Rain Man (1988)

"It is not your fault if you have no unused phrase for what you feel... it is enough that you feel... 

I club her thighs with my dong, ..."

 Under the Roofs of Paris, Henry Miller

"We need a penny's worth of human sympathy."

Wise Blood (1979)

"You are face to face with your brother and you withhold the embrace. That is what I can't forgive you for. Look at Max! He is almost your double! Three times around the globe and now you have met yourself face to face. How can you run away from him? ... 

... You died, you say, and you've been holding one long funeral ever since. But you're not dead, and you know you're not. What the hell does spiritual death matter when Max is standing before you? Die, die, die a thousand deaths--but don't refuse to recognize the living man. Don't make a problem of him. It's flesh and blood, Boris. Flesh and blood. He's screaming and you pretend not to hear. You are deliberately making yourself deaf, dumb, and blind. You are dead before the living flesh. Dead before your own flesh and blood. You will gain nothing, neither in spirit, nor in the flesh, if you do not recognize Max your true brother."

The Cosmological Eye, Henry Miller

"You'll realize light is as important as the body itself."

Cronos (1993)

"Live alone, in a room where the windows are painted stuck. Old salmon paint that reminds you of those who were beautiful when you were a child. They were still young when this paint was slapped on creamy over dust. They saw streetcars in the traffic out the window. The war was over. Now you are as old. They seemed happier. 

You'll need a BEFORE. A concentration camp photo of a cousin that looked like you. Or someone fat. Here the resemblance needs be less exact. Especially if it's passport size and overexposed. You'll realize light is as important as the body itself. Begin to experiment. Shawl your head with a towel after a bath. You're only a blur in the steamy mirror, and the glow from the bare bathroom bulb shimmers about you like a halo. 

Extra time can be spent visiting churches. Each day walk to one farther away. You won't get lost -- sooner or later you'll come to a church and inside will be the same smell of the Middle Ages, their weather of cool plaster and smokey light. You'll discover the past can be preserved if enclosed in a temple. Though the empty vestibules return you to modern times -- cheap racks of free holy cards. Imagine the saints naked. 

Knotted muscle in forearms. Biceps bulging. Neck tapers from shoulders with the grace of marble. Shoulders sculptured into a chest defined as armor. Stomach flat. Legs rippling power, planted on the floor as you continue to heave upward, fists knurled through handles, straining at the stuck window. 

Finally it's time to confront the mirror in a skin of natural daylight. The hottest August anyone can remember. Slick with sweat, bare, gazing at your body. Face no longer important, spirit inseparable."

"To Acquire a Beautiful Body," Brass Knuckles, Stuart Dybek

"the taste of doorknobs / you kiss before squinting"

The Conversation (1979)

"(The story goes the priest / has carried a torch for Cherry / since grammar school / when he was just Wally Zwia, / nobody's father, not this saint / drunk enough to have removed his collar, / neck raw as a watchdog's.)"

"Cherry," Brass Knuckles, Stuart Dybek

Pillow Book (1996)

"Look. Look. Look. You forgot to take your shirt, and there's your book! and there's your pen! sitting on the table."

"Gravity's Angel," Mister Heartbreak. Laurie Anderson (1984)

("thirty two pages long")

Mr. Mom (1983)
"...can I ...have a moment ...to myself, please?" 

"he writes me a letter, a letter, a letter"

Nexus, Henry Miller

"No coffee, no apple pie."

"Each day the work grew a little tougher. The great moment came when I stood at the bottom of the hole swinging shovelsful of dirt over my shoulder. A beautiful piece of work. A hole in the ground? There are holes and holes. This was a consecrated hole. A special, from Adam Cadmus to Adam Omega."

Nexus, Henry Miller

"God himself could not have picked a better goat."

A Shock to the System (1990)

Nexus, Henry Miller

"He was the sort of man I would have been proud to call a friend. But I was too bashful to make advances..."

