already.
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Pearl: Give me a good sirloin anytime. Charcoaled. They talk about club steaks and porterhouse. Sirloin, charcoaled and blood-rare.
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Pearl: He was in the jewelry business, my first husband, may he rest in peace. Adam, my second, was an orthodontist.
Renata: How many have you had?
Pearl: Two. Adam had a massive coronary. Rudy was an alcoholic.
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Pearl: You know what I say: You only live once, but once is enough if you play it right.
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Renata: Do you have any children, Pearl?
Pearl: Oh, yes. I have two sons. Lewis and John. Lewis is in real estate. John runs an art gallery.
Renata: Oh?
Pearl: In the lobby in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. It's not exactly a gallery. It's more - a concession.
Joey: Paintings of clowns on black velvet?
Pearl: That's right. Junk. Oh, I tell you, it's pure junk. But people like it. They get a kick out of it. He does very nicely.
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Arthur: Pearl collects African art.
Pearl: Oh! Oh, I love black ebony. Mmm. I own some statues. Actually, they're from Trinidad. Oh, I love those real primitive statues with the big hips and the big breasts. I even have some voodoo masks. I believe in that stuff.
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Arthur: Fashionable pessimism is all the rage nowadays.
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Renata: It's hard to argue that in the face of death, life loses real meaning.
Pearl: It is?
Renata: Well, I can't argue it succinctly, but if you read Socrates or Buddha or Schopenhauer or even Ecclesiastes, they're very convincing.
Pearl: Well, they should know. I don't read that much.
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Renata: Have you spoken with Mother?
Flyn: Oh, yes. We're having dinner one night this week. How's she holding up?
Renata: I don't know. Better than we all expected. Isn't that right, Joey?
Joey: She took it very badly at first, but after the initial shock she seemed to come out of it.
Renata: Joey feels that all of her Jesus Christ nonsense is actually somewhat of a help.
Flyn: Well, whatever works.
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Flyn: Are you and Dad gonna be staying here or are you gonna take a place in town?
Pearl: Well, its a little quiet out here. But, Arthur loves it. Of course, it means redoing so much of the house.
Joey: In what way?
Pearl: Oh, I don't know. It's just the two of us and it's - kinda pale.
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Renata: I look in the mirror every day and I feel discouraged. Now I see you, and you don't change at all.
[Flyn laughs]
Renata: No, you don't change! Your skin is like cream. Look at your skin. I'm so envious.
Flyn: I work at it.
Renata: No, I don't think that's it.
Flyn: I have a few good years, then my youth will be frozen on old celluloid for TV movies.
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Joey: You know I want you to be happy. I want you both to be happy.
Arthur: Tell her. Tell Pearl. I know she puts on a gay facade, but she knows how you feel. Tell her.
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Frederick: I did a terrible thing last week. I wrote about this friend's book. Not a very good book. And I pointed that out, which is what I was getting paid to do. But I was extremely cruel about it - and I took great pleasure in my cruelty. My anger scares me. I don't like what I'm becoming.
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Flyn: I happen to think you're a very impressive person.
Frederick: Oh, I think you have very impressive feet.
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[last lines]
Joey: The water's so calm.
Renata: Yes. It's very peaceful.
Interiors Quotes
Extended Reading
