Raj: That was my superplan as a kid. To terraform Venus.

Cecily: Mine was to make a good spaghetti Bolognese.

Sitting near a falafel stand…

Cecily: There are no good drinks here.
Raj: What did you expect?
Cecily: Something artisanal.

Cecily: Lust is fuel for the artist.

Carlo: What is lust? Don’t you mean love?

Cecily: Love is a different thing, that makes one throw oneself from the battlements and abandon all hope. I need to be more restrained than that, if I wish to preserve my life until I create my legacy.

Cecily: I am in love, but I cannot be. He left me once. He returned unceremoniously, and I welcomed him back stupidly. Because this is the meaning of love. It’s a fear and punishment matrix.

Alexander: If you’re wanting to lament your fear and punishment matrix you’re barking up the wrong tree. My last six months has been a hellscape of stratagems, cheating, polyamory, passive aggression, and twenty year-old gay hormones.

Cecily: It was a stunning realisation, that day I started preferring loneliness to you.

Arnaud: You can steal everything – our economy, our culture, even our power. But not our cèpes.

Cecily: My voice is not as bad as yours.

Nicolas: No, but you are loud.

Cecily: He is wildly wealthy. I am going to have to buy him 18th century furniture for his birthday.

Alexander: I feel like I am absolutely drowning in malaise.

Cecily: The moment you let go and realise the world is a hideous soup of continuous happenstance, your life will get better. You have no life-brewing cooking pot, and even if you did, it would be full of vices.

Cecily: Why won’t he cherish me like the others do?

Alexander: Perhaps he is more aware of your wash of falsities and pretence than the others are (no judgement, I am much the same).