There Will Be Blood (2008)

"Whenever I went deep enough into my childhood I was no longer outside, on the fringe, but snugly inside, like a pip in the fleshy heart of a ripe piece of fruit. I might be standing in front of Annie Heineken's candy shop, in the old 14th Ward, my nose pressed against the windowpane, my eyes aglitter at the sight of some chocolate-covered soldiers. That abstract noun, 'the world,' hadn't yet penetrated my consciousness. Everything was real, concrete, individuated, but neither fully named nor wholly delineated. I was and things were. Space was limitless, time was not yet. Annie Heineken was a person who always leaned far over the counter to put things in my hand, who patted me on the head, who smiled at me, who said I was such a good little fellow, and sometimes ran out into the street to kiss me goodbye, though we lived only a few doors away.  

I honestly think that at times, out there on the fringe, when I got very quiet and still, I half expected someone to behave towards me exactly as Annie Heineken used to. Maybe I was running off to those faraway places of my childhood just to receive again that piece of candy, that smile, that embarrassing parting kiss. I was indeed an idealist. An incurable one. (An idealist is one who wants to turn the wheels back. He remembers too well what was given him; he doesn't think of what he himself might give. The world sours imperceptibly, but the process beings virtually from the moment one thinks in terms of 'the world.'" [sic]

Plexus, Henry Miller

Another Country (1984)

"In short, he was usually in a miserable condition, always ailing, griping, sneezing, and always blaming it on the cigarettes which he swore he would cut out next week or next month, and which sometimes he did do, to my great amazement, but only to go back to them, only to smoke more heavily....

... He had copies of magazines ten and fifteen years old, and newspapers too, which were treated in the same manner. Occasionally he would take a batch of these with him, open them up on the trolley or the train, skim through them rapidly, then fling them out the window. 'That's that!' he would say, smiling ruefully. He had cleared his conscience."

Plexus, Henry Miller

(Forward, I tell myself. Let's go! We are here.)

The Blues Brothers (1980) 

"It is on such a day as that I am apt to make one of those haphazard encounters which will alter the course of my life. The stranger coming towards me greets me like an old friend. We have merely to exchange a few words and the intimate stenographic language of ancient brothers replaces the current jargon. Communication is cryptic and seraphic, accomplished with the ease and rapidity of born deaf-mutes. For me it has only one purport--to bring about a reorientation. Altering the course of my life, as I put it before, means simply--correcting my sidereal position. The stranger, fresh from the other world, tips me off. Given my true bearings. I cut a fresh swath through the chartered realms of destiny. Just as the dream street swung softly into position, so I now wheel into vital alignment. The panorama against which I move is awesome and majestic. A landscape truly Tibetan beckons me onward. I know not whether it is a creation of the inner eye or some cataclysmic disturbance of the outer reality attuning itself to the profound reorientation I have just made. I know only that I am more solitary than ever. Everything that occurs now will have the quality of shock and discovery. I am not alone. I am in the midst of other solitaries. And each and every one of us speaks his own unique language! It is like the coming together of distant gods, each one wrapped in the aura of his own incomprehensible world. It is the first day of the week in the new cycle of consciousness. A cycle, need I say, which may last a week or a lifetime. En avant, je me dis. Allons-y! Nous sommes là." [sic]

Plexus, Henry Miller

"I am a freshly minted coin ready to fall into the palm of the first comer."

Manhunter (1986)

Plexus, Henry Miller

"That's how it begins. A duet which they have rehearsed a hundred times."

