- Joey: Mother, is that you? You shouldn't be here, not tonight. I'll take you home. You look so strange and tired. I feel like we're in a dream together. Please don't look so sad. It makes me feel so guilty, so consumed with guilt. It's ironic, because I've cared for you so, and you have nothing but disdain for me, and yet I feel guilty. I think you're really too perfect to live in this world. I mean, all the beautifully furnished rooms, carefully designed interiors, everything's so controlled. There wasn't any room for any real feelings. None, between any of us. Except Renata, who never gave you the time of day. You worship Renata. You worship talent. Well, what happens to those of us who can't create? What do we do? What do *I* do when I'm overwhelmed with feelings about life? How do I get them out? I feel such rage toward you! Oh mother, don't you see, you're not just a sick woman. That would be too easy. The truth is, there's been perverseness, and willfulness of attitude in many of the things you've done. At the center of a sick psyche there is a sick spirit. But, I love you. And we have no other choice, but to forgive each other.
- Joey: I feel the need to express something, but I don't know what it is I want to express. Or how to express it.
- Renata: We never see Marion and Gail. I don't understand. You used to like them!
- Frederick: I can't stand them. They're so enthusiastic. College kids. I get embarrassed!
- Renata: Oh, well, don't get embarrassed. Don't come. Stay home, drink yourself unconscious. That's one of the cliches of being a novelist you've had no problem with.
- Frederick: Yeah, I sure can drink.
- Pearl: First time I went to Europe with my first husband, many years ago, all we saw was churches, one cathedral after another. Don't misunderstand. They were beautiful. But so you see two or three, then enough already.
- Pearl: Give me a good sirloin anytime. Charcoaled. They talk about club steaks and porterhouse. Sirloin, charcoaled and blood-rare.
- Renata: Do you have any children, Pearl?
- Pearl: Oh, yes. I have two sons. Lewis and John. Lewis is in real estate. John runs an art gallery.
- Renata: Oh?
- Pearl: In the lobby in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. It's not exactly a gallery. It's more - a concession.
- Joey: Paintings of clowns on black velvet?
- Pearl: That's right. Junk. Oh, I tell you, it's pure junk. But people like it. They get a kick out of it. He does very nicely.
- Mike: Basic popularity and appeal of Mao for so-called American Marxists. This is supposed to go in under the sequence in reel two about South Africa. What we want to do is get to examples. But the idea is, Mao's style was Marxist-Leninist, but that he was accessible to the lower classes because of his use of homilies. The example would be, "The hardest thing is to act properly throughout one's whole life." What the hell does that mean?
- [first lines]
- Arthur: I had dropped out of law school when I met Eve. She was very beautiful, very pale and cool in her black dress with never anything more than a single strand of pearls. And distant. Always poised and distant. At the time the girls were born it was all so perfect, so ordered. Looking back, of course, it was rigid. The truth is she created a world around us that we existed in, where everything had its place, where there was always a kind of harmony. Great dignity. I will say, it was like an ice palace. Then suddenly one day, out of nowhere, an enormous abyss opened up beneath our feet and I was staring into a face I didn't recognize.
- Renata: I can't seem to shake the real implication of dying. It's terrifying. The intimacy of it embarrasses me.
- Renata: I look in the mirror every day and I feel discouraged. Now I see you, and you don't change at all.
- [Flyn laughs]
- Renata: No, you don't change! Your skin is like cream. Look at your skin. I'm so envious.
- Flyn: I work at it.
- Renata: No, I don't think that's it.
- Flyn: I have a few good years, then my youth will be frozen on old celluloid for TV movies.
- Renata: Have you spoken with Mother?
- Flyn: Oh, yes. We're having dinner one night this week. How's she holding up?
- Renata: I don't know. Better than we all expected. Isn't that right, Joey?
- Joey: She took it very badly at first, but after the initial shock she seemed to come out of it.
- Renata: Joey feels that all of her Jesus Christ nonsense is actually somewhat of a help.
- Flyn: Well, whatever works.
- Renata: My impotence set in a year ago. My paralysis. I suddenly found I couldn't bring myself to write anymore. I shouldn't say "suddenly." Actually, it started happening last winter. Increasing thoughts about death just seemed to come over me. These... A preoccupation with my own mortality. These feelings of futility in relation to my work. Just what am I striving to create, anyway? To what end? For what purpose, what goal? I mean, do I really care if some of my poems are read after I'm gone forever?
- Frederick: I'm not in the mood for your lesbian friends and a lot of vacuous gossip about New York poetesses.
- Frederick: Flyn suffers from the same thing my last book suffered from. She's a perfect example of form without any content.
- Renata: That's very profound. You haven't even started drinking yet.
- Frederick: Yeah, I am profound. And I'm not the award-winning writer. You're the one who's supposed to be giving me insights into sex and other world-shattering phenomenon.
- Frederick: I did a terrible thing last week. I wrote about this friend's book. Not a very good book. And I pointed that out, which is what I was getting paid to do. But I was extremely cruel about it - and I took great pleasure in my cruelty. My anger scares me. I don't like what I'm becoming.
- Renata: Do I really care if a handful of my poems are read after I'm gone forever? Is that supposed to be some sort of compensation?
- Pearl: I prefer a warmer climate. I even lived in Australia for a year with my sister Faye, when Adam died, but I went nuts! It's dead there.
- Mike: I was in Sydney, Australia, once.
- Pearl: Was I lying? Did you like it?
- Mike: Well it was just a vacation you know. I was only there a coupla days.
- Pearl: Lucky. It's like a morgue. Nothing to do at night; no pizzazz. I couldn't take that.
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