If I read The Sound and the Fury or Middlemarch, I'm filled with the aromas of either book, with past readings and relationships t...o the characters, with a whole continent of language and scenes, but the books don't frighten me. I can enter into their dream songs, and leave at my own will. But if I'm watching Casablanca on the wall, I'll let my eye slip past the phony details, the studio-bound streets, the laughable sense of a fabricated city, and drift into that dream of Humphrey Bogart and Rick's Cafe Americain, which exists outside any laws of physics, like the eternal dream of Hollywood itself, a little dopey, but with a power we can't resist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I sat at the cafe, I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,... They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fitzgerald describes the social disillusionments and ballroom romanticism of the young people of the upper classes and the lonelin...ess of Gatsby, who gives large parties and has an extensive social life; yet he is lonely, and his guests scarcely know him.... Hemingway's characters live in a tourist world, and one of their major problems is that of consuming time itself. It is interesting to observe that his works are written from the stand point of the spectator. His characters are usually people who are looking--looking at bullfights, scenery, and at one another across cafe tables.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who wants always to look at a cafe or an altar or an oak tree with the first innocence and the limited understanding of a naive lo...vesick girl, or a born-again Byron? Five minutes or five centuries from now, we will see changeless realities with new eyes, and the sounds of sheep bleating and a new child's wail will be the same but heard through new ears. How can we pretend to be changeless, then?... Is it wrong to see the phony, painted mushroom-bollard on the quay and accept it, as part of the whole strong song that keeps on singing there, in spite of wars and movies and the turtling-on of time?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When cafe life thrives, talk is a shared limberness of the mind that improves appetite for conversation: an adequate sentence make...r is then made good, a good one excellent, an excellent one extraordinary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The train was crammed, the heat stifling. We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have... fed and slept, life will regain its looks, and the American instruments will make music in the merry cafe described by our friend Lange. And then, sometime later, we die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Talk is a pure art. Its only limits are the patience of listeners who, when they get tired, can always pay for their coffee or cha...nge it with a friendly waiter and walk out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist an...d has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits.... It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lise: Look, monsieur, I don't know what type of girl you think I am, but I'm not. And now I would like to return to my friends. ... />Jerry: I thought you were bored with them. You sure looked it. Lise: You should see me now. Jerry: Ouch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »