- [last lines]
- Jep Gambardella: This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life. Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah. It's all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah... Beyond there is what lies beyond. I don't deal with what lies beyond. Therefore... let this novel begin. After all... it's just a trick. Yes, it's just a trick.
- Jep Gambardella: We're all on the brink of despair. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little... Don't you agree?
- Jep Gambardella: The most important thing I discovered a few days after turning 65 is that I can't waste any more time doing things I don't want to do.
- Romano: I spent all my summers making plans for September. Not any longer. Now I spend the summer remembering the good intentions which vanished. In part because of laziness, in part because of carelessness. What's wrong with feeling nostalgic? It's the only distraction for those who've no faith in the future. Without rain August is coming to an end, and September isn't arriving. And I'm so ordinary. But there's no need to worry. It's alright, it's okay.
- Jep Gambardella: To this question, as kids, my friends always gave the same answer: "Pussy." Whereas I answered "The smell of old people's houses." The question was "What do you really like the most in life?" I was destined for sensibility. I was destined to become a writer. I was destined to become Jep Gambardella.
- Jep Gambardella: When I came to Rome at the age of 26, I fell pretty swiftly into what might be defined as the whirl of the high life, but I didn't just want to live the high life, i wanted to be the king of the high life. I didn't just want to attend parties, i wanted the power to make them fail.
- Jep Gambardella: The trains at our parties are the best in Rome. They're the best 'cause they go nowhere.
- Santa: Do you know why I only eat roots?
- Jep Gambardella: No, why?
- Santa: Because roots are important.
- Jep Gambardella: It was nice not making love.
- Ramona: It was nice loving each other.
- Jep Gambardella: I'd forgotten what loving someone was about. I'd forgotten that.
- Stefania: Rome is the only city in the world where Marxism has truly existed. You can't excel over others for more than a week, you're immediately brought back to mediocrity. Rome is pure collectivism.
- Jep Gambardella: Pure collectivism. Stefania, what utter nonsense! Do you know that Flaubert wanted to write a book about nothing? If he'd met you, we'd have had a great book, what a shame!
- Jep Gambardella: What's wrong with feeling nostalgic? It's the only distraction left for those who've no faith in the future.
- Talia Concept: Write about how she has sex with her fiance 11 times a day, he's a talented conceptual artist, he covers basketballs with confetti! He's sensational!
- Ramona: It must be very satisfying knowing so many people.
- Jep Gambardella: You're guaranteed to be unhappy.
- Ramona: Have people let you down?
- Jep Gambardella: I've let them down.
- Jep Gambardella: Stefania, mother and woman. You're 53, with a life in tatters, like the rest of us. Instead of acting superior and treating us with contempt, you should look at us with affection. We're all on the brink of despair, all we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little. Don't you agree?
- Jep Gambardella: Last night I went to bed at 10:30. Now I don't know what to do. Morning is an unknown object to me.
- Jep Gambardella: Re-heated rice is always tastier than freshly cooked rice.
- Dadina: The old is better than the new.
- Romano: What about you and Orietta?
- Jep Gambardella: Who's Orietta?
- Romano: Don't you know? She was at your house. A real beauty.
- Jep Gambardella: At my age, a real beauty isn't enough.
- Jep Gambardella: Many think that a funeral, is a fortuitous event, without any rules. That's not true. A funeral is a high-society event par excellence. You must never forget that at a funeral you are appearing on stage.
- Santa: Why did you never write another book?
- Jep Gambardella: I was looking for the great beauty, but, I didn't find it.
- Orietta: I'm from Milan, to be honest, I find Romans - unbearable.
- Jep Gambardella: The best people in Rome are the tourists.
- Jep Gambardella: Are you going out with that gloomy girl you're always with?
- Romano: I wish. I've tried it on 7,000 times. I've never even had a kiss, not one!
- Jep Gambardella: She's a bitch.
- Romano: No, she's not. She's complicated.
- Jep Gambardella: She's a bitch. Trust me, you're too kind. I can tell her type from a mile off, I don't even need to meet them.
- Egidio: Why don't you fix her up?
- Jep Gambardella: Me?
- Egidio: Don't you know any rich guys who want a beautiful wife? We could change her name, that's no problem. You'd do me a big favor.
- Jep Gambardella: I'm a writer, not a pimp.
- Egidio: Sorry, I was a bit vulgar.
- Jep Gambardella: He asked me to find you a husband.
- Ramona: He's obsessed. I'm not looking for a husband.
- Jep Gambardella: Well, you should be. A family's a beautiful thing.
- Ramona: I know. But I'm not cut out for beautiful things.
- Jep Gambardella: Thank goodness. We still have something nice to do together. The future is marvelous.
- Jep Gambardella: I'm not fit for this life or this city.
- Dadina: Nobody's fit for shit, dammit. Take it from the queen of misfits.
- Dadina: How's the soup, Little Jep?
- Jep Gambardella: The soup's good. Why did you call me Little Jep? No one's called me that for centuries.
- Dadina: Because a friend, every now and again, needs to make their friend feel like they did as a child.
- Romano: Unfortunately in this country, in order to be taken seriously, you have to take yourself seriously.
- Talia Concept: I don't need to read, I live on vibrations, extra-sensory ones.
- Jep Gambardella: Extra-sensory aside, what do you mean by vibrations?
- Talia Concept: The poetry of vibrations cannot be described with the vulgarity of words.
- Jep Gambardella: Well, try at least.
- Talia Concept: I'm an artist, I don't need to explain jack shit.
- Lello Cava: Italy - what are we famous for overseas? Fashion an pizza. A country of weavers and grocers.
- Orietta: I once saw Piazza Navona covered in snow.
- Jep Gambardella: Really? What was it like?
- Orietta: White!
- Romano: Has something happened?
- Jep Gambardella: No. No. Why?
- Romano: You want to write again after all these years, something's happened.
- Jep Gambardella: Something always happens in Rome. Nothing's happened.
- Egidio: I'm not important. It's her I worry about. I love her. And I'm not a loser there, I'm a father. And like all fathers, I'm worried. What'll she do in a few years? She can't be a stripper at 50!
- Egidio: She wants to keep doing this job for the money. I don't know why she always needs money and what she fucking does with it.
- Jep Gambardella: For drugs?
- Egidio: I wish, we'd have a common interest. She doesn't even drink beer.
- Egidio: There's my daughter, you see? She makes me so mad, I've told her a million times! You're too old for this! Now these hot young Polish girls rule the scene. They're experts at turning tricks. She's 42 and she wants to be a sophisticated stripper. But the world's no longer sophisticated. Right, Jep?
- Egidio: Do I seem like a loser?
- Jep Gambardella: No, why?
- Egidio: Because I can hear myself talk, I sound like a loser.
- Jep Gambardella: How are you?
- Andrea: Not well. Proust says that death may come to us this afternoon. Proust is scary. Not tomorrow, not in a year, but this afternoon.
- Jep Gambardella: But it's evening already so it'd be tomorrow afternoon.
- Andrea: Turgenev said: "Death looked at me, noticing me."
- Jep Gambardella: Don't take these writers so seriously.
- Andrea: Who should I take seriously then?
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