Quotes from M. Butterfly

“I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Sometimes I hate you, sometimes I hate myself, but always I miss you”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Tonight, I've finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East -- he's already confused. The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. ...Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.' The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated -- because a woman can't think for herself. ...You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Consider it this way: what would you say if a blond homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? He treats her cruelly, then goes home for three years, during which time she prays to his picture and turns down marriage from a young Kennedy. Then, when she learns he has remarried, she kills herself. Now I believe you should consider this girl to be a deranged idiot, correct? But because it's an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner–ah!–you find it beautiful.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men?...Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Now I see -- we are always most revolted by the things hidden within us.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“It just hangs there. This little... flap of flesh. And there's so much fuss that we make about it. I think the reason we fight wars is because we wear clothes. Because no one knows–between the men, I mean–who has the bigger... weenie. So. if I’m a guy with a small one, I’m going to build a really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really long book so the other men don’t know, right? But see, it never really works, that's the problem. I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you’re still wearing clothes, so there’s no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or smaller. And that’s what we call a civilized society. The whole world run by a bunch of men with pricks the size of pins.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Gallimard: You have to do what I say! I'm conjuring you up in my mind!
Song: Rene, I've never done what you've said. Why should it be any different in your mind?”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Gallimard: It's... a pure sacrifice. He's unworthy, but what can she do? She loves him... so much. It's a very beautiful story.
Song: Well, yes, to a Westerner.
Gallimard: Exuse me?
Song: It's one of your favotite fantasies, isn't it? The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Judge: But why would that make it possible for you to fool Monsieur Gallimard? Please--get to the point.
Song: One, because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in fact, a woman. And second, I am an Oriental. And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“For the myths of the East, the myths of the West, the myths of men, and the myths of women—these have so saturated our consciousness that truthful contact between nations and lovers can only be the result of heroic effort.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Don't forget: there is no homosexuality in China!”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“We must conserve our strengths for the battles we can win.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Time flies when you’re being stupid.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“And you wonder, what's wrong with me? Will anyone beautiful want me?”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Death with honor is better than life... life with dishonor.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“But is it possible for a woman to be too uninhibited, too willing, so as to seem almost too... masculine?”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Happiness is so rare that our mind can turn somersaults to protect it.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

“Well, there's no guarantee of failure in life like happiness in high school.”
― David Henry Hwang, quote from M. Butterfly

About the author

Popular quotes

“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone.
So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach.
In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all because we are progressing.

You brag of your Opera houses; ten Opera houses the size of yours could dance a saraband in a Roman amphitheatre. Even Mr. Martin, with his lame tiger and his poor gouty lion, as drowsy as a subscriber to the Gazette, cuts a pretty small figure by the side of a gladiator from antiquity. What are your benefit performances, lasting till two in the morning, compared with those games which lasted a hundred days, with those performances in which real ships fought real battles on a real sea; when thousands of men earnestly carved each other -- turn pale, O heroic Franconi! -- when, the sea having withdrawn, the desert appeared, with its raging tigers and lions, fearful supernumeraries that played but once; when the leading part was played by some robust Dacian or Pannonian athlete, whom it would often have been might difficult to recall at the close of the performance, whose leading lady was some splendid and hungry lioness of Numidia starved for three days? Do you not consider the clown elephant superior to Mlle. Georges? Do you believe Taglioni dances better than did Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? Admirable as is Bocage, I am convinced Roscius could have given him points. Galeria Coppiola played young girls' parts, when over one hundred years old; it is true that the oldest of our leading ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mlle. Mars has not even progressed in that direction. The ancients had three or four thousand gods in whom they believed, and we have but one, in whom we scarcely believe. That is a strange sort of progress. Is not Jupiter worth a good deal more than Don Juan, and is he not a much greater seducer? By my faith, I know not what we have invented, or even wherein we have improved.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin

“In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz

“Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible
signals of what can be done. Signifiers are of far more importance to designers than are affordances.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)

“I check my phone messages and email about forty-five times a day. I don’t even know what I’m expecting to get in these messages. Maybe Visa will call and say, “We just realized that we owe you money!” or I’ll get an email from a high school classmate that says, “We’ve reconsidered and we’ve decided you were cool after all.” Whatever”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories

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