Miranda Priestly:
Do you know why I hired you? I always hire the same girl- stylish, slender, of course... worships the magazine. But so often, they turn out to be- I don't know- disappointing and, um... stupid. So you, with that impressive résumé and the big speech about your so-called work ethic- I, um- I thought you would be different. I said to myself, go ahead. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl. I had hope. My God. I live on it. Anyway, you ended up disappointing me more than, um- more than any of the other silly girls.
Alexander:
A thousand ships we'll launch from here, Hephaistion! We'll round Arabia, and sail up the gulf to Egypt. From there, we'll build a channel through the desert, out to the middle sea. And then we'll move on Carthage, and that great island Cecily; they'll pay large tribute. After that the Romans - good fighters, but we'll beat them. And then explore the northern forests, and add the pillars of Heracles to the western ocean. And then one day, populations will mix and travel freely. Asia and Europe will come together. And we'll grow old, Hephaistion, looking out our balcony at this new world.
Russell Hammond:
[Russell grabs phone away from William] Hey, mom! It’s Russell Hammond. I play guitar in Stillwater. Hey, how does it feel to be the mother of the greatest rock journalist we've met? Hello? Hello...? Look, you've got a really great kid here. There's nothing to worry about. We're taking good care of him, and you should come to the show sometime - join the circus...
Elaine Miller:
Hey, hey, listen to me, mister. You're charm doen't work on me - I'm on to you. Of course you like him...
Russell Hammond:
Well, yeah...
Elaine Miller:
He worships you people. And that's fine by you as long as he helps make you rich.
Russell Hammond:
Rich? I don't think so...
Elaine Miller:
Listen to me. He's a smart, good-hearted fifteen year old kid with infinite potential.
Russell Hammond:
[Russell is stunned]
Elaine Miller:
This is not some apron-wearing mother you're speaking with - I know all about your valhalla of decadence and I shouldn't have let him go. He's not ready for your world of compromised values and diminished brain cells that you throw away like confetti. Am I speaking to you clearly?
Russell Hammond:
Yes - yes, ma'am...
Elaine Miller:
If you break his spirit, harm him in any way, keep him from his chosen profession which is law - something you may not value, but I do - you will meet the voice on the other end of this telephone and it will not be pretty. Do we understand each other?
Russell Hammond:
Uh, yes, ma'am...
Elaine Miller:
I didn't ask for this role, but I'll play it. Now go do your best. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Goethe said that. It's not too late for you to become a person of substance, Russell. Please get my son home safely. You know, I'm glad we spoke. [Elaine hangs up]
Russell Hammond:
[Russell stands holding phone in stunned silence]
Jesse:
This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath... all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn't get it out of his head. And I think that's so true, I mean, all - everything is so finite. But don't you think that that's what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?
Celine:
Yeah, I know. It's the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see each other again, right?
Celine:
We, maybe we should try something different. I mean, it's no so bad if tonight is our only night, right? People always exchange phone numbers, addresses, they end up writing once, calling each other once or twice...
Jesse:
Right. Fizzles out. Yeah, I mean, I don't want that. I hate that.
Celine:
I hate that too, y'know.
Jesse:
Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway?
Celine:
Yeah, why. It's stupid.
Vanessa Kensington:
Look, I know I'm being neurotic, but I can't shake off this suspicious feeling about Miss Fagina. I don't want to sound paranoid, but I've had some bad relationships in the past, and I have been known to be jealous. I'm sorry.
Austin Powers:
No, don't be sorry, baby. You're right to be suspicious. I shagged her.
Vanessa Kensington:
What?
Austin Powers:
I shagged her rotten, baby, yeah!
Vanessa Kensington:
Did you used protection ?
Austin Powers:
Of course. I had my 9mm automatic.
Vanessa Kensington:
You know I meant, did you use a condom?
Austin Powers:
No, only sailors wear condoms baby.
Vanessa Kensington:
Not in the '90s Austin.
Austin Powers:
Well they should, those filthy buggers. They go from port to port.
Andy Stitzer:
[drunk] You know the thing about relationships is that they make one person go, "Blah blah blah blah blah," and the other person go, "What are you talking about?" And then one person goes, "Blah blah blah blah blah."
Cal:
How much have you had to drink, man?
Andy Stitzer:
Oh, how much have I had to drink? Hey, how many pots have you smoken?
Cal:
What are you talking about?
Andy Stitzer:
Oh, how many times have you gone to the bathroom in your life? Let me ask you that. You know what, you don't have an answer for that, do you? Who the fuck you, man? I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, you're such a good guy, and I appreciate you.
It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.
This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.
Daniel:
So, let's go. We can definitely crack this. Remember, I was a kid once, too. So come on, it's someone at school, right?
Sam:
Yeah.
Daniel:
Aha, good, good. And what does she - he - feel about ya?
Sam:
*She* doesn't even know my name. And even if she did, she'd despise me. She's the coolest girl in school and everyone worships her because she's heaven.
Daniel:
Good. Good. [sits on the couch next to Sam]
Daniel:
Well... [grins]
Daniel:
Basically, you're fucked, aren't you?
What marriage offers - and what fidelity is meant to protect - is the possibility of moments when what we have chosen and what we desire are the same. Such a convergence obviously cannot be continuous. No relationship can continue very long at its highest emotional pitch. But fidelity prepares us for the return of these moments, which give us the highest joy we can know; that of union, communion, atonement (in the root sense of at-one-ment)...
To forsake all others does not mean - because it cannot mean - to ignore or neglect all others, to hide or be hidden from all others, or to desire or love no others. To live in marriage is a responsible way to live in sexuality, as to live in a household is a responsible way to live in the world. One cannot enact or fulfill one's love for womankind or mankind, or even for all the women or men to whom one is attracted. If one is to have the power and delight of one's sexuality, then the generality of instinct must be resolved in a responsible relationship to a particular person. Similarly, one cannot live in the world; that is, one cannot become, in the easy, generalizing sense with which the phrase is commonly used, a