The Paper Chase (1973) 

"Curious, but any feelings of lineage or of ephemeral connections with the past which might arise in me were usually evoked by one of three curiously disparate phenomena: one, narrow, olden streets with miniature houses; two, certain unreal types of human beings, generally dreamers or fanatics; three, photographs of Tibet, of the Tibetan landscape particularly. I could be disoriented in a jiffy, and was then marvelously at home, one with the world and with myself. Only in such rare moments did I know or pretend to understand myself. My connections were, so to speak, with man and not with men. Only when I was shunted back to the grand trunk line did I become aware of my real rhythm, my real being. Individuality expressed itself for me as a life with roots. Efflorescence meant culture--in short, the world of cyclical development. In my eyes the great figures were always identified with the trunk of the tree, not with the boughs and leaves. And they were all variations of the one man, Adam Cadmus, or whatever he be called. My lineage stemmed from him, not from my ancestors. When I became aware I was superconscious I could make the leap back at one bound."

Plexus, Henry Miller

7, Section 3

The Fly II (1989)

Fratres Semper!

"'What will you do when we get there?' In Polish, of course. 

'Drnzybyisi uttituhy kidjeueycmayi,' said Stasu. Which meant, in our own vernacular, 'Take it easy.'"

Plexus, Henry Miller

the windup and pitch

Age of Summerhood (2013)

"With all the advantages of an American upbringing had I not (in my twenty-eighth year) been obliged to seek this lowest of all occupations? And was it not with extreme difficulty that I succeeded in earning sixteen or seventeen dollars a week? Soon I would be leaving this world to make my way as a writer, and as such I would become even more helpless than the lowliest of these immigrants.... 

... The strange thing was, I reflected, that most everybody I knew already considered me a writer, though I had done little to prove it. ...Everything, yes everything, was noted, analyzed, compared and described--for future use. Studying an object, a face, a facade, I studied it in the way it was to be written down (later) in a book, including the adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, parentheses and whatnot."

Plexus, Henry Miller

"the Carpathian Mountains moving up from under the moon"

Indecent Proposal (1993)

"'...One doesn't want appreciation...one wants a response. To tell you the truth, I don't know what I want of you, or anybody, for that matter. I want more than I get, that's all I know. I want you to step out of your skin. I want everybody to strip down, not just to the flesh, but the soul. Sometimes I get so hungry, so rapacious, that I could eat people up. I can't wait for them to tell me things... how they feel... what they want... and so on. I want to chew them alive... find out for myself... quick, all at once. Listen...'" 

Sexus, Henry Miller

16 ("grab a towel, she need it")

3 Women (1977)

ahrn ohral frhixation

"Talk is only a pretext for other, subtler forms of communication. When the latter are inoperative speech becomes dead. If two people are intent upon communicating with one another it doesn't matter in the least how bewildering the talk becomes. People who insist upon clarity and logic often fail in making themselves understood. They are always searching for a more perfect transmitter, deluded by the supposition that the mind is the only instrument for the exchange of thought. When one really begins to talk one delivers himself. Words are thrown about recklessly, not counted like pennies. One doesn't care about grammatical or factual errors, contradictions, lies and so on. One talks. If you are talking to someone who knows how to listen he understands perfectly, even though the words make no sense."

Sexus, Henry Miller 

14

Age of Summerhood (2013)

"There was no censor standing on her subliminal threshold; messengers came and went without the least formality."

Rocky III (1982)

Sexus, Henry Miller

"When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat--at least that is my experience. Then they either fail you utterly or they surpass themselves. ... when you are testing your powers, when you are trying to do something new, the best friend is apt to prove a traitor. The very way he wishes you luck, when you broach your chimerical ideas, is enough to dishearten you; the possibility that you are greater than you seem is disturbing, for friendship is founded on mutuality. It is almost a law that when a man embarks on a great adventure he must cut all ties. He must take himself off to the wilderness, and when he has wrestled it out with himself, he must return and choose a disciple. It doesn't matter how poor in quality the disciple may be: it matters only that he believe implicitly. For a germ to sprout, some other person, some one individual out of the crowd has to show faith."

Sexus, Henry Miller

"Cross, lasso, and arrow--former tools of a man, debased or exalted now to the status of symbols. Why should I marvel at them, when there is not a single thing on earth that oblivion does not erase or memory change, and when no one knows into what images he himself will be transmuted by the future."

