Imperial Bedrooms Quotes

...if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you.

What keeps me interested--and it always does--is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality?

That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers. That's how I became the boy who never understood how anything worked. That's how I became the boy who wouldn't save a friend. That's how I became the boy who couldn't love the girl.

Her need is so immense that you become surrounded by it; this need is so enormous that you realize you can actually control it, and I know this because I've done it before.

He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all.

This isn't a script," Julian says. "It's not going to add up. Not everything's going to come together in the third act.

A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.

Women aren't very bright," Rip says. "Studies have been done.

I'm thinking about the beautiful boy on the treadmill wearing the I STILL HAVE A DREAM T-shirt and realize that it might not have been ironic.

There are so many things Blair doesn’t get about me, so many things she ultimately overlooked, and things that she would never know, and there would always be a distance between us because there were too many shadows everywhere. Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away—I now want to explain all these things to her but I know I never will, the most important one being: I never liked anyone and I’m afraid of people.

Keep everything young and soft, keep everything on the surface, even with the knowledge that the surface fades and can't be held together forever - take advantage before the expiration date appears in the nearing distance.

... Because the writer resented that she had turned to me I became the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness. That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers. That's how I became the boy who never understood how anything worked. That's how I became the boy who wouldn't save a friend. That's how I became the boy who couldn't love the girl.

The movie was very different from the book in that there was nothing from the book in the movie. Despite everything — all the pain I felt, the betrayal — I couldn't help but recognize a truth while sitting in that screening room. In the book everything about me had happened. The book was something I simply couldn't disavow. The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.

Descansado," he tells me. "What does that mean?" "Descansado," Rip says. "It means 'take it easy,'" he whispers, clutching the child next to him. "Yeah?" "It means relax.

How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?" "You'll have to test me out." "You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it." "Rain," I say. "That's not your real name." "Does it matter?" "Well, it makes me wonder what else isn't real." "That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living." "And?" "And"-- she shrugs--"I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that.

The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.

The director mentions the whispers about Clifton's sexual orientation, a supposed gig on a porn site years ago, a rumor about a very famous actor and a tryst in Santa Barbara and Clifton's denial in a Rolling Stone cover story about the very famous actor's new movie which Clifton had a small part in: 'We're so into girls it's ridiculous.

When Blair bites her lower lip she’s eighteen again.

Some people at the party, she adds, are freaks, then mentions a drug I've never heard of, and tells me a story that involves ski masks, zombies, a van, chains, a secret community, and asks me about a Hispanic girl who disappeared in some desert.

I realize I have nothing to say to Trent Burroughs as I tell him, “I’ve been in New York the last four months.” New Age Christmas music fails to warm up the chilly vibe. I’m suddenly unsure about everything.

He wasn't, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us-- except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all. But there was no point in being angry with him.

The real Julian Wells didn't die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track.

Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.

In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. (I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-- jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room.

She immediately moves into me and says she is sorry and then she's guiding me toward the bedroom and this is the way I always wanted the scene to play out and then it does and it has to because it doesnt really work for me unless it happens like this.

Don't get smart or sarcastic He snaps back just like elastic Spare us the theatrics and the verbal gymnastics We break wise guys just like matchsticks

Nunca me ha gustado nadie y e da miedo la gente.

Siempre existe la posibilidad de que ocurra algo aterrador, y normalmente ocurre.

Cada día hay todo un ejército de retrasadas impacientes por ser deshonradas.

El silencio es una risa burlona. El silencio roba algo.

Is that your real name? Does it really matter? It makes me wonder what else is not real.

You seem happy. I'm almost afraid of how happy I am.

And it doesnt really matter if intelligence exists because it is really about the look, the idea of a girl like this, the promise of sex. It's all about the lure.

Later, as she's putting the dress back on, I notice a bruise on the side of her torso that I had'nt seen before. "Who did that to you" I ask. "Oh that" She says? "You did

La noria vacía se alza ante nosotros ucando pasamos por su lado, un círculo impreciso apenas visible en la bruma, y, si exceptuamos unos pescadores mexicanos, no hay nadie alrededor.

So many people died last year: the accidental overdose, the car wreck in East Hampton, the surprise illness. People just disappeared. I fall asleep to the music coming from the Abbey, a song from the past, “Hungry Like the Wolf,” rising faintly above the leaping chatter of the club, transporting me for one long moment into someone both young and old. Sadness: it’s everywhere.

I kiss her on the mouth. She looks around nervously. I watch her reflection in the BMW. "What's wrong?" I ask. "Not here", she says, but as if "not here" is the promise of somewhere better.

USA. The land of the free; where you accent didn’t matter. But he supposed everybody related to it; movies, TV, fat-food, outlets, you grew up with it. Cultural imperialism. Yet no wonder everybody increasingly hated it: it was stupid, self-serving and so in-your-face that it was setting itself up to be despised

She said that you--" "I don't care what she said." I stand up. "Everyone lies." "Hey," he says softly. "It's just a code." "No. Everyone lies." I stub the cigarette out. "It's just another language you have to learn." Then he delicately adds, "I think you need some coffee, dude." Pause. "Why are you so angry?

(...) estaba tan por encima de la ciudad que tenías la impresión de contemplar un mundo enorme y abandonado que se extendía en cuadrículas anónimas, una vista que confirmaba que estabas mucho más solo de lo que creías.

