Alexander: I keep reexamining the words of old authors I love in the hope of finding some semblance of clarity and comfort in their familiarity; yet it’s all for naught, and my ongoing stare-down with the Void has become more treacherous than ever.
relationships
Efraim, on being Jewish at airport border control.
Efraim: You took away my state; don’t take away my nose-hair scissors.
Two Italians, on harems.
Carlo: Nicolas, you should have a harem of men like Cecily.
Nicolas: No. I have one woman per night and then she leaves.
Carlo: But really, that’s a kind of harem.
Nicolas: It’s not! I don’t ever intend to keep my women.
Two friends, on escalators.
Charles: There is something very soothing about this escalator.
Cecily: At the end of a tough day, do you go up and down it and feel like you’re in a narrow, metallic womb? And is Freud’s escalator anything like Schrödinger’s box?
Charles: Well it’s certainly a space where there is only one logical direction and no choice. I think you’d quite benefit from Freud-Shrödinger’s escalator.
Two friends, on shirking identity.
Charles: I do not want to be Charles anymore.
Cecily: Charles has light and shade. Sometimes he’s so dryly drôle, at other times wracked with deep malaise, at other times, he simply makes dad jokes. You’re a universe. Don’t deny the world your universe. What does it matter if being Charles hurts you a little? You don’t keep long-term friendships anyway.
Two friends, on denouement.
Cecily: I’m hungry all the time. I don’t know why. I want a big bowl of pasta.
Charles: Please don’t be with child. Movies end with marriage and childbirth because nothing happens thereafter.
Charles, on greeting cards.
Charles: Being a lawyer is a waste of my life. Honestly, I have always just wanted to design and write greeting cards. I don’t have enough wit to sustain anything else.
Two friends, on endings.
Charles: I live a double life at best. When, where, and how does it all end? Do I walk into work one day and they’ll all have realised I’m not the person they always thought me to be?
Cecily: You already know your end. It’s preordained. Every moment of your life you have respired as Don Draper, and now you’re questioning whether your writers are going to spontaneously change your course? Hold their hands and walk into that ocean my friend. Buy the world a Coke.
Charles: I want a new story.
Cecily: So did Don. Escape is futile.
Two friends, on an orchestra.
Cecily: Yves went to inform his music teacher that he’s staying in Paris so he can be with me forever, instead of joining the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Charles: You have a responsibility to the global art world. Just drug him and put him on the Eurostar.
Two friends, on the balm of wine.
Charles: Paris has given me an unshakeable malaise.
Cecily: You need a tasting flight and some fromage, tout de suite.
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