the palm beach story

50's hollywood teach you how to transform a blanket and pyjamas in a smart outfit in 1 take...

'if there's one thing i admire, it's a woman who can whip up something out of nothing''

claudette colbet  at preston sturges' the palm beach story

'often the hearts of men and women are stirred,

as likewise they are soothed in their sorrows more by example than by words. and therefore, because i too i have known some consolation from speech had with one who was a witness thereof, am i now minded to write of the sufferings which have sprung out of my misfortunes, for the eyes of one who, though absent, is of himself ever a consoler. this i do so that, in comparing your sorrows with mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of small account, and so shall you come to bear them more easily.'

peter abelard - foreword to historia calamitatum

listening to nicole

the amazing truffaut's la peau douce

'one of the principal functions of a friend

is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.'

brave new world

'they say i have to rewrite the opera

but it's perfect as it is! i can't rewrite what's perfect!'

i give up! i see no point in living if i can't be beautiful

if heaven is such a wonderful place

than how is getting crucified such a big fucking sacrifice?

'é que até minha sombra é inexorável,

morrer! morrer! soluça-me implacável.'

'I have forced myself to contradict myself

in order to avoid conforming to my own taste'

'A few months ago a strange thing happened

I was idling through my bookshelves when I noticed a book my brother had once given me for my birthday - a collection of short stories. Well, I started to reread one of those stories. It was about a man who one morning wakes up and cannot bring himself to get out of bed. He shuts his eyes in self-defense. He reexamines his life, he’s seized with a restlessness. He packs his bags, cuts all ties, he can no longer live among the people he knows. They paralyze him. He’s monied. He goes to Rome. He wants to burrow under the Earth like a bulb, like a root. But even in Rome he cannot escape people from his former life. So, he decides to return to the city where he was born and educated but which he can’t quite bring himself to call home. Well, the move doesn’t help. He feels he has no more right to return than a dead man. What can he do? He desires an extreme solution to his conundrum. He aches for nothing less than a new world, a new language. Nothing changes. Out of indifference - and because he can’t think of anything better to do - he decides once more to leave his hometown, to do some hitching. A man picks him up, they ride off into the night when BANG, the car smacks into a wall. The driver dies, our man is hospitalized, broken up. Months pass, his wounds heal. Now he wishes for life. He has a confidence in himself, in things he doesn’t have to explain, things like the pores in his skin - all things corporeal. He can’t wait to get out of the hospital, away from the infirm and the moribund. “I say unto thee, rise up and walk. None of your bones are broken.” The end. When I reread those words “Rise up and walk. None of your bones are broken” I felt a tremendous sadness. Do you know what the opening line of the story is? When a man enters his thirtieth year people will not stop calling him young. Thirty. I’d been given the book for my thirtieth birthday. “The Thirtieth Year” by Ingeborg Bachmann. So I had heard, I had been told, I knew all along even if I didn’t really know - the great true things are unsurprising. But what did I do back then? I carried on. I carried on dutifully. We were the happy couple, Elizabeth and I. That’s how people saw us. But in truth, I did not cherish my wife. And I did not cherish my friends or even my children. I just carried on. I was a success. I made my way. But with each step I cringed. I was on the backfoot, the defensive. And now, tonight, for the first time I say “my bones are broken.” Broken. One day I will need your help. All of my bones are broken.'

monologue from julia leigh's sleeping beauty

'i gave my beauty and my youth to men

i am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals'

'i'm not a beautiful woman

i'm nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else'

'como entender-me?

por que de início aquela cega integração?

e depois, a quase alegria da libertação? de que matéria sou

feita onde se entrelaçam mas não se fundem os elementos e a

base de mil outras vidas? sigo todos os caminhos e nenhum

deles é ainda o meu. fui moldada em tantas estátuas e ainda

não me imobilizei..'

'i see blue, i don't see red anymore,

nor yellow. this bothers me terribly because i know that these colors exist, because i know that there is red, yellow, a special green, a particular purple on my palette. i don't see them anymore as i used to see them in the past, and however i remember very well how it was like.'

'color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment'

l'orangerie's nymphéas room

'i had to come all the way from the highways and byways of tallahassee, florida to motor city, detroit to find my true love

if you gave me a million years to ponder, i would never have guessed that true romance and detroit would go together. and to this day, the events that followed all seem like a distant dream. but the dream was real and was to change our lives forever. i kept asking clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so shitty. and he'd say: 'that's the way it goes. but don't forget, it goes the other way too.' that's the way romance is. usually that's the way it goes. but every once in a while, it goes the other way too.'

'but why would I want to do a thing like that? i chose not to choose life

i chose somethin' else. and the reasons? there are no reasons. who needs reasons when you've got heroin?'

'i started being really proud of the fact that i was gay even though i wasn't'

jenny wren's lazy thoughts of a lazy girl

'i remember once when i was dining out and feeling very pleased with my tout ensemble, i was disillusioned in a way that upset not only my self-confidence but my gravity at the same time. to heighten the general effect, i had stuck a patch near my mouth. (oh, the minds of the last century! from whose fertile brain did it emanate, i wonder, the fact that a piece of black plaster on the should be so eminently becoming!) imagine my horror when the maid, an old servant i knew very well, took me aside and whispered confidentially, 'oh miss! you've got such a big smut on your chin!'

clothes are altogether a great nuisance, i think. how tired you get of the regular routine of the morning toilet; always the same, never any variety. why are we not born, like dogs, with nice cosy rugs all over us, so that we should just have to get out of bed in the morning, shake ourselves and be ready at once to go down to breakfast and do the business of the day?

'ah well! god knows what's best for us all,' as an old charwoman said to me, years ago, when she was remarking on how i had grown. i never saw the application of the remark and do not think i ever shall. whether my growth was a subject to deplore, and she tried to comfort me, or not, i cannot say; but she was evidently proud of the remark, for she repeated it three times!'