Alexander: I doubt anyone with an IQ that qualifies them as even marginally better than brain dead could find happiness in the Côte d’Azur.
love
Two friends, on loving once.
Nino: I should not have hesitated with you.
Cecily: We weren’t right to be together forever. You know it. But we will always be something special. You know that too.
Nino: What do you think could have been wrong?
Cecily: We’re maybe both butterflies. And we seek plants to settle with. Not other butterflies.
Cecily, a Christmas story.
Charles, to Cecily.
Charles: You are like one of Ayn Rand’s protagonists: a self-interested person that must be unsentimental toward those that rely on you. They need you for their joy. You produce, they consume. Don’t forget that.
Cecily, on expectations.
Cecily: I crumble when people expect too much from me romantically. But then, to an extent, I expect much of them. And the symmetry cripples us both, until all we can do is make out at the movies and try to forget we can’t really make eye contact for fear of not being or being in love.
Two friends, on wives.
Karim: I’m flying back to Riyadh for a couple of weeks.
Cecily: Bring me a wife?… That may have come off as culturally conflationary, but I generally ask for wives when my friends travel.
Two friends, on monogamy.
Cecily: I had a massive panic attack the other day because I haven’t dealt with monogamy in such a very long time.
Alexander: Maybe try and brainwash them just enough to start a polyamorous cult of mutually aware men who are in love with you?
Cecily: I did that over summer.
Two friends, on relationships.
Cecily: I just agreed to a one hundred percent monogamous, committed relationship.
Christian: For the weekend?
Alexander, on Cecily’s new lover.
Alexander: Your new lover looks like an off-brand, Pan-European Oscar Wilde.
Maurice, on Cecily’s love life.
Maurice: I think you have so many men because one deceived you, and you’re taking vengeance on the others.