The Decline of the American Empire (1986)

Pierre Curzi: Pierre

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Quotes 

• Pierre : If I'm in love, I get hard. If I don't get hard, I'm not in love. Otherwise, you're deceiving yourself. Like a woman who says she still loves you when she's as dry as sandpaper, and you remember how she'd be dripping if you so much as kissed her on the neck.

• Pierre : I know I'll never be a Toynbee or a Braudel. All I have left is... sex... or love. What's the difference? I don't know what's left for me. That's why age leads to vice.

• Pierre : Wittgenstein wrote that... our only certainty is the ability to act with the body.

• Pierre : You lie through your teeth, that's what saves you.

• Pierre : That's when it happened. I fell head over heels in love. Ejaculating while discussing the millennium was intellectually and physically overwhelming.

• 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.

• Pierre : In sex, practice makes perfect. My best lovers have always been those who fucked the most.

• Pierre : I get a kick out of eminent sociologists and psychologists who spew forth theories of sexuality, when I've seen them being flogged with wet towels in a massage parlor.

• Dominique St. Arnaud : You should write a paper on that.

  Pierre : 17,000 scholarly articles are published every day. One more or less...

• Pierre : Want me to describe a female fantasy? The female fantasy? The woman is at home in the nest she has so lovingly decorated. Her husband or lover arrives. He's brought flowers and a bottle of champagne. He is extremely nice. They spend a pleasant evening... and make love. End of fantasy. What a bore.

• Pierre : Women live to old age, not men.

• Danielle : Would we see the missiles in a nuclear war?

  Pierre : No, they'd be too high.

  Danielle : But when they start to fall?

  Pierre : The missiles don't fall, just the bombs. And they're small.

• Pierre : [explaining why he doesn't want to have kids]  You have to like yourself to procreate. I don't. I'm not optimistic enough.

• Danielle : You are going to grow old alone.

  Pierre : Having kids won't change that. They'd put me in a home and resent having to visit me at Christmas.

• 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.