Polly Bailey: You didn't tell her about us, did you? Nick Naylor: Who? Heather? No!... I mean, maybe in passing. Polly Bailey: In passing. Bobby Jay Bliss: Oh God, he fucked her. I tried to warn you... Polly Bailey: Hey, he didn't fuck her. You didn'...
Bobby Jay Bliss: Did you know that you can fool the breathalizer test by chewing on activated charcoal tablets? Polly Bailey: Well, maybe we should change our slogan to "If you must drink and drive, suck charcoal." Nick Naylor: Won't the police ask a...
Nick Naylor: Right there, looking into Joey's eyes, it all came back in a rush. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop...
Jack: Alright come here, this is my favourite part. That one right there... [points in pool of fish] Jack: It's 7000 dollars. Nick Naylor: 7000 for a fish? Jack: Yep, kinda makes you wanna stop eating sushi, but I guess you kinda have to. Jack: See t...
Nick Naylor: Bobby Jay works for S.A.F.E.T.Y., the Society for the Advancement of Firearms and Effective Training for Youth. After watching the footage of the Kent State shootings, Bobby Jay, then seventeen, signed up for the National Guard so that h...
Joey Naylor: Why are you hiding from everyone? Nick Naylor: It has something to do with being generally hated right now. Joey Naylor: But it's your job to be generally hated. Nick Naylor: It's more complicated then that, Joey. Joey Naylor: You're jus...
Joey Naylor: Do I have flexible morals? Nick Naylor: Let's say you became a lawyer and you were asked to defend a murderer worse than that, a child murderer now, the law states that every person deserves a fair trial, would you defend him? Joey Naylo...
General Sternwood: You may smoke, too. I can still enjoy the smell of it. Hum, nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You're looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life, crippled, paralyzed in both legs, ba...
Happy? That doesn’t feel solid enough, somehow. Like it’s fleeting or transient, and whenever something crappy happens, it’s gone in a puff of smoke. I’m in love with someone I want to spend my life getting to know. He makes me feel safe and ...
The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking...
Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men blush not in actions blacker than the night, will 'schew no course to keep them from the light. One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke. Poison and treason are th...
Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of...
She was right: school was lonely. The eighteen and nineteen year olds didn't socialize with the younger kids, and though there were plenty of students my age and younger [...] their lives were so cloistered and their concerns so foolish and foreign-s...
Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn’t think the view could be any more perfect until I saw that beat-up trilby. Honestly, Sixsmith, as ridiculous as that thi...
Just the minute another person is drawn into some one's life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities, and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as fetes, divertissements, telephone...
Then you think, is this a better world, closer to the one before you knew of wars— earth wars? Before you found that canary in its cage laying, barely heaving. And you took it outside and said, Go Free! Go free! But it died there, right in your han...
Oh, he shouldn't be surprised, he's a Marxist and has nothing but contempt for the bourgeois capitalist press, yet paradoxically he is also somehow an Americanist and a believer in Science and Freedom and History and Reason, and it dismays him to see...
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them,...
Do you prefer fermented or distilled? This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer’s interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of t...
That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action. There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity...
[Alabama walks into her room and sees Virgil sitting on a couch holding a shotgun] Virgil: Hi. Alabama: Hi... cigarette? Virgil: No... that's a very nice outfit. Alabama: This? I got this in Las Vegas, Nevada. [pause] Virgil: Alabama, where's our cok...
