The Autograph Man Quotes
"He deals in a shorthand of experience. The TV version. He is one of this generation who watch themselves."
"Marital rows, street riots, bar-room brawls - these seem to him now to be the great luxuries of modern life."
"When you subtract the rows what you are left with is love, a huge amount of it, leaking out of you."
"He can't risk the escalation. He simply doesn't have the time."
"The unholy trinity of Mountjoy life. It was vanity, surely, to assume that he had been singled out for something special."
"All the kids know that. Any fool can tell a story - can't they? - but how many can demonstrate one."
"Not everything in the world has to turn into the Tandem roadshow. You are not the world. There are other people in this film we call life."
"He was emotionally undeveloped, he supposed, like most Western kids. He was probably in denial of death. He was certainly suspicious of enlightenment. Above all, he liked to be entertained."
"He knew that in the wrestling match between possibly and probably that takes place inside every pineoblastoma, the probably wins nine times out of ten."
"He was still still slightly thrilled by the idea of receiving post addressed to him and not to his mother."
"The pills had a priapic side-effect. Each pair of feminine legs clipping past caused him agony."
"A woman who gives up her treasure with too much frequency is not coveted by men."
"Autograph collecting, as Alex is not the first to observe, shares much with woman-chasing and God-fearing."
"A Garbo autograph, even a bad one, is still worth about six thousand pounds."
"When a man hurries, the first things he forgets are his toothbrush and his God."
"Only thirty. You can quote all you like at thirty, but that's where it's got to end."
"This is the whole of the Kabbalah, Rabbi. This is not to be made light of."
"The thing about a delusion is if you allow it to continue, it develops, and then it can get very serious."
"THERE ARE TWO ASPECTS OF HASHEM, ALEX. HASHEM AS HE IS IN MANIFESTATION AND AS HE IS IN HIMSELF."
"IT'S LIKE THIS, THERE ARE TWO ASPECTS OF HASHEM, ALEX. HASHEM AS HE IS IN MANIFESTATION AND AS HE IS IN HIMSELF."
"WHEN THE WORLD WAS CREATED, HE ENTERED WITH HIS ORBS OF LIGHT; MADE FROM THE LETTERS, HE FILLED THE WORLD WITH HIMSELF."
"HE DID NOT EXIT FULLY. HE LEFT SHARDS OF HIMSELF... SPECKS OF LIGHT AND BITS."
"WE ACCRUE MERIT TO THE GODHEAD BY GOOD ACTIONS."
"ALL WOMEN ARE LIKE JUST SYMBOLS TO YOU? ALL YOU EVER..."
"I THINK BEAUTY, REAL BEAUTY, IS THE REALIZATION OF THE DIVINE ON EARTH."
"BEAUTY IN WOMEN IS THE REALIZATION OF THE DIVINE IN HUMAN LIFE."
"WHEN ALL OF LIFE'S TREASURES ARE GONE, IT ALONE WILL HELP A MAN ACROSS THE WATERS OF LIFE."
"YOU RUIN A PERFECTLY GOOD PAINTING OUT OF SOME MISPLACED CURIOSITY."
"YOU'RE ALWAYS THERE. SO INSTEAD THEY CUT THEIR LOSSES. THEY OPT FOR FOREVER."
"You're a Jew."
"You're a Buddhist."
"That's a chair."
"You're a Buddhist."
"That's a chair."
"Hey. Ohhh... You got no damn idea who I am. Am I right?"
"You're so full of questions - nothing else you wanna know?"
"I hate it, obviously I hate it. But it's weird. I hate, hate, hate it, and yet..."
"Every time, I feel sick. But the weird thing is, if nobody looks, I notice. I just notice - and I feel... I don't even know how to explain it. Like, out of focus. Fuzzy."
"You got a half million commuters looking at your you-know-what on a daily basis? People crashing their cars, people losing their lives? That's when you know you made it."
"I sucked this famous dick once - caused a whole lot of fuss - but I guess you heard that about, I mean, about that, today."
"Got any liquor? Actually, forget it. This is fine."
"And I'm saying I don't like onion ballads. Go sucker-bait somebody else."
"Got any glasses? Actually, forget it. This is fine."
"I'm sure the other guys have already told you, but the rules are, one, no touching any of the product, unless you're wearing gloves, which I can provide to you."
"Pictures are for entertainment. Messages should be delivered by Western Union."
"I thought I told you, you're off this damn case. You're too close to it, McLaine."
"I know, I know, you ain't got cooties, right?"
"It's not about what they could get, it's about what people'll do to be famous. It's about humiliation. That's nothing on Stepin Fetchit."
"People don't tell the truth. As if we pass easily from one to another. Youth to age. No - it is not true, one is yanked."
"For me it is too morbid. Graveyard of my friends."
"It is odd to me because I always believe I hate my father for marrying this woman, and now I spend my time and all of this money saving his things."
"You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead."
"Nature is fascista, the big bully is nature."
"It's just a name, It's not me. It doesn't take from me. It's just ink."
"If you were staying in town, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, don't you think?"
"The bottom line is there was something godly in it."
"The distinctions between coach and business class seemed to him worldly manifestations of the goyish conception of heaven."
"People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them."
"Living is the little that is left over from dying."
"Life is a negation already. It's pointless and vain to negate the negation."
"You draw a circle in the sand and you agree to stand in it and believe in it. It's faith, you idiot."
"Where were they? He became frustrated, treading the same paths again and again, knowing this was a dream, wanting to wake up."
"The men laughed when he said he couldn't read it."
"He awoke with a single breathy phoneme and the feeling he was going to die."
"You watch too many films is one of the great modern sentences."
"They were not. But they would be. All his people, all his loves."
"Everybody likes to talk about the first day of spring any more, it is seen as a wilful sentimentality on the part of nature."
"Life is going to do things to me. And that's all there is. And it's all good."
"It's not what I think you did. It's like the girl on the sofa - it's not what you did or didn't do. It's how I feel about it."