"Mutations," Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges

Sunday 2.5.50

Marvin's Room (1996) 

"Robert's First Day to Sunday School.

He held the New Testament tightly in his left hand, see?"

"peace to him, you are not those you imagine."

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

"That's how I wanted it--I like privacy...my needs come first. Still, I have here and there talked a little about my life: My father was a grocer; my mother, who helped him, after a long illness, died young. I had a younger brother who lived a hard and lonely life and died in his fifties. My mother and father were gentle, honest, kindly people, and who they were and their affection for me to some degree made up for the cultural deprivation I felt as a child. They weren't educated, but their values were stable.... On the other hand, there were no books that I remember in the house, no records, music, pictures on the wall. On Sundays I listened to somebody's piano through the window. At nine I caught pneumonia..."

Malmud, Bernard. Interview by Daniel Stern. "The Art of Fiction No. 52," The Paris Review.

"It was on the table -- it was spoiling -- it was spoilt!"

"Mrs. Beever's excited mistrust dropped at the mere audacity of this: there was something perceptibly superior in the girl who could meet half way, so cleverly, a suspicion she was quite conscious of and much desired to dissipate. The lady of Eastman looked at her hard, reading her desire in the look she gave back. 'Trust me, trust me,' her eyes seemed to plead; 'don't at all events think me capable of any self-seeking that stupid or poor. I may be dangerous to myself, but I'm not so to others; least of all am I so to you.'"

The Other House, Henry James

Rocky (1976)

"'Patrodeman Madcuso. Uddercover.' A badge flashed in front of George's pimples. 'Cubb alogg wid me.'"

Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

"...judging by their moist edges, the jelly had been sucked."

Back to School (1986)

"If both your wrists were broken, how could you write me a letter?"

Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

DO NOT DISTURB

"'Ignatius, what's all this trash on the floor?' 

'That's my worldview that you see. It must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.'... 

'If I know it was like this, I'd been in here long ago.' 

'I don't know why you are here now, as a matter of fact, or why you have this sudden compulsion to invade my sanctuary. I doubt whether it will ever be the same after the trauma of this intrusion by an alien spirit.' 

'I came to talk to you, boy. Get your face out of them pillows.'"

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

the pulse

Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003) 

"Perhaps, if records still exist, one could trace resemblances here and there between the two histories, but my impression is that these are nowhere striking."

Goose of Hermogenes, Ithell Colquhoun

Mommie Dearest (1981)

"Certain ghosts feel little of that attraction of haunting which so powerfully influences many others, for these former leave upon the earth a physical manifestation in a human being. Sometimes this counterpart appears among their descendants; but when this is not so, another being is chosen and possessed, though perhaps this one is never wholly alien in a physical sense. The chosen one looks henceforth to the ghost as to an illustrious ancestor, and draws from it authority and inspiration. 

The chosen being may be singled out in various ways, either before or after the death of the possessor. It may happen that those two halves of Plato's sphere cannot join on earth, but must be parted by a dividing dimension before they can work as one, the earth too narrow to hold them. One of them has to die. They struggle to decide which is to be the victim, and at last one of them kills the other. The survivor acts in self-defence, and there are this many murders and suicides that go unrecognized by law. But this being feels, mixed with pain and remorse, a subtle triumph, for it knows that from now onwards it drinks life at a double spring. That very identity which separated it from its stirrer during the day, at night draws them together. They are undivided but working in a manner both hidden and expressed... I am not here any longer, I am dead, it is only my unhappy ghost... I am lying in a small graveyard at the edge of a thirsty plain, the dust is on my eyelids I cannot see, the earth is in my nostrils I cannot breathe, the pebbles are in my ears I cannot hear, the stones are at my feet I cannot move. We two have lain there a single corpse under rocky hills since the beginning of time, and one ghost is still walking, and one has ceased to walk."

