- Nescaffier: Seeking something missing, missing something left behind.
- Roebuck Wright: Maybe with good luck, we'll find what eluded us in the places we once called home.
- Herbsaint Sazerac: Perhaps the doubtful old maxim speaks true: All grand beauties withhold their deepest secrets.
- Roebuck Wright: I admire your bravery, lieutenant.
- Nescaffier: I'm not brave. I just wasn't in the mood to be a disappointment to everybody. I'm a foreigner you know.
- Roebuck Wright: This city is full of us, isn't it? I'm one myself.
- Nescaffier: Seeking something missing. Missing something left behind.
- Talk Show Host: You've written about the American negro, the French intellectual, the Southern romantic...
- Roebuck Wright: And the anti-negro.
- Talk Show Host: The anti-negro. Scripture, mythology, folklore, true crime, false crime, the ghost story, the picaresque, the bildungsroman. But more than anything, over all these years, you've written about food. Why?
- Roebuck Wright: Who? What? Where? When? How? Valid questions, but I learned as a cub stringer, never, under any circumstance, if it is remotely within your power to resist the impulse, never ask a man why. It - it tightens a fellow up.
- Talk Show Host: I apologize, but I'm going to hold you to it...
- Roebuck Wright: Torture.
- Talk Show Host: ...if you'll agree.
- Roebuck Wright: Self-reflection is a vice best conducted in private or not at all.
- Roebuck Wright: There is a particular sad beauty... well-known to the companionless foreigner as he walks the streets of his adopted preferably moonlit, city. In my case, Ennui, France. I have so often... I have so often shared the day's glittering discoveries with no one at all. But always, somewhere along the avenue or the boulevard there was a table set for me. A cook, a waiter, a bottle, a glass, a fire. I chose this life. It is the solitary feast that has been very much like a comrade... my great comfort and fortification.
- Lucinda Krementz: [Lucinda Krementz on Zeffirelli] He is not an invincible comet, speeding on its guided arc toward the outer reaches of the galaxy in cosmic space-time. Rather, he is a boy who will die young. He will drown on this planet in the steady current of the deep, dirty, magnificent river that flows night and day through the veins and arteries of his own ancient city. His parents will receive a telephone call at midnight, dress briskly, mechanically, and hold hands in the silent taxi as they go to identify the body of their cold son. His likeness, mass-produced and shrink-wrap packaged, will be sold like bubblegum to the hero-inspired who hope to see themselves like this. The touching narcissism of the young.
- [Lucinda Krementz pulls a shower curtain back to reveal Zeffirelli in the bathtub with a towel wrapped around his head]
- Zeffirelli: [gasps] I'm naked, Ms. Krementz!
- Lucinda Krementz: I can see that.
- Roebuck Wright: You see, people may or may not be mildly threatened by your anger, your hatred, your pride. But, love the wrong way and you will find yourself in great jeopardy.
- [first lines]
- Narrator: It began as a holiday. Arthur Howitzer Jr., college freshman, eager to escape a bright future on the Great Plains, convinced his father, proprietor of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, to fund his transatlantic passage as an educational opportunity to learn the family business through the production of a series of travelogue columns to be published to local readers in the Sunday Picnic magazine.
- Herbsaint Sazerac: After receiving the host, marauding choir boys half-drunk on the blood of Christ stalk unwary pensioners and seek havoc.
- Zeffirelli: I said, "Don't criticize my manifesto." She said...
- Juliette: Take off your clothes.
- Zeffirelli: I feel shy about my new muscles.
- Zeffirelli: [speaking of Juliette] Her large, stupid eyes watched me pee. A thousand kisses later, will she still remember the taste of my tool on the tip of her tongue? Apologies, Mrs. Krementz. I know you despise crude language.
- Julian Cadazio: "Simone, Naked. Cell Block J. Hobby Room." I wanna buy it.
- Moses Rosenthaler: Why?
- Julian Cadazio: Because I like it.
- Moses Rosenthaler: It's not for sale.
- Julian Cadazio: Yes, it is.
- Moses Rosenthaler: No, it isn't.
- Julian Cadazio: Yes, it is.
- Moses Rosenthaler: No, it isn't.
- Julian Cadazio: Yes, it is.
- Moses Rosenthaler: No, it isn't.
- Julian Cadazio: It is. Yes, it is. All artists sell all their work. It's what makes you an artist. Selling it. If you don't wish to sell it, don't paint it. Question is, what's your price?
- Moses Rosenthaler: 50 cigarettes. Actually, make it 75.
