Griffin Dunne Quotes

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. —

who had finally made her an honest woman.

At the moment when Mrs. Griffin had been notified of her husband’s death, she was in bed with her lover at the Hotel del Coronado in California, and took the news that she was a widow rather well. She untwined herself from the arms of Admiral Paul Henry Bastedo who served under Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, and proposed they get married in the morning so he could be her date at her late husband’s funeral. To the tabloids’ delight, the newlyweds took Helen Prindeville Griffin Bastedo’s private railway car to Lake Forest, Illinois, to attend the service. The act so outraged the Griffin family that they used their juice with Union Pacific to divert the train and the unlucky passengers coupled to Helen’s private car. The train choo-chooed deep into Wisconsin, denying the newlyweds their grand entrance to the funeral.

My fragile identity at that time was tied to a father who couldn’t throw to third and gave me two French poodles named after famous homosexuals. What I secretly longed for was to have a father like my hotheaded uncle. It took me many years to understand what it meant to be a man, and by then I realized I’d been raised by one all along.

Her detachment from my feelings was an early symptom of MS, one that over the coming years would extend to her friends, making communication so impossible they stopped coming by. But at that moment, she at least still had a sense of humor, and even though I was a little hurt, I laughed at her droll comment and never mentioned my letters again.