“Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.”
“I keep feeling that people are becoming less human and more animalistic. They seem to think less and feel less so that everyone is operating on a very primitive level. I wonder what you and I will see in our lifetimes. It seems so hopeless yet we must keep on trying ... I guess we can't escape being a product of the times, can we?”
“On the plane leaving Tokyo I’m sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing “Over the Rainbow” straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn’t give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don’t even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them. Roger offers me a joint and I take a drag and stare out the window and I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon.”
“About a week ago I was sitting in L.A.'s chicest nightclub with a few friends and the DJ was playing Yaz and Bowie and the videos were on and I was on my third gin and tonic and I realized that no matter where I am it's always the same. Camden, New York, L.A., Palm Springs - it really doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this should be disturbing but it's really not. I find it kind of comforting.”
“Just read this fabulous screenplay. A remake of Camus's The Stranger with Meursault as a bi break-dancing punk rocker. Randy showed it to me. I loved it. Randy thinks "basically unfilmable" and that filming an orange rolling around a parking lot for three hours would draw a bigger audience.”
“Looking at Tim, one cannot help feeling great waves of uncertainty, an absence of aim, of purpose, as if he is a person who simply doesn’t matter.”
“Danny is on my bed and depressed because Ricky was picked up by a break dancer at the Odyssey on the night of the Duran Duran look-alike contest and murdered.”
“did another line and believed him because it is easier to move through the motions than not to.”
“I’m tired, William. I’m tired of you. I’m tired of these parties. I’m tired.” “The tone of your voice could have fooled me,” he says, taking my arm roughly. “Just smile, okay? Just until we get past the photographers, then I don’t give a fuck what you do.” “You … are … awful,” I say. “You’re not much better,” he says, pulling me along.”
“Tim glances over at me and I avert my gaze and an imagined sense of imposed peace washes calmly over the two of us, answering my question.”
“Судя по всему, мать уже две недели постоянно убирается на чердаке и находит одни и те же фотографии с Рождества в Нью-Йорке. Я это Рождество помню смутно. Как она несколько часов выбирала мне платье в сочельник, причесывала длинными, легкими взмахами. Рождественское шоу в Радио-Сити, и как я ела там полосатую карамельку — она походила на исхудавшего напуганного Санта-Клауса. Как отец напился вечером в Плазе, как родители ссорились в такси по дороге в Карлайл, а ночью я слышала их ругань и, конечно, звон стекла за стеной. Рождественский ужин в La Grenouille, где отец порывался поцеловать маму, а та отворачивалась. Но лучше всего, так отчетливо, что меня аж скручивает, я помню одну вещь: в ту поездку мы не фотографировались.”
“Не поймешь, чего он хочет. Смотришь на Тима, и тебя словно обдает волнами неуверенности, отсутствия цели, задачи, будто перед тобой человек, который совсем не имеет значения.”
“I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.”
“There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were about the most hated animals on earth, except maybe snakes and germs.
That seemed strange to us, and unjust. [...] But people think we spread diseases, and I suppose possibly we do, though never intentionally, and surely we never spread as many diseases as people themselves do.”
“Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.”
“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved
earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
Unyielding.”
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