- J.K.L. Berensen: The French Splatter-school Action group. A dynamic, talented, lusty, slovenly, alcoholic, violent pack of creative savages. They inspired, and very often personally attacked each other for two decades and more. I'll have my drink now. Remember, in those days, as you know, it was much more socially acceptable for a painter or a sculptor to hit another fellow with a chair or even a brick or walk around with a black eye or a broken tooth, and so on. Indeed, I'm jumping ahead, but in my own experience, Rosenthaler could be quite unpredictably impulsive. Uh, meaning, I refer to the, uh, pigment locker beneath his studio in the Boulevard de Plombiers, on one occasion, he grabbed me and put me in there, and inappropriately, sort of, tried to fuck me, against the wall in the corner of that pigment locker. He was crazy. Officially certified. The Cadazios, of course, represented them all.
- Roebuck Wright: I had arrived insufficiently early. Though the suite of rooms on the penultimate floor of the grand edifice was hypothetically indicated on a floorplan provided on the back of the carte de dégustation - - it was nigh impossible to locate. At least, for this reporter. A weakness in cartography: the curse of the homosexual.
- Zeffirelli: [in a note left for Mrs. Krementz] Recollection of two memories. You. Soap scent of drugstore shampoo, ashtray of stale cigarettes, burnt toast. Her. Perfume of cheap gasoline, coffee on the breath, too much sugar, cocoa butter skin. Where does she spend her summers? They say it's the smells you finally don't forget. The brain works that way.
- Chief Magistrate: Mr. Rosenthaler, why should we put you back on the street?
- Moses Rosenthaler: Because it was an accident, your honor. I didn't intend to kill anybody.
- Chief Magistrate: You decapitated two bartenders with a meat saw.
- Moses Rosenthaler: [after consulting with his lawyer] The first bartender was an accident. The second one was self-defense.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: "Rats, vermin, gigolos, streetwalkers." You don't think it's almost too seedy this time?
- Herbsaint Sazerac: No, I don't.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: For decent people.
- Herbsaint Sazerac: It's supposed to be charming.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: "Pick-pockets, dead bodies, prisons, urinals..." You don't want to add a flower shop?
- Herbsaint Sazerac: No, I don't
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Or an art museum? A pretty place of some kind?
- Herbsaint Sazerac: I hate flowers.
- Juliette: Tip-top is a commodity, represented by a record company, owned by a conglomerate, controlled by a bank, subsidized by a bureaucracy, sustaining the puppet leadership of a satellite stooge government. For every note he sings, a peasant must die in West Africa.
- Julian Cadazio: We have to accept it. His need to fail is more powerful than our strongest desires to help him succeed. I give up. He's defeated us.
- J.K.L. Berensen: [seeing a nude of herself in a kimono has ended up in her presentation] Good God. Wrong slide. That's me.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Shrink the masthead, cut some ads, and tell the foreman to buy more paper. We're not killing anybody.
- Lucinda Krementz: [to Juliette and Zeffirelli] Stop bickering. Go make love.
- Juliette: I'm a virgin.
- Zeffirelli: Me too. Except for Mrs. Krementz.
- Lucinda Krementz: I thought so.
- Talk Show Host: Someone told me you have a photographic memory. Is that true?
- Roebuck Wright: That is false. I have a typographic memory. I recollect the written word with considerable accuracy and detail. In other spheres, my powers of retention are distinctly impressionistic. I'm known to my intimates as a most forgetful man.
- Talk Show Host: Yet you remember every word you ever wrote.
- Roebuck Wright: Hmm.
- Talk Show Host: The novels, the essays, the poems, the plays...
- Roebuck Wright: The unrequited valentines. Sadly, I do.
- Julian Cadazio: How'd you learn to do it, by the way? Paint this kind of picture. Also, who'd you murder, and how crazy are you, really? I need background information so that we can do a book about you. It makes you more important. Who are you - Moses Rosenthaler?
- Moses Rosenthaler: I'm gonna need art supplies. Canvas, stretchers, brushes, turpentine.
- Simone: What do you want to paint?
- Moses Rosenthaler: The future. Which is you.
- Julian Cadazio: Don't growl at me, you convicted murderer. You homicidal, suicidal, psychopathic, no-talent drunk!
- Juliette: You believe I haven't informed myself properly? Or taken important matters seriously? I assure you, it's not the case.
- Lucinda Krementz: That was impolite - of me. I withdraw the remark.
- Juliette: If you wish.
- Lucinda Krementz: I beg your pardon.
- Juliette: Very well.
- Lucinda Krementz: I'm sorry.
- Juliette: Noted.
- Lucinda Krementz: Thank you. You're sure?
- Juliette: Of course. Sure about what?
- Lucinda Krementz: Sure you're not a child.
- Juliette: Quite sure.
- Lucinda Krementz: Then learn to accept an apology. That's important.
