Ira Levin Quotes

Anyone who needs more than one suitcase is a tourist, not a traveler

Like so many unhappinesses, this one had begun with silence in the place of honest open talk.

Being happy or unhappy - is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness - a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.

You're not going to get any true confessions out of me," she said. "I'm a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject.

What’s the going price for a stay-in-the-kitchen wife with big boobs and no demands?

That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

You are only partly alive.

They never stop, these Stepford wives. They something something all their lives. Work like robots. Yes, that would fit. They work like robots all their lives.

Someday, he thought, I would like to meet a monster who looked like a monster.

could anyone know when an actor was true and not acting?

A chance to sit quietly and find out who you are; where you've been and where you're going.

Sex, yes; sexism, no.

When you're older you'll come to realize that acts of kindness are few and far between in this world of ours.

Anyone who needs more than one suitcase,” he said as he double-locked their door, “is a tourist, not a traveler.

Better to live in doubt than to die in certainty.

Bread now, or cake later

What we are probably given is a mixture of truth and untruth. It's anybody's guess as to which part is which and how much there is of each.

A false-hearted lover is worse than a thief. For a thief will just rob you and take what you have, But a false-hearted lover will lead you to the grave. And the grave will decay you and turn you to dust; Not one boy in a hundred a poor girl can trust.

The baby kicked like a demon

philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

That green stuff outside is grass, and the yellow stuff coming down on it is sunshine.

They were confident and cunning. They weren't mucking around looking for nuclear weapon secret sloppy seconds in America. They could care less about America. They were busy with the whole world domination thing.

They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt,” he said. “And you haven’t been, really. I mean, suppose you’d had a baby and lost it; wouldn’t it be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.

Les gens qui ont besoin de plus qu une valise ne sont pas de vrais voyageurs, ce sont des touristes.

Did you lose the game? Losing’s the same as winning; you know that, don’t you?” The

The thing to do was kill it. Obviously.

One great difference between good writing, that readers overlook, and bad writing, that they fail to notice, has to do with the number of rewrites and revisions usually required by the former. It isn’t at all easy to write clear, declarative prose—transparency evolves from ruthless cutting and trimming and is hard work—while lumpy, tangle-footed writing flows from the pen as if inspired by the Muse.

Today the combat takes a different shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavors to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence. Now the attitude of the males creates a new conflict: it is with a bad grace that the man lets her go.

Joanna's period was late but came, thank God and the Pill.

No, thanks, we’re not keen on cat pix.

I’d like to have a spice garden some day,” Rosemary said. “Out of the city, of course. If Guy ever gets a movie offer we’re going to grab it and go live in Los Angeles. I’m a country girl at heart.

Some day, he thought, I would like to meet a monster who LOOKS like a monster.

—Todo aquel que necesita más de una maleta —dijo mientras cerraba con dos vueltas de llave la puerta de su apartamento— es un turista, no un viajero.

They gave Mrs. Cortez a check for five hundred and eighty-three dollars—a month’s rent in advance and a month’s rent as security—

The garlic bread!’ Rosemary cried.

It is a paradox that the more egalitarian society becomes, the more important an individual’s genes will be. Where opportunity is completely open – should a child’s background ever become entirely irrelevant in their attainment – innate advantages will still create division.

I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions, and the people to follow the Hitler. And don't you think he'd find them? No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference.

The egocentricity which motivated it was not that of the spoiled, but of the too little spoiled; the lonely. Had she been an artist she would have painted a self-portrait; instead she decorated two rooms, charging them with objects which some visitor, some day, would recognize and understand. And through that understanding he would divine all the capacities and longings she had found in herself and was unable to communicate.

This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I’ve stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice. Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I’d paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people… And then I’d tell you, “Now get off my porch.” But if you came back to me a third time, I’d say, “Kid…” I’d say, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Charmaine was Miss Vamp, provocative and come-hithery in floor-length white silk cut clear to her navel; Dave and Shep were provoked and went thither.

It was Mrs. Castevet and with her another woman, short, plump and smiling, with a "Buckley for Mayor" button on the shoulder of her green dress.

philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat

Padded Wagon. The painters came on Wednesday the

And you’ll put a deposit on the house tomorrow?

