Isaac Davis: My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst.
Isaac Davis: Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh.....
Isaac Davis: I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion.
Mary Wilke: Facts?I got a million facts at my fingertips. Isaac Davis: That's right, and they don't mean a thing, right? Because nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind. Everything really valuable has to enter you through a different op...
Isaac Davis: I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.
[On her ex-husband] Mary Wilke: I was tired of submerging my identity to a very brilliant, dominating man. He's a genius. Isaac Davis: Oh really, he was a genius, Helen's a genius and Dennis is a genius. You know a lot of geniuses, y'know. You should...
Isaac Davis: I can't express anger. That's one of the problems I have. I grow a tumor instead.
Yale: You are so self-righteous, you know. I mean we're just people. We're just human beings, you know? You think you're God. Isaac Davis: I... I gotta model myself after someone.
Isaac Davis: You know what you are? You're God's answer to Job, y'know? You would have ended all argument between them. I mean, He would have pointed to you and said, y'know, "I do a lot of terrible things, but I can still make one of these." You kno...
Mary Wilke: I'm honest, whaddya want? I say what's on my mind and, if you can't take it, well then fuck off! Isaac Davis: And I like the way you express yourself too, y'know, it's pithy yet degenerate. You get many dates?
Isaac Davis: You honestly think that I tried to run you over? Connie: You just happened to hit the gas as I walked in front of the car? Isaac Davis: Did I do it on purpose? Jill: Well, what would Freud say? Isaac Davis: Freud would say I really wante...
Yale: It's just gossip, you know. Gossip is the new pornography.
Mary Wilke: [reading aloud from Issac's wife's memoir] "He was given to fits of rage, Jewish liberal paranoia, male chauvinism, self-righteous misanthropy, and nihilistic moods of despair. He had complaints about life but never any solutions. He long...
Party Guest: Oh,but really biting satire is always better than physical force. Isaac Davis: No,physical force is always better with Nazis.
Party Guest: I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor said it was the wrong kind. Isaac Davis: You had the wrong kind? I've never had the wrong kind, ever. My worst one was right on the money.
Isaac Davis: It's an interesting group of people, your friends are. Mary Wilke: I know. Isaac Davis: Like the cast of a Fellini movie.
Isaac Davis: When it comes to relationships with women, I'm the winner of the August Strindberg Award.
Isaac Davis: The steel cube was brilliant? Mary Wilke: Yes. To me it was very textual, you know what I mean? It was perfectly integrated, and it had a marvelous kind of negative capability. The rest of the stuff downstairs was bullshit.
