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Alain Leroy: The sensitivity was in my heart, not my hands.
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Alain Leroy: Tomorrow, I kill myself.
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Dr. La Barbinais: Life's good.
Alain Leroy: Good for what?
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Alain Leroy: Life flows too slowly on me. So I speed it up. I set it right.
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Dubourg: How are you now?
Alain Leroy: Feeling empty. With some atrocious moments.
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Alain Leroy: You've spent the last ten years in gilded mediocrity.
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Dubourg: I'm older. The hopes are gone, but I have certainties now.
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Alain Leroy: One day I realised I'd spent my life waiting. For women. Money. Action. So I drank myself stupid.
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Alain Leroy: You and your mediocre certainties!
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Eva: Sleep is all I believe in.
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Alain Leroy: The peace of mind of these people!
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Alain Leroy: I'm not eager to face life again.
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Alain Leroy: I drink because I'm a bad lover.
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Alain Leroy: I'd have liked to captivate people, hold on to them, bind them close.
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Lydia: I know I'm leaving you with your worst enemy, yourself.
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Alain Leroy: I don't find it funny to sleep on a tomb... when it's so easy to open it and sleep inside.
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Alain Leroy: I have no power over them. I was handsome at 20. They still find me fun and nice. But it's not enough. I have no hold on them. And yet, it's only through women... that I've felt some hold on life.
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Alain Leroy: Five minutes with her and l'd feel like an insect. l'd vanish into the woodwork.
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Narrator: Once again the feeling had eluded him, like a snake between stones.
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Lydia: Dorothy isn't the woman for you. She isn't rich enough. She lets you do what you want. You need a woman who won't let you out of her sight. Otherwise you get depressed and act foolishly.
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Alain Leroy: A patient's life is ordered and simple. It shelters us. I'm not eager for a life again. Paris scares me.
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Alain Leroy: I am patient. I've done nothing but wait. All my life. Waiting - for something to happen. For what, I don't know.
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Dr. La Barbinais: You still have feelings of anxiety?
Alain Leroy: It's not feelings of anxiety, Doctor. It's a single feeling of constant anxiety.
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Dr. La Barbinais: Send her a telegram. Tell her to take the next plane. Take her down south. Or somewhere else. Anywhere but Paris. American women are strong and healthy. She'll help you forget.
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Charlie: When Mr. Castellotti is in town, he always stays here. We remember old times. "That sweet Alain," he says. He worships you. He lives in Milan now. Married, two cute little girls. He showed me photos. He comes for business and a bit of fun on the side. The other day he brought in this gorgeous brunette, a stripper.
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Dubourg: The cure was rough, especially after New York.
Alain Leroy: It has nothing to do with New York.
Dubourg: Yes it does. It's no place for us. It's like a crazy whirlpool.
Alain Leroy: I love New York.
Fanny: Fascinating, but hard to live in. It's intoxicating. People disappear into the city like drug addicts.
Alain Leroy: I felt good there. It wasn't home. I always felt like a visitor.
Fanny: And Paris?
Alain Leroy: Pretty much the same, but I prefer New York. People leave you alone.
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Alain Leroy: Do you like Françoise Hardy? Who then?
Faveur, Dubourg's daughter: Sylvie Vartan.
Dubourg: Who's that?
Alain Leroy: A teen idol. You forgot population growth, old man.
Dubourg: Young people today are hopeless. Good-looking, elegant, well-fed. They're all alike, like California oranges.
Alain Leroy: But you know nothing about them.
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Alain Leroy: It's all over for me. I'm leaving. Don't you understand?
Dubourg: Life still has things to offer. You must have a sense of your life. That sense can't perish. I hate things that stay locked up. A man's got to show what he's made of. Doing something well is wonderful.
Alain Leroy: I never knew what that meant. I've only run after money, like everybody else.
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Alain Leroy: It's not life itself I blame, but what's contemptible in it.
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Dubourg: Funny lives we lead, clinging to women.
Alain Leroy: You don't seem to cling to Fanny.
Dubourg: I wallow in her warmth like a pig in a trough.
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Alain Leroy: Dubourg, what will you do tonight?
Dubourg: Tonight, I'll write a few pages on my Egyptians, then make love to Fanny. I fall into her silence as into a well. At the bottom is a great sun that warms the earth.
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Eva: You look like death warmed over.
Alain Leroy: You're no spring chicken yourself.
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Eva: How's your American witch?
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Urcel: We poets have no need for drugs to attain the borderline between life and death.
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Jérôme Minville: What did you do over in JFK-land? Party a lot?
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Alain Leroy: The humiliation of it all.
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Cyrille Lavaud: Hong Kong is overrated. Oriental eroticism, based on my own little experience, is nothing like what they say.
Maria: But there's Chinese erotica.