Wszystko, o czym mówisz, wszystko, o czym myślisz, było już kiedyś powiedziane i pomyślane. I wprowadzone w czyn. Kilkanaście razy.

There’s something here, Joanna! I’m not kidding! This is Zombieville! And Charmaine moved in in July, I moved in in August, and you moved in in September!

Walter?” she called, touching her hands to a towel. “Yes?” She went to where she could see him, standing in the hallway. “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “I feel better.

Hutch sent a telegram: The Bramford will change from a bad house to a good house when one of its doors is marked R. and G. Woodhouse.

you’ll come to realize that acts of kindness are few and far between in this world of ours.

Had he wanted to get her out of the apartment that night for some reason?

But why had he lied about the tickets?

Bueno, hay un par de homosexuales; pero eso son anormales normales.

Chip frowned and looked at Lilac. She was packing books into the carton, not looking at him. He looked back at King and sought words. ‘It would still be worth knowing,’ he said. ‘Being happy or unhappy – is that really the most important thing? Knowing the truth would be a different kind of happiness – a more satisfying kind, I think, even if it turned out to be a sad kind.

What’s wrong with Bill McCormick? Can’t he run a washer? I thought he was one of our aerospace brains.” “He’s taking care of Marge,” Kit said, folding the T-shirt. “These things came out nice and white, didn’t they?” She put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling. Like an actress in a commercial. That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

Jake Manheim: Try something else. Try advertising. Harry Levine: I loathe advertising! Bunch of trendy fucks in running clothes spreading disease and dementia. Jake Manheim: Somebody has to do it. Harry Levine: Not me!

My też musimy wypełnić nasze zadanie, co oznacza między innymi pilne oglądanie telewizji i śmierć w wieku 62 lat. A cała wolność, o której możemy marzyć, to fajka, parę dowcipów i trochę nadprogramowego pieprzenia. Nie traćmy tego, co mamy, dobrze?

When Sarah finally got pregnant, she was determined to be ruthlessly positive about it. She would not jinx her twins by complaining about minor inconveniences. No, she would remain sunny. She read all the feel-good books she could find on pregnancy and child-rearing, blocking out dark thoughts by force of will. But as the days wore on and her nausea went from bad to worse, one book kept bobbing up in Sarah’s consciousness: Rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin’s tale about Satan’s mother. Rosemary had had morning sickness too, right?   47

On the sidewalk Terry lay, watching the sky with one eye, half of her face gone to red pulp. Tan blanket flipped over her. Settling, it reddened in one place and then another. Rosemary wheeled, eyes shut, right hand making an automatic cross. She kept her mouth tightly closed, afraid she might vomit.

... In her immaculate kitchen she said, 'Yes, I've changed. I realized I was being awfully sloppy and self-indulgent. It's no disgrace to be a good homemaker. I've decided to do my job conscientiously, the way Dave does his, and to be more careful about my appearance. Are you sure you don't want a sandwich?' Joanna shook her head. 'Bobbie,' she said, 'I— Don't you see what's happened? Whatever's around here—it's got you, the way it got Charmaine!' Bobbie smiled at her. 'Nothing's got me,' she said. 'There's nothing around. That was a lot of nonsense. Stepford's a fine healthful place to live.' ...

don’t let me hear you say again ‘Fuck orders’! You’re a corporal who’s been assigned a duty, and if your superiors have chosen not to tell you the reason for it, then they have a reason for that too. Good Christ, you’re an SS man; behave like one! ‘My Honor Is Loyalty.’ Those words were supposed to be engraved on your soul!

Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one - my God, you know what we've got!' 'No,' Liebermann said. 'No, I've been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions... and the people to follow the Hitler.' 'And don't you think he'd find them?' 'No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing... Some he'd find, yes; but no more, I think- I hope- than the pretend Hitlers we have now...

there are now only two people on earth who know who he is.” He swung a finger back and forth between them. “Us.” He squeezed her hands, held her eyes with his. “That’s why it’s such—joy for me to be with you again. Not just because you’re my mother. Because you know who I am, because I don’t have to hide the truth from you! And don’t you feel something like that toward me? How

Liebermann said, “Ninety-four Hitlers,” and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. It’s not possible.” “Of course it isn’t,” Nürnberger said. “There are ninety-four boys with the same genetic inheritance as Hitler. They could turn out very differently. Most of them probably will.” “Most,” Liebermann said. He nodded at Klaus and at Lena. “Most.” He looked at Nürnberger. “That leaves some,” he said.