Goose of Hermogenes, Ithell Colquhoun

the vow of stability

Days of Heaven (1978)

"So his was the classic Ellis Island story... it must have been extraordinary. He was a very unadventurous man; he didn't have a strong personality--he was timid. He still is a mystery to me. I wonder if he didn't burn himself out in this tremendous initial adventure, where it wasn't really too much for him, and once having a niche for himself somewhere, he just didn't have the guts to become much of a personality."

Gordimer, Nadine. Interview by Jannika Hurwitt. "The Art of Fiction No. 77," The Paris Review.

progress of the soul

Leon: the Professional (1994)

"Unvirtuous weeds might long unvex'd have stood; / But he's short-lived that with his death can do / most good."

"XVII." Progress of the Soul, John Donne

"I know that you're nauseous right now and I'm hopin' to lead you to victory"

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

"...the glass floor is insecure from a psychological point of view as well. To walk over a void is like walking on nothing. It gives the same sensation of dizziness and falling as that which is felt on top of a mountain or high tower. The depth has a magnetic effect -- it 'sucks' us downward -- a phenomenon indicating that depth, just as all other types of space, is a potential sphere of activity which we 'try out' by 'falling'. The transparent floor conveys, therefore, a spontaneous feeling of insecurity and danger."

"The Open Floor," Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen
"Swimming Pools (Drank)," Good Kid M.A.A.D City, Kendrick Lamar

break it up

3 Women (1977)

"The mirrored floor gives no main directional indication of space-- one finds oneself in its centre. But, this centre is not a specific place on the floor, rather it is like the centre of a 'sphere' in which all directions are equal.... On the mirror floor we find ourselves, therefore, in the middle of what is in principle a homogenous and directionless space.... 

... The reflecting floor is an 'indistinct' mirror floor.... The reflection creates a belowness, one which shifts between light and dark in that objects, cieling and walls are transformed and converted into diffuse forms as they are reflected downwards. The characteristic has a counter effect on objects above the floor. Objects are optically detached and freed from the floor on which they stand. They seem to stand only on their own shadows."

Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen

"...one of those deviations by which man thinks to reconstruct himself."

The Paper Chase (1973)

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

what shocks the system

There Will Be Blood (2008)

"'I began to mourn for my spirit, and the spirits of all people who cast a shadow a long way beyond what they are, and for the beasts that walk out of the darkness alone; I began to wail for all the little beasts in their mothers, who would have to step down and begin going decent in the one fur that would last them their time. ... 

...And then at the child -- there was terror in it and it was running away from something grown up; I saw that she was sitting still and she was running; it was in her eyes and in her chin, drawn down, and her eyes wide open.'"

"Watchman, What of the Night?" Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

drama queen, "a dealer in second-hand"

Mr. Mom (1983)

"'Shut up,... Shut up, you don't know what you are talking about. You talk all the time and you never know anything. It's such an awful weakness with you. Identifying yourself with God!'"

"The Squatter," Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

first, the burnout

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

"Two spirits were working in her, love and anonymity. Yet they were so 'haunted' of each other that separation was impossible."

"Night Watch," Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

"With the fury of a fanatic he hunted down his own disqualification..."

Rocky (1976)

"From the mingled passions that made up his past, out of a diversity of bloods, from the crux of a thousand impossible situations, Felix had become the accumulated and single--the embarrassed."

"Bow Down," Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

maybe tomorrow

The Big Chill (1983)

nothing fits

Wise Blood (1979) 

"If our actions take place below the ground, we become dependent on its characteristics, we are in the clutch of the ground. We are faced with primordial forces, the ground's own phenomena. To be beneath the ground means that we have left the near and familiar which is above the ground to enter into a lower region unknown and confining. The way in which the surface leads us down into the ground is, however, decisive for our impressions. If the surface cracks and breaks open, we 'fall'. The sensation of falling, of plunging through empty space is fraught with fear and danger. If, on the other hand, the earth sinks as in a trough, the ground follows long and we feel we are being 'guided' down."