- Juliette: I don't object to you sleeping with him, Mrs. Krementz. We all have that freedom. It's a fundamental human right we fight for, in fact. What I object to is: I think you're in love with Zeffirelli! That's wrong. Or, at the very least, it's vulgar. You're an old maid!
- Lucinda Krementz: Kindly leave me my dignity.
- Zeffirelli: [to Juliette] She's not an old maid. She's not in love me. She's our friend. I'm her friend.
- [to Mrs. Krementz]
- Zeffirelli: She's confused.
- [to Juliette]
- Zeffirelli: She wants to help us.
- [to Mrs. Krementz]
- Zeffirelli: She's angry.
- [to Juliette]
- Zeffirelli: She's a very good writer.
- [to Mrs. Krementz]
- Zeffirelli: It's a lonely life, isn't it?
- Lucinda Krementz: Sometimes.
- Julian Cadazio: We're done with flowers and fruit bowls. We're finished with beaches and seascapes. We're getting out of armor, rugs, and tapestries, too. I found something new.
- [reveals Moses Rosenthaler's painting "Simone, Naked. Cell Block J. Hobby Room."]
- Uncle Nick: Modern art?
- Julian Cadazio: Modern art. Our specialty, starting now.
- Uncle Joe: I don't get it.
- Julian Cadazio: Of course you don't.
- Uncle Joe: Am I too old?
- Julian Cadazio: Of course you are.
- Uncle Nick: Why is this good?
- Julian Cadazio: It isn't good. Wrong idea.
- Uncle Joe: That's no answer.
- Julian Cadazio: My point. You see the girl in it?
- Uncle Nick, Uncle Joe: No.
- Julian Cadazio: Trust me, she's there.
- Alumna: Berensen's article. The Concrete Masterpiece.
- Proofreader: Three dangling participles, two split infinitives, and nine spelling errors in the first sentence alone.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Some of those are intentional.
- Copy Boy: A message from the foreman. One hour to press.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: You're fired.
- Copy Boy: Really?
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: Don't cry in my office.
- Alumna: Sazerac?
- Legal Advisor: Impossible to fact-check. He changes all the names and only writes about hobos, pimps, and junkies.
- Arthur Howitzer Jr.: These are his people.
- Moses Rosenthaler: Well, I've been here 3,647 days and nights. Another 14,603 to go. I drink 14 pints of mouthwash rations per week. At that rate, I think I'm going to poison myself to death before I ever get to see the world again, which makes me feel very sad. I gotta change my program. I gotta go in a new direction. Anything I can do to keep my hands busy, I'm gonna do. Otherwise, I think maybe it's gonna be a suicide. And that's why I signed up for clay pottery and basket weaving. My name is Moses.
- J.K.L. Berensen: Certain women do gravitate toward incarcerated men. It's a recognized condition. Something about the captivity of others enhances the experience of their *own* freedom. I assure you, it's erotic.
- Julian Cadazio: I don't want to buy this important piece for 50 cigarettes.
- Moses Rosenthaler: 75.
- Julian Cadazio: Or 75 of prison currency. I want to pay you 250,000 francs in legal French tender. Do we agree - on the sale? Uh-huh. I can only offer a deposit of, uh, 83 centimes, one candied chestnut, and four cigarettes. Everything I have at this present moment in time. However, if you'll accept my signatory voucher, I assure you a check for the outstanding balance will be remitted to your account within 90 days.
- Chief Magistrate: What demonstration of genuine remorse, or, at the very least, regret can you offer for beheading these men?
- Moses Rosenthaler: They had it coming.
- Julian Cadazio: "Simone, Naked. Cell Block J. Hobby Room." is probably a masterpiece worth a significant, even exorbitant, sum of money. But not yet.
- Uncle Nick: The desire must be created.
- J.K.L. Berensen: Rosenthaler continued to work in confinement. Strikingly, the artist favored raw materials sourced exclusively from within the prison-asylum domain. Powdered eggs. Pigeon blood. Shackle grease. Coal, cork, and dung. Fire, of course. Bright yellow scullery soap. And fresh cream of millet as a binding agent.
- J.K.L. Berensen: Simone liked to stand still. Indeed, she was Olympian in her ability to hold extremely challenging positions for extended periods of time. She exhibited very little vulnerability to extremes of heat or cold. After even the most adverse forms of exposure, her skin remained unburned, unblemished, un-goose-pimpled. Another tidbit. She genuinely enjoyed the smell of turpentine and in later years actually wore it in the application of her toilet. She was more than a muse.
- Zeffirelli: Every clique had a rival. The Nuts had the Bolts. The Sticks had the Stones. The Jocks had us, the Bookworms,
- Lucinda Krementz: The kids did this. Obliterated 1,000 years of Republican authority in less than a fortnight. How and why? Before it began, where did it begin?