Quotes

Gil: I'm having trouble because I'm a Hollywood hack who never gave real literature a shot.

Gil: It's understated but elegant. That's what you always say.

Helen: Cheap is cheap. That's what I always say.

Gil: Gil Pender.

Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway.

Gil: Hemingway?

Ernest Hemingway: You liked my book?

Gil: Liked? I loved all of your work.

Ernest Hemingway: Yes. It was a good book because it was an honest book, and that's what war does to men. And there's nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully. And then it's not only noble but brave.

Gil: What is it with this city? I need to write a letter to the Chamber of Commerce.

Adriana: That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.

Gertrude Stein: Hemingway did have one plot suggestion - he doesn't quite believe that the protagonist doesn't see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes

Gil: She's right, I recently read a two-volume biography of Rodin, and Rose was the wife, Camille the mistress.

Gil: I'm a huge Mark Twain fan. I think you can make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.

Ernest Hemingway: Do you box?

Gil: No. Well... Not really, no.

Ernest Hemingway: You'll never be a great writer if you fear dying, do you?

Gil: Yeah, I do. I would say it's my greatest fear.

Inez: Gil, just pay attention. You might learn something.

Ernest Hemingway: Picasso only thinks that women are to sleep with, or to paint.

Gil: Thomas Stearns Eliot? T.S. Eliot? T.S. Eliot? Prufrock is like my mantra.

Gil: You know how I think better in the shower, get all those positive ions flowing.

Adriana: I'm from the '20s, and I'm telling you the golden age is la Belle Epoque.

Gil: I'm jealous and I'm trusting. It's cognitive dissonance. F. Scott Fitzgerald talked about it.

Man Ray: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!

Luis Buñuel: I see a film!

Gil: I see insurmountable problem!

Salvador Dalí: I see rhinoceros!

Gertrude Stein: The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

[first lines]

Gil: This is unbelievable! Look at this! There's no city like this in the world. There never was.

Inez: You act like you've never been here before.

Gil: I don't get here often enough, that's the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!

Inez: Why does every city have to be in the rain? What's wonderful about getting wet?

Gil: These people don't have any antibiotics!

Adriana: What are you talking about?

Gil: Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you'll start imagining another time was really your... You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life's a little unsatisfying.

Adriana: That's the problem with writers. You are so full of words.

Gil: He's a pseudo-intellectual. Just a little bit.

Inez: Ah, Gil, I hardly think he'd be lecturing at the Sorbonne if he's a pseudo-intellectual.

Gil: Hi Mr. Hemingway.

Ernest Hemingway: The assignment was to take the hill. There were four of us, five if you counted Vicente, but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off and couldn't fight as could when I first met him. And he was young and brave, and the hill was soggy from days of rain. And it sloped down toward a road and there were many German soldiers on the road. And the idea was to aim for the first group, and if our aim was true we could delay them.

Gil: Were you scared?

Ernest Hemingway: Of what?

Gil: Of getting killed.

Ernest Hemingway: You'll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?

Gil: Yeah, I do. I'd say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.

Ernest Hemingway: It's something all men before you have done, all men will do.

Gil: I know, I know.

Ernest Hemingway: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?

Gil: Actually, my fiancé is pretty sexy.

Ernest Hemingway: And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion. And you for at least that moment lose your fear of death.

Gil: No, that doesn't happen.

Ernest Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte, who's truly brave. It is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds, until the return that it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

Adriana: Well, good luck with your book and your wedding

Gil: Thanks, I think you would like Inez she has a, a very sharp sense of humour and attractive, I wouldn't say that we agree on everything

Adriana: But the important things

Gil: Yeah, or actually maybe the small things, sometimes there is a little bit of a disconnect with the big things. She wants to live in Malibu and wants me to work in Hollywood... but i will say that we both like Indian food, not all Indian food, but the pita bread, we both like pita bread, I guess its called naan