- Matthew: Yes, I'm drunk. And you're beautiful. And tomorrow morning, I'll be sober but you'll still be beautiful.
- Father: Listen to me, Theo. Before you can change the world you must realize that you, yourself, are part of it. You can't stand outside looking in.
- Matthew: I was one of the insatiables. The ones you'd always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they'd been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist's cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us... from the world.
- Theo: Clapton is God, Matthew.
- Matthew: I don't believe in God; but, if I did, he would be a black, left-handed guitarist. This is not Chaplin and Keaton. This is Clapton and Hendrix.
- Theo: Matthew, Clapton reinvented the electric guitar.
- Matthew: Clapton reinvented the electric guitar? Clapton plugs in a guitar, he plugs in an electric guitar and he plays it like an acoustic guitar. Hendrix plugs in an electric guitar, he plays with his teeth. There are soldiers in the Vietnam War right now. Who are they listening to? Clapton? No, they're listening to Hendrix. The guy who tells the truth.
- [first lines]
- Matthew: The first time I saw a movie at the cinématèque française I thought, "Only the French... only the French would house a cinema inside a palace."
- Theo: [reading from a book] A revolution isn't a gala dinner. It cannot be created like a book, a drawing or a tapestry. It cannot unfold with such elegance, tranquility and delicacy. Or such sweetness, affability. Courtesy, restraint and generosity. A revolution is an uprising, a violent act by which one class overthrows another.
- Matthew: [voice over] I could hear my heart pounding. I don't know if it was because I'd just been chased by the police or because I was already in love with my new friends. As we walked and talked and talked and talked, about politics, about movies, and why the French could never come close to producing a good rock band... I didn't want that night to ever end.
- Isabelle: My parents fucked once in their lives. That's why we're twins, they didn't want to make it twice.
- Isabelle: I entered this world on the Champs-Elysees, 1959. La trottoir du Champs Elysees. And do you know what my very first words were? New York Herald Tribune! New York Herald Tribune!
- Matthew: As we walked, we talked and talked and talked about politics, about movies, and about why the French could never come close to producing a good rock band.
- Matthew: Yes, I'm drunk. And you're beautiful. And tomorrow morning, I'll be sober but you'll still be beautiful.
- Isabelle: Theo, Theo. Wake up.
- Theo: [sleepily, eyes still closed] What is it?
- Isabelle: I want you to listen.
- Theo: Why?
- Isabelle: Because. Theo?
- Theo: Mm?
- Isabelle: I love you. You know that?
- Theo: I love you too.
- Isabelle: You love me too? That's funny. Are you listening? It's forever, right?
- Theo: What's forever?
- Isabelle: The two of us. Right?
- Theo: Yes. Why did Matthew say that?
- Isabelle: What did Matthew say?
- Theo: That we're monsters, freaks.
- Isabelle: I just want you to tell me that it's forever. It's forever.
- Father: You seem to be mesmerized by this tin lighter. I'd like to know why? Well?
- Matthew: George, please. Mathew's our guest.
- Father: No. No, no, no. I'm genuinely curious. I'd like to know why.
- Matthew: I was just fidgeting with Isabelle's lighter. And I wasn't really realizing and I noticed and I thought it was rude so I put it down on the table. But, I put it diagonally across one of these squares. Do you see? Look, that's when I noticed the lighter's length is exactly the same length as the diagonal itself. So, I put it lengthwise, along the outside edge. Look, it fits there too. But, it fits there. And it fits like this. And like this. And this way too. And I bet you, I bet you if I split it in half, wait a minute, it's got to fit somewhere. I mean, it really fits anywhere. Look, you see? I was noticing that the more you look at it, everything, this table, the objects on it, the refrigerator, this room, your nose, the world, suddenly, you realize that there's some sort of cosmic harmony of shapes and sizes. I was just wondering why? I don't know why that is. I know that it is.
- Father: [to Isabelle] You have an interesting friend here.
- Matthew: [voice over] We hardly left the apartment any more. We didn't know or care if it was day or night. We felt as if we were drifting out to sea, leaving the world far behind us.
- Matthew: If you really believed what you were saying, you'd be out there.
- Theo: Where?
- Matthew: Out there, on the street.
- Theo: I don't know what you mean.
- Matthew: Yes, you do. There's something going on out there. Something that feels like it could be really important. Something that feels like things could change. Even I get that! But, you're not out there. You're inside, with me, drinking expensive wine, talking about film, talking about Maoism. Why?
- Theo: That's enough.
- Matthew: Tell me why? Ask yourself - why? Because I don't think you really believe it.
- Matthew: [voice over] It was Henri Langlois who prayed at the cinematic and it was because he liked to show movies instead of letting them rot in some underground vault, to show any movies: good, bad, old, new, silents, westerns, thrillers; that all the New Wave film makers came here to learn their craft. This is where modern cinema was born.
- Isabelle: You know, Matthew, you aren't being very gallant. Is the prospect of making love to me so hateful?
- Isabelle: Pom, pom, pom-pom-pom, turu turururu, pom-pom-pom. Pom, pom, pom-pom-pom, turu turururu, pom-pom-pom. Pom, pom, pom-pom-pom, turu turururu. What film?
- Theo: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, and Renoir, Jean Rouch, Rohmer are here. Signoret, Jean Marais and God knows who else. Marcel Carne too.
- Matthew: For me, there's no comparison.
- Theo: Why? Because, Chaplin's incomparable.
- Matthew: No, because *Keaton's* incomparable.
- Theo: Keaton? You think Keaton's greater than Chaplin?
- Matthew: Absolutely, I do.
- Theo: Oh, you're not serious.
- Matthew: Of course I am.
- Theo: You're crazy.
- Matthew: Come on, Theo, in the first place, you can't deny that Keaton is funnier than Chaplin.
- Theo: Yes I can!
- Matthew: You don't think that Keaton is funnier than Chaplin?
- Theo: I don't think anyone's funnier than Chaplin.
- Matthew: Keaton is! Even when he's not doing anything, he's funny.
- Matthew: You're a big movie buff, right?
- Theo: Oui.
- Matthew: Then why don't you think of Mao as a great director making a movie with a cast of millions? All those millions of Red Guards marching together into the future with the little red book in their hands. Books, not guns. Culture, not violence. Can't you see what an epic, big movie that would make?
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