Bruce Robinson · 144 pages
Rating: (390 votes)
“Those with the money are eccentric. Those without, insane.”
“We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”
“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”
“We've gone on holiday by mistake”
“BALLS! We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them HERE, and we want them NOW.”
“Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one.”
“Here. Hare. Here. Here hare here!”
“Withnail: This is ridiculous. Look at me, I'm 30 in a month and I've got a sole flapping off my shoe.
Marwood: It'll get better, it has to.
Withnail: Easy for you to say, luvvie, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? It's ridiculous. I've been to drama school. I'm good looking. I tell you, I've a fuck sight more talent that half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can't I get on television?
Marwood: Well, I don't know. It'll happen.
Withnail: Will it? That's what you say. The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news.”
“You have done something to your brain. You have made it high. If I lay 10 mls of diazepam on you, it will do something else to your brain. You will make it low. Why trust one drug and not the other?”
“Do not destroy the dignity of the other person. That person is as valuable in existence as you are. There is no need to impose your ideas on anybody. Who are you? What authority have you got to impose your ideas on others? You can share, you can tell, you can expose your heart. And if the other feels that something falls in tune with him, and chooses it, it is their decision, not your imposition. Revolutionaries”
“It was as if the wars they were conducting were to be symbolized in their own relationships. I thought how contention makes us human. How every form of it is practiced religiously, from gentlemanly debate to rape and pillage, from dirty political attacks to assassinations. Our nighttime street fights outside of bars, our slapping arguments in plush bedrooms, our murderous mutterings in the divorce courts. We had parents who beat their children, schoolyard bullies, career-climbing killers in ties and suits, drivers cutting one another off, people pushing one another through the subway doors, nations making war, dropping bombs, swarming onto beaches, the daily military coups, the endless disappearances, the dispossessed dying in their tent camps, the ethnic cleansing crusades, drug wars, terrorist murders, and all violence in every form countenanced somewhere by some religion or other … and for its entertainment politicidal, genocidal, suicidal humanity attending its beloved kick-boxing matches, and cockfights, or losing its paychecks on the blackjack felt and then going back to work undercutting the competition, scamming, ponzi-ing, poisoning … and the impassioned lovers of their times contending in their own little universe of sex, one turgidly wanting it, the other wincingly refusing it.”
“Coming out is something you never stop doing. You start by telling your friends and family. Then you tell new acquaintances or coworkers who invite you out for a drink. Even the telemarketers who call and ask if my wife is home. You don’t have to tell everyone you meet, of course, but coming out is something that accompanies your entire life.”
“Her receding laughter sounded so comforting, so alluring to my senses that I could hardly control myself from reaching out to her and telling her what I felt there and then!”
“It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.”
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