La Chinoise Quotes

[repeated lines]

Veronique: Guillaume, answer the phone!

Omar: [reading aloud] 'Cast away illusions and prepare for struggle. The world is as much yours as ours. In you lies the hope. Work is struggle and the practice of searching for the truth in the facts.'

Veronique: Yes, but what precisely is a fact?

Omar: 'Facts are things and phenomena as they exist objectively. The truth is the internal link of these things and phenomena, that is the laws that govern them. To search is to study. We must begin with the real situation inside and outside the country, the province, the prefecture and the county to employ the laws that are proper for this situation to guide our action and not generated by our imagination, that is to say to find the internal link of events unfolding around us.'

Guillaume: I would like to be blind.

Veronique: Why?

Guillaume: To talk to each other better. We would listen seriously.

Veronique: Ah yes. How come?

Guillaume: By delivering language differently. Listen, language has changed its meanings in two thousand years.

Veronique: So?

Guillaume: So we would talk seriously. Finally, these real meanings would change words.

Veronique: Ah yes, we would talk as if words were sounds and matter.

Guillaume: That's... what they... are. Veronique.

Veronique: Right. Let's start then.

Guillaume: By the river.

Veronique: Green and blue.

Guillaume: Tenderness.

Veronique: A bit of despair.

Guillaume: The day after tomorrow.

Veronique: Maybe.

Guillaume: Literary theory.

Veronique: A film by Nicholas... Ray.

Guillaume: The... Moscow... trials.

Veronique: Red... breast.

Guillaume: Rock... and roll.

Veronique: And so on.

Guillaume: And so on?

Veronique: And so on.

Guillaume: I love you, you know.

Kirilov: 'Art does not reproduce the visible but makes visible.'

Veronique: Yes, as imaginary aesthetics.

Kirilov: Yes, but this imaginary does not reflect reality. It is the reality of surreflexion. One can hear statements like 'use only the three colours, the three primary colours, blue, yellow and red, which are perfectly pure and thus perfectly balanced' on the pretext that all other colours can be found in them.

Francis: But your idea?

Veronique: To close universities.

Francis: But how?

Veronique: With bombs.

Francis: With bombs? Are you going to... Are you going to throw bombs?

Veronique: Listen, when one starts killing students and teachers, they won't show up, and so the universities will close.

Francis: But tell me are you doing it alone?

Veronique: Well, there are two or three of us.

Francis: Two or three, but...

Veronique: But for example you during the Algerian War when Djamila Bouhired blew up cafes, you were there, you defended her when Marshal Juin and then those L'Express guys were against her.

Francis: Uh-huh.

Veronique: All of France was against her except for you.

Francis: Yes, that's right. But there is a difference, and tell me if I'm wrong.

Veronique: What difference? Please explain?

Francis: Because there was a whole people behind Djamila. There were men and women who had already entered the struggle...

Veronique: But it was for...

Francis: Pardon?

Veronique: It was for indipendence, and me too, I want my independence.

Francis: You want your independence, but how many of you want it that way? I asked you, and you said two or three.

Veronique: Precisely. There are many who don't think about it yet. So we think for them now. It's for them.

Francis: Do you think you can make a revolution for others?

Veronique: But Francis, you agree that work is struggle?

Francis: Of course it's struggle, but what is the struggle?

Veronique: Look, if I want to know the theory and methods of revolution, I'm obliged to participate practically in a revolution.

Francis: You can participate in a revolution but not invent one.

Veronique: Look, if I want to gain knowledge, you have to go through practice, right?

Francis: Yes.

Veronique: Do you agree?

Francis: Yes, I agree, but revolutionary practice nevertheless presumes knowledge of the situation. Do you know?

Veronique: Yes, I know the situation. Everything is wrong.

Francis: You know it, but do you know...

Veronique: And it makes itself known to... to...

Francis: Do you know what can be done to remedy it?

Veronique: But you do agree that all genuine knowledge originates in direct experience?

Francis: When you believe in direct experience, does it tell you what content to give to your action next? Because terrorism, it's only the beginning of action. It's terrorism, isn't it?

Veronique: Yes, it's terrorism.