Hessen? Dr. Mengele. Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Exactly the amateur I expected. I don’t think he even understood German. Send the boys home to practice their signatures; it was just an excitement to round off the evening. No, not till 1977, I’m afraid; I fly back to the compound as soon as we clean up. So go with God, Horst. And say it for me to the others: ‘Go with God.’” He hung up and said, “Heil Hitler.

Supper?' he asked. She nodded. 'Would you take them to the pizza place? Or to McDonald's?' He took his pipe from the table. 'All right,' he said. 'I want to get it done with,' she said. 'Otherwise I won't enjoy next weekend.' He laid the open book down across his lap and took his pipe-cleaning gadget from the table. She turned to go, and looked back at him. 'You sure you don't mind?' she asked. He twisted the gadget back and forth in the pipe bowl. 'Sure,' he said. 'Stay with it.' He looked up at her and smiled. 'I don't mind,' he said.

now I want something better than vengeance, and something almost as hard to get.” He told it to the young woman in the second row: “I want remembrance.” He told it to all of them: “Remembrance. It’s hard to get because life goes on; every year we have new horrors—a Vietnam, terrorist activities in the Middle East and Ireland, assassinations”—(ninety-four sixty-five-year-old men?)—“and every year,” he drove himself on, “the horror of horrors, the Holocaust, becomes farther away, a little less horrible. But philosophers have warned us: if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.” “And don’t you think he’d find them?” “No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.

Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,” he said, reading. “Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland, and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.” He sat back and looked at the men again. “Why must these men die? And why on or near their particular dates?” He shook his head. “Not now; later you can be told that. But this I can tell you now: their deaths are the final step in an operation

He had lain awake all night, sat awake all day, thinking of a full-grown Hitler hurling his demonic speeches at mobs too discontented to care about history. Two or three Hitlers even, maneuvering to power in different places, recognized by their followers and themselves as the first human beings bred by what in 1990 or so would be a widely known, maybe widely practiced, procedure. More alike than brothers, the same man multiplied, wouldn’t they join forces and wage again (with 1990 weapons!) their first one’s racial war? Certainly that was Mengele’s hope; Barry had said so: “It’s supposed to lead to the triumph of the Aryan race, for God’s sake!” Words to that effect.

Sylvia called to apologize - she had been passed up for a promotion she damn well knew she deserved - and Charmaine called to say they'd had a great time and to postpone a tentative Tuesday tennis date. "Ed's got a bee in his bonnet," she said. "He's taking a few days off, we're putting Merrill with the DaCostas - you don't know them, lucky you - and he and I are going to 'rediscover each other.' That means he chases me around the bed. And my period's not till next week, God damn it. "Why not let him catch you?" Joanna said. "Oh God," Charmaine said. "Look, I just don't enjoy having a big cock shoved into me, that's all. Never have and never will. And I'm not a lez either, because I tried it and that's no big deal. I'm just not interested in sex. I don't think any woman is, really, not even Pisces women. Are you?" "Well I'm not a nympho," Joanna said, "but I'm interested in it, sure I am." "Really, or do you just feel you're supposed to be?" "Really. "Well, to each his own," Charmaine said.

Sylvia called to apologize - she had been passed up for a promotion she damn well knew she deserved - and Charmaine called to say they'd had a great time and to postpone a tentative Tuesday tennis date. "Ed's got a bee in his bonnet," she said. "He's taking a few days off, we're putting Merrill with the DaCostas - you don't know them, lucky you - and he and I are going to 'rediscover each other.' That means he chases me around the bed. And my period's not till next week, God damn it." "Why not let him catch you?" Joanna said. "Oh God," Charmaine said. "Look, I just don't enjoy having a big cock shoved into me, that's all. Never have and never will. And I'm not a lez either, because I tried it and that's no big deal. I'm just not interested in sex. I don't think any woman is, really, not even Pisces women. Are you?" "Well I'm not a nympho," Joanna said, "but I'm interested in it, sure I am." "Really, or do you just feel you're supposed to be?" "Really." "Well, to each his own," Charmaine said.