"If the level of our actions is above the mass, our spontaneous reaction is one of independence. We are in control of the ground and liberated from the depths beneath. In this case a feeling of superiority may be the result. The scale of variations within this shared experience depends upon equally specific situations."

"Interplay in Nature's Floor," Archetypes in Architecture, Thomas Thiis-Evensen.

The Ace of Cups

The Paper Chase (1973)

"I will drink of it in order to live; I will not rely on myself and be lost... Weak as I am, I shall draw near, for it is not the healthy who need the physicians, but the sick." (St. Augustine)

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, "203: The Invitation to the Banquet"

"in my breast-meat there is a famine"

Grease 2 (1982)

"'I consecrate myself entirely to You; invade me, take me, possess me wholly. Be the penetrating light which illumines my intellect, the gentle motion which attracts and directs my will, the supernatural energy which gives energy to my body. Complete in me Your work of sanctification and love. Make me pure, transparent, simple, true, free, peaceful, gentle, calm, serene even in suffering, and burning with charity toward God and my neighbor.'" (Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.)

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, "189: The Descent of the Holy Spirit"

reserved for Hart

"When the contemplative life--considered as an assiduous seeking after union with God--is really fervent, it cannot fail to rekindle in the soul the burning fire of the apostolate. One who has experience, in an intimate contact with God, the ineffable reality of His love for men, cannot fail to burn with the desire to win all to that love."

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, "184: Mary's Apostolate"

farewell to the flesh

Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

"It is true, O Mary, that on the day of my baptism the Holy Spirit diffused His charity in me; but my self-love has halted its growth, and I who have so little love for my God, have likewise very little love for my neighbor. O most loving Mother, see how I need to have my heart dilated with charity! Stir up, then, and nourish that virtue in me and grant that, having given myself to the service of God, I may give myself to that of my neighbor, with kindness and humility, promptness and generosity."

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, "181: Mary and Fraternal Charity"

"It was easy indeed not to speak when the difficulty was to find words."

Chapter XV: Mexican Standoff

Chapter XVI: Two of Swords

Chapter V

Desert Hearts (1985)

"What had her whole life been but an effort toward completeness and perfection?"

Paper Moon (1973)

"What had taken place in her above all was that a long resentment had ripened. She hated the effacement to which English usage reduced the widowed mother; she had discoursed of it passionately to Fleda; contrasted it with the beautiful homage paid by other countries to women in that position, women no better than herself, whom she had seen acclaimed and enthroned, whom she had known and envied; made in short as little as possible a secret of the injury, the bitterness she found in it. The great wrong Owen had done her was not his 'taking up' with Mona--that was disgusting, but it was a detail, an accidental form; it was his failure from the first to understand what it was to have a mother at all, to appreciate the beauty and sanctity of the character. She was just his mother as his nose was just his nose, and he had never had the least imagination or tenderness or gallantry about her."

"With such a mother to give him the pitch how could he take it so low?"

The Spoils of Poynton, Henry James

showtime

Age of Summerhood (2013)

"Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to succeed."

The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

Sherman's "On the March"

Morning sun! Stiff brim!
On the county courthouse steps,
the beat reporter

waits for the story.
Sits down and dries out his flask.
Fingers his brim limp.

In court, on trial,
the bait from Park Avenue
pleads, "I'm so sorry!"

her hem full of staples

School Ties (1992)

An aged woman's
nude stocking rolled down her calf,
between knee and foot;

no ankle. Metal
and twelve year old yellowed foam
hold up her body.

Bull Durham, 1988

The lost Brady

all or nothing, less is more

Catherine Breillat's room

"'If there were more there would be too many to convey the impression in which half the beauty resides -- the impression somehow of something deemed and missed, something reduced, relinquished, resigned: the poetry, as it were, of something sensibly gone.' Fleda ingeniously and triumphantly worked it out."

The Spoils of Poynton, Henry James