"'My friend,' he advised once more, 'became a good independent country dweller, worthy and educated, rather than a priest without a vocation.'"

The Red and the Black, Stendhal (M-H B)

("For he was not a quixote, was he? A quixote imitated great models. What models did he imitate?")

Belly of an Architect (1987)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"...Moses, in his slightly dazed but intense way, unable to restrain associations, wondered whether she still gave off those odors of feminine secretions..."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

Belly of an Architect (1987)

"Whatever had come over him during these last months, the spell, really seemed to passing, really going. ... At this time he had no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"'Oh, Lord, let no bad man come unto my chubbiness.'"

Rocky II (1979)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"And anyway he was growing tired of his obsession."

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

Cronos (1993)

"That was hardly a joke. When a man's breast feels like a cage from which all the dark birds have flown--he is free, he is light. And he longs to have his vultures back again. He wants his customary struggles, his nameless, empty works, his anger, his afflictions and his sins."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"The antagonism, as Mama felt it, was mystical -- a matter of souls."

The Paper Chase (1973)

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"Napoleon Street, rotten, toylike, crazy and filthy, riddled, flogged with harsh weather--the bootlegger's boys reciting ancient prayers."

"Herzog was thinking, however, how she found the strength to spoil her children. She certainly spoiled me. Once, at nightfall, she was pulling me on the sled, over crusty ice, the tiny glitter of snow, perhaps four o'clock of a short day in January. Near the grocery we met an old baba in a shawl who said, 'Why are you pulling him, daughter!' Mama, dark under the eyes. Her slender cold face. She was breathing hard. She wore the torn seal coat and a red pointed wool cap and thin button boots. Clusters of dry fish hung in the shop, a rancid sugar smell, cheese, soap--a terrible dust of nutrition came from the open door. The bell on a coil of wire was bobbing, ringing. 'Daughter, don't sacrifice your strength to children,' said the shawled crone in the freezing dusk of the street. I wouldn't get off the sled. I pretended not to understand. One of life's hardest jobs, to make quick understanding slow. I think I succeeded, thought Herzog."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"A year of work saved the house from collapse."

Cronos (1993)

"And to truth. And truth is true only as it brings down more disgrace and dreariness upon human beings, so that if it shows anything except evil it is illusion, and not truth. But of course he, Herzog, predictably breaking such trends, had characteristically, obstinately, defiantly, blindly but without sufficient courage or intelligence tried to be a marvelous Herzog, a Herzog who, perhaps clumsily, tried to live out marvelous qualities vaguely comprehended. Granted he had gone too far, beyond his talents and his powers, but this was the cruel difficulty of a man who had strong impulses, even faith, but lacked clear ideas."

Herzog, Saul Bellows

"All you needed was a train ride. It has turned the trick."

The Conversation (1974)

Herzog, Saul Bellow

"Just cling to the status quo and avoid leaps in the dark?"

She-Devil (1989)

"Every sod seemed to exude a yearning for beauty soon muted by languor."

The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa

"Only then did she dress herself in herself..."

Gird me, O Lord, with the cincture of justice and the cord of purity that I may unite the many affections of my heart in the love of you alone. Amen.

Dominican Rite Vesting Prayers

I don't recognize
the old pool of images.
(How else can I say?)

"'Ah, ne touchay pas. C'est dangeray.'"

Rain Man (1988)

"Then he realized suddenly that Ramona had made herself into a sort of sexual professional (or priestess). He was used to dealing with vile amateurs lately. I didn't know that I could make out with a true sack artist. 

But is that the secret goal of my vague pilgrimage?..."

Herzog, Saul Bellow

"Swingers" The Wonder Years (1988 TV)

"The square shapes were vivid, not inert, they gave him a sense of fateful motion, almost intimacy. Somehow he felt himself part of it all--in the rooms, in the stores, cellars--and at the same time he sensed the danger of these multiple excitements. But he'd be all right. He was overstimulated. He had to calm down these overstrained galloping nerves, put out this murky fire inside."

Herzog, Saul Bellow

"Late in spring Herzog had been overcome by the need to explain, to have it out, to justify, to put in perspective, to clarify, to make amends."

Pumpkin (2002)

"Considering his entire life, he realized that he had mismanaged everything--everything. His life was, as the phrase goes, ruined. But since it had not been much to begin with, there was not much to grieve about. ... 

... He went on taking stock, lying face down on the sofa. Was he a clever man or an idiot? Well, he could not at this time claim to be clever. He might once have had the makings of a clever character, but he had chosen to be dreamy instead, and the sharpies cleaned him out. What more?..." 

Herzog, Saul Bellow

"He looked keenly at everything but he felt half blind."

Barfly (1987)

Herzog, Saul Bellow

"... even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't."

"Concetta withdrew into her room; she felt no emotion whatsoever; she seemed to be living in a world known to her yet strange, which had already ceded all the impulses it could give her and now consisted only of pure forms. The portrait of her father was just a few square inches of canvas; the green cases were just a few square yards of wood. ... Still she could feel nothing; the inner emptiness was complete; but she did sense an unpleasant atmosphere emanating from the heap of fur. That was today's distress: even poor Bendicò was hinting at bitter memories. She rang the bell. 'Annetta,' she said, 'this dog has really become too moth-eaten and dusty. Take it out and throw it away.' 

As the carcass was dragged off, the glass eyes stared at her with the humble reproach of things that are thrown away, that are being annulled. A few minutes later what remained of Bendicò was flung into a corner of the courtyard visited every day by the dustman. During the flight down from the window the form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air one could have seen dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, and its right foreleg seemed to be raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust."

The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Bowfinger (1999)

The Onion Field (1979) 

"This was one of those rooms (so numerous that one might be tempted to say it of all rooms) which have two faces, one with a mask they show to ignorant visitors, the other which is revealed only to those in the know, the owner in particular, to whom they are made manifest in all their squalid essence."

The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa

"you're like that whip there, you're used for the same ends."

"... in the secret apartment but in the venerated one called the Apartment of Saint-Duke, where in the middle of the seventeenth century a Salina had withdrawn as if into a private monastery, there to do penance and prepare his own journey toward heaven. They were small low rooms, with floors of humble brick, whitewashed walls, like those of the poorest peasants. The last of these opened on to a balcony which overlooked the yellow expanse of estate after estate, all immersed in sad light. On one wall was a huge crucifix, more than life-sized; the head of the martyred God touched the ceiling, the bleeding feet grazed the floor; the wound in the ribs seemed like a mouth prevented by brutality from pronouncing the words of ultimate salvation. Next to the Divine Body there hung from a nail a lash with a short handle, from which dangled six strips of now-hardened leather ending in six lumps of lead as big as walnuts. This was the 'discipline' of the Saint-Duke. ... 'There,' said Tancredi, 'you're like that whip there, you're used for the same ends.'" 

The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa

The King of Glory comes, the nation rejoices! Open the gates before him, lift up your voices!

The Blues Brothers (1980)

ancestral pant-shitters (the brothers Blues)

"The paradoxical result of all these separate but convergent

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resolutions was that at dinner in the evening the pair most in love were the calmest, reposing on their illusory good intentions for next day..."

The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa