The Decline of the American Empire (1986)

Dorothée Berryman: Louise

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Quotes 

• Louise : Oh, to be slim, young, and attractive. I'm forever on a diet. I weigh myself every morning. I'm terrified of getting flabby. You know what? My problem is I was born in the wrong era. I was made to be fat.

• Louise : [describing an orgy]  Well, it was for married couples.

  Diane Leonard : [laughing]  Married?

  Louise : That's right. These people are absolutely faithful, do everything together. For me it was... a way of showing our love.

• Louise : Making love is the only exercise I really enjoy. After 15 years of marriage, I can't rely on it to keep in shape.

• Louise : [responding to a theory that civilization is declining]  Well, I don't agree. I'm sure there are experts who can prove just the opposite... that we're living in an age of incredible rebirth, that science has never progressed so fast, that life has never been better.

• Louise : [referring to massage parlors]  If I ever found out Rémy had been to one, I'd never forgive him.

  Pierre : Why not?

  Louise : He's got me. If he wants a massage, I'd be happy to give him one.

• Louise : Better to have kids who love you than to end up like Pierre, alone, bitter, without any family.

  Pierre : But I do have a family. Here, sitting around this table. A family I love. I feel closer to this family than to my brother the insurance broker, or my parents who could never figure me out, and complain 'cause I don't go to mass. You're my family.

• Louise : It's impossible to understand the age you live in. All you can do is try to be happy. That's what people have always wanted. The rest invent theories to justify their misery.

• Louise : Just because you choose... to live all alone... and sacrifice your life to a career, doesn't mean that if I'm lucid, I have to be depressed.

• Dominique St. Arnaud : [asking for comments on her theory]  You haven't said a word about the book.

  Louise : I bet they agree with me but are scared to say so.

  Dominique St. Arnaud : I think they feel superior.

  Pierre : Superior? Why?

  Dominique St. Arnaud : [referring to Pierre and Rémy]  Because you've both slept with me.

  Pierre : What does that have to do with it?

  Dominique St. Arnaud : I think that for men like you... love always entails a struggle for power. Rémy's often said he'd like to seduce a big intellectual... I don't know, say...

  Alain : Susan Sontag.

  Dominique St. Arnaud : Right. It's the urge to appropriate her. To dominate her, almost physically.

  Claude : Come on... it can also be the desire to share, to be with.

  Dominique St. Arnaud : Perhaps. But I can't trust the disdain of men who've made me come, who've had me.