Brancion: There's nothing erotic about it. Eroticism is a Western invention, a Christian concept based on ideas of good and evil, transgression and original sin. These concepts don't exist there.
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Brancion: Chinese libertines are pure hedonists for whom love is a pleasure which they seek to refine. It's something esthetic, whereas for us it's a concept.
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Alain Leroy: François Mignac, a model Parisian. In bed at 3:00am. Riding from 9:00 to 11:00. Then off to the stock exchange, to win or lose a quick million. Business lunch. Some time at the office. A woman. A few drinks. Dinner out. A nightclub. Then he starts over again. Twenty years, and he still loves it!
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Dr. La Barbinais: Some small-town professor who posits Ricine's world against that of Proust, Cocteau, Genet. The prig should read la Palatine.
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Clinic Male Patient: Believing is not knowing.
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Alain Leroy: Ever been to America?
Clinic Female Patient: No, it's hard enough getting to know our old Europe. And they're so brutal there, they might kill me.
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Black Café Patron: In St. Tropez, for the whole month of June! What a madhouse! It was ten years ago. The whole crowd was there, remember? It was something! We told Coppi, the cyclist, his girl had killed herself.
Alain Leroy: It wasn't funny.
Black Café Patron: Once he hijacked an American Express tourist bus and gave them a tour of the Ritz while talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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Alain Leroy: We drunks are poor cousins, and we know it. Anyway, we fade away fast.
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Alain Leroy: When I get depressed, I do foolish things.
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Alain Leroy: Don't go. Don't leave me. I need you. Don't leave, I'm begging you. It's serious.
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Alain Leroy: I feel at home here. You're my family.
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Alain Leroy: Money. It slips right through your fingers.
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Dr. La Barbinais: I can't keep you here without reason.
Alain Leroy: Doctor, I'll start again. If I leave, I'll start drinking again. Sooner or later.
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Dr. La Barbinais: It will gradually let up. A matter of willpower.
Alain Leroy: A contradiction, Doctor. How can you talk about my willpower? That's where my sickness lies. That's what you're treating.
Dr. La Barbinais: You weren't always this way.
Alain Leroy: What do you mean?
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Alain Leroy: Don't worry. I'll be gone by the end of the week, come what may.
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Alain Leroy: I'm drowning in debt.
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Brancion: You work in Versailles?
Alain Leroy: I don't work.
Brancion: Private income?
Alain Leroy: I'm sick.
Brancion: So that's why.
Alain Leroy: What?
Brancion: Why you look so pale. What's the problem?
Alain Leroy: My heart.
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Alain Leroy: I left my youth for another life.
Brancion: You turn your back. You reject adulthood. You're stuck in adolescence. Hence your anxiety. It's hard to be a man. You have to want to be one.
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Alain Leroy: I've had enough. I'm calling it a day. I refuse to grow old.
Brancion: You miss your youth as if you'd lived it to the fullest.
Alain Leroy: It was a promise. And a lie. I was the liar.
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Brancion: Where did all this start? If I knew, maybe I could help you.
Alain Leroy: Alcohol was in my blood before I realized it.
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Alain's old acquaintance: See that face?
Alain's old acquaintance: Alcohol.
Alain's old acquaintance: He's done for.
Alain's old acquaintance: A shame. He was good-Looking.
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Alain Leroy: I'm not feeling well. I'm early. I fainted in the street.
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Alain Leroy: I'm a poor drunkard.
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Maria: Alain, you're too far gone.
Alain Leroy: I'm not gone yet, but I'm going.
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Frédéric: As it happens, I'm a man. But I've never had money or women.
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Alain Leroy: The thing is... I can't reach out with my hands. I can't touch things. And when I do touch things, I feel nothing.
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Frédéric: Congratulations on finding Maria. You have a woman.
Alain Leroy: I have nothing.
Frédéric: Come now!
Alain Leroy: You don't know what it's like, being unable to touch anything. I'm incapable of wanting. I can't even desire. The women here tonight... I can't desire them. They scare me. Scare me!
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Alain Leroy: Five minutes with her and I'd feel like an insect. I'd vanish into the woodwork.
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Maria: What's wrong, Alain? You're a bit tipsy. And so sad. What is it now?
Alain Leroy: You're life itself. Yes, life. But I can't touch you. It's horrible. You're here in front of me, but there's no way.
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Alain Leroy: So I'll try with death. She should be more accommodating.
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Alain Leroy: You're a beautiful woman. A good woman. You love making love. And yet... between the two of us nothing's possible.
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Alain Leroy: To leave without having touched anything.
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Alain Leroy: You can work miracles. Touch the leper.
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Alain Leroy: I'm awkward, inept.
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Alain Leroy: I'm killing myself because you didn't love me, because I didn't love you. Because our ties were loose, I'm killing myself to tighten them. I leave you with an indelible stain.
The Fire Within Quotes
Extended Reading
