Owen Wilson credited as playing...
Gil
- Gil: Would you read it?
- Ernest Hemingway: Your novel?
- Gil: Yeah, it's about 400 pages long, and I'm just looking for an opinion.
- Ernest Hemingway: My opinion is I hate it.
- Gil: Well you haven't even read it yet.
- Ernest Hemingway: If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it's good, I'll be envious and hate all the more. You don't want the opinion of another writer.
- 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 an insurmountable problem!
- Salvador Dalí: I see a rhinoceros!
- Adriana: I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.
- Gil: No, you can't, you couldn't pick one. I mean I can give you a checkmate argument for each side. You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can't. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
- 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: 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: 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.
- Gil: It sounds so crazy to say. You guys are going to think I'm drunk, but I have to tell someone. I'm from a - different time. Another era. The future. Okay? I come from the 2,000th millennium to here. I get in a car, and I slide through time.
- Man Ray: Exactly correct! You inhabit two worlds. So far, I see nothing strange.
- Gil: Why? Yeah, you're surrealists! But I'm a normal guy.
- 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: I think a woman is equal to a man in courage. Have you ever shot a charging lion?
- Adriana: Never.
- Ernest Hemingway: Would you like to know how that feels?
- Adriana: I don't think so.
- Ernest Hemingway: You ever hunted?
- Adriana: No.
- Ernest Hemingway: You?
- Gil: Only for bargains.
- Gertrude Stein: Hemingway read it?
- Gertrude Stein: He thinks it's going to be a fine book. but he did have one plot suggestion.
- Gil: What's the suggestion?
- Gil: Well, he doesn't quite believe that the protagonist doesn't see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes.
- Gil: With?
- Gertrude Stein: The other character. The pedantic one.
- Gil: That's called denial.
- 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
- Gil: 500 francs for a Matisse? Yeah I think that sounds fair! You know, I wonder if actually I can pick up 6 or 7?
- [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?