A. Manette Ansay Quotes

You know the one about the old man whose grandson is getting married? Just before the wedding, he calls the boy in for a chat. "My child," he says, "I want you to know that all marriages go through phases. At first, you and you wife will make love all the time. But then, as the children come along, you will find that you are having sex less and less. And by the time they are grown and gone, you'll be just like your grandmother and me. All you'll ever have is oral sex. I just wanted you to know how things will go." The boy looks at him, incredulous. "You and Grandma have oral sex?" "Every single night," the old man says, "and it's a perfectly natural thing. She goes into her bedroom and calls, 'Fuck you!' And I go into my bedroom and call back to her, 'No, fuck you!

Each piano is unique. Each feels different beneath your hand and yields a new geography of sound. Each room or hall accepts that sound in a completely different way, and if, within that room or hall, the piano is moved, the sound will change, as it will if the hall is full of people in thick winter coats, or half full of people in light summer dresses. You must adjust your touch, your tone, your range; you must LISTEN, for even the most familiar passages can become unfamiliar, challenging, strange.

If we just had some time to ourselves, we could talk to each other the way we used to. Maybe about nothing in particular at first, but even that would be a start.

Infatuation is the inciting incident. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't, but you can't have a story without it. Love is the story itself, the thing we carry with us after the mountains are gone.

Who else but a lover retains the ability to wound the other person with such passion, such precision? And who else but that lover has the capacity to heal what he or she has done?

It is a lonely thing, remembering for someone else.

One cannot exchange ideas with a rational person any more than one can argue with a religious fanatic.

I have this strange feeling none of this is really happening. Like I'm standing far away from myself. Like nothing is real. Have you ever had a feeling like that?

Oscar Wilde said that men marry because they are bored, and women because they are curious, and that both are disappointed ... He was right about the disappointment. You will be disappointed ... Not just in each other, but in yourselves. It's inevitable that you'll each fall short of your own expectations ... But you will also exceed those expectations, again and again, and in ways you can't possibly imagine. And my wish for you both is that there will come a time when you'll look back on this day and realize that - in spite of the disappointments - even the best of your old expectations seem pale in the face of the actual life you have lived together.

Religion in this country is worse than communism. Say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing and, look
there's the Stasi knocking at your door.