Me mira fijamente, y la mirada que le devuelvo es el principio de todo, y me imagino el futuro: "¿Por qué me odias?", imagino que dice la voz angustiada de una chica. "¿Qué te he hecho?, imagino que grita otra persona.

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away.

What is this bullshit—it is what it is?

What keeps me interested—and it always does—is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality? This is where the suspense of it all usually lies.

It's basically a joke." "I think it's cool," Julian says. "It's all about control, right?" He considers something. "It's not a joke. You should take it seriously. I mean, you're also one of the producers--" I cut him off. "Why have you been tracking this?" "It's a big deal and--" "Julian, it's a movie," I say. "Why have you been tracking this? It's just another movie." "Maybe for you." "What does that mean?" "Maybe for others it's something else," Julian says. "Something more meaningful." "I get where you're coming from, but there's a vampire in it.

The audience-- the book's actual cast-- quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material-- surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality-- had to be reshaped.

¿Qué es lo peor que te ha pasado, Jimmy?", lee fuera de cuadro alguien que hace el papel de una chica llamada Claire. "El amor incondicional", responde el chico, y el personaje de Jimmy se vuelve con fingida vergüenza, pero el chico lee mal la frase, poniendo el énfasis donde no toca, sonriendo cuando debería haberse puesto totalmente serio, convirtiéndolo en el remate de un chiste cuando nunca lo ha sido.

At the casting sessions it was all boys and though I wasn’t exactly bored I didn’t need to be there, and songs constantly floating in the car keep commenting on everything neutral encased within the windshield’s frame ( … one time you were blowing young ruffians … sung over the digital billboard on Sunset advertising the new Pixar movie) and the fear builds into a muted fury and then has no choice but to melt away into a simple and addictive sadness.

Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away...

Those minutes were the beginning of his abandoning himself to a very strange kind of devotion, such a reeling, intoxicated sensation that the proud and portentous word ‘love’ is not quite right for it. It was that faithful, dog-like devotion without desire that those in mid-life seldom feel, and is known only to the very young and the very old. A love devoid of any deliberation, not thinking but only dreaming. He entirely forgot the unjust yet ineradicable disdain that even the clever and considerate show to those who wear a waiter’s tailcoat, he did not look for opportunities and chance meetings, but nurtured this strange affection in his blood until its secret fervour was beyond all mockery and criticism. His love was not a matter of secret winks and lurking glances, the sudden boldness of audacious gestures, the senseless ardour of salivating lips and trembling hands; it was quiet toil, the performance of those small services that are all the more sacred and sublime in their humility because they are intended to go unnoticed. After the evening meal he smoothed out the crumpled folds of the tablecloth where she had been sitting with tender, caressing fingers, as one would stroke a beloved woman’s soft hands at rest; he adjusted everything close to her with devout symmetry, as if he were preparing it for a special occasion. He carefully carried the glasses that her lips had touched up to his own small, musty attic bedroom, and watched them sparkle like precious jewellery by night when the moonlight streamed in. He was always to be found in some corner, secretly attentive to her as she strolled and walked about. He drank in what she said as you might relish a sweet, fragrantly intoxicating wine on the tongue, and responded to every one of her words and orders as eagerly as children run to catch a ball flying through the air. So his intoxicated soul brought an ever-changing , rich glow into his dull, ordinary life. The wise folly of clothing the whole experience in the cold, destructive words of reality was an idea that never entered his mind: the poor waiter François was in love with an exotic Baroness who would be for ever unattainable. For he did not think of her as reality, but as something very distant, very high above him, sufficient in its mere reflection of life. He loved the imperious pride of her orders, the commanding arch of her black eyebrows that almost touched one another, the wilful lines around her small mouth, the confident grace of her bearing. Subservience seemed to him quite natural, and he felt the humiliating intimacy of menial labour as good fortune, because it enabled him to step so often into the magic circle that surrounded her.

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

You’re too arrogant for your own good,” Galien accused him defensively. “The man is an imperial wizard. What he is capable of is beyond your comprehension. For all we know, he may have been visiting her in the form of a butterfly in the garden or a moth that entered her bedroom window each night. We had to be sure.” “A butterfly?” Saldur said, genuinely amazed. “He’s a wizard. Damn you. That’s what they do.” “I highly doubt—” “The point is we didn’t know for sure.

The presence of a lararium in the bedroom of emperors (Suet., Aug., 7, 2; Dom., 17, 5; see SHA, AS, 29, 2) suggests that morning prayers were said there.

The presence of lararia in some bedrooms gives reason to suppose that before going to sleep prayers were again offered to the gods. An idol of Fortuna (SHA, AP, 12, 5; S, 23, 5) watched over the sleep of the emperors. In his bedroom, Augustus also had a portrait of his great-grandson as Cupid, on which he would bestow a kiss each night when he entered (Suet., Cal., 7).

There can be no liberation of women without a complete transformation of the way that male sexuality is constructed. Whilst the eroticising of women's subordination remains the basis of what is seen as sex, women cannot escape coercion in the bedroom, sexual harassment on the streets and at work, and the requirement to service men's excitements in the way they dress and behave. Women's appearance, behaviour, body language, opportunities are shaped by this 'duty'.