Come Closer by Sara Gran; Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory; Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin.

Even if he hadn't given it to me, you don't throw away another person's books. If I want to read something, I want to read it.

Jackie Kennedy came into the ballroom in an exquisite gown of ivory satin embroidered with pearls. “I’m so sorry to hear you aren’t feelingwell,” she said, hurrying to Rosemary’s side. Rosemary explained about the mouse-bite, minimizing it so Jackie wouldn’t worry. “You’d better have your legs tied down,” Jackie said, “in case of convulsions.” “Yes, I suppose so,” Rosemary said. “There’s always a chance it was rabid.” She watched with interest as white-smocked interns tied her legs, and her arms too, to the four bedposts. “If the music bothers you,” Jackie said, “let me know and I’ll have it stopped.” “Oh, no,” Rosemary said. “Please don’t change the program on my account. It doesn’t bother me at all, really it doesn’t.” Jackie smiled warmly at her. “Try to sleep,” she said. “We’ll be waiting up on deck.” She withdrew, her satin gown whispering. Rosemary slept a while, and then Guy came in and began making love to her. He stroked her with both hands—a long, relishing stroke that began at her bound wrists, slid down over her arms, breasts, and loins, and became a voluptuous tickling between her legs. He repeated the exciting stroke again and again, his hands hot and sharp-nailed, and then, when she was ready-ready-more-than-ready, he slipped a hand in under her buttocks, raised them, lodged his hardness against her, and pushed it powerfully in.Bigger he was than always; painfully, wonderfully big. He lay forward upon her, his other arm sliding under her back to hold her, his broad chest crushing her breasts. (He was wearing, because it was to be a costume party, a suit of coarse leathery armor.) Brutally, rhythmically, he drove his new hugeness. She opened her eyes and looked into yellow furnace-eyes, smelled sulphur and tannis root, felt wet breath on her mouth, heard lust-grunts and the breathing of onlookers. This is no dream, she thought. This is real, this is happening. Protest woke in her eyes and throat, but something covered her face, smothering her in a sweet stench. The hugeness kept driving in her, the leathery body banging itself against her again and again and again. The Pope came in with a suitcase in his hand and a coat over his arm. “Jackie tells me you’ve been bitten by a mouse,” he said. “Yes,” Rosemary said. “That’s why I didn’t come see you.” She spoke sadly, so he wouldn’t suspect she had just had an orgasm. “That’s all right,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to jeopardize your health.” “Am I forgiven, Father?” she asked. “Absolutely,” he said. He held out his hand for her to kiss the ring. Its stone was a silver filigree ball less than an inch in diameter; inside it, very tiny, Anna Maria Alberghetti sat waiting. Rosemary kissed it and the Pope hurried out to catch his plane.

What if, Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was more than just about housewifely ennui but also about the alienation and unending tedium of all modern work - of a moneymaking need that expands to fill the time available? Why else this constant repetition and reinforcement of a fiction that reality keeps refuting but that fiction keeps reimposing: the fiction of progress, the feeling that we are going somewhere, getting somewhere, that our lives have meaning, that we are not caught in a constant recursion, an infinite loop? Is there progress? What is progress? What if author Ira Levin was not ripping off Betty Friedan but was on her side? What if he was calling back to her, saying, 'I feel you, sister! Fuck the patriarchy!' What if, as Elliott suggested, The Stepford Wives was an allegory for the lives not just of suburban housewives but of global corporate capitalism? of working ceaselessly with nothing to show for it at the end? What if it represented anxieties about lives of pointless repetition with no progress, no end result, and no possibility of transformation? If it wasn't just the housewives' problem, or a problem caused by housewives who ceased to perform their housewifely duties, but everyone's problem? What if 'the problem that has no name turns out to be caused by the life that has no more plot?

She wished that no motive and no number of drinks could have enabled him to take her that way, taking only her body without her soul or self or she-ness- whatever it was that he presumably loved.

Until now it had been inside her; now she was inside it; pain was the weather around her, was time, was the entire world.

Paralyse and ultimately kill.

So much for 'tannis root'. Devil's Fungus.

Partial ignorance is partial bliss.