Wilde's Heirs

[IdleRich]

I did enjoy the bit in Succession when Tom realised that Greg had become privy to some potentially useful and dangerous information, I couldn't remember the precise quote so I had to look it up and apparently he said

"Information, Greg, it's like a bottle of fine wine. You store it, you hoard it, you save it for a special occasion, and then you smash someone's f---ing face in with it."

Contrast that with the following from Wild Wild West as the two main characters muse on Salma Hayek

Artemus Gordon: Ah, she is a breath of fresh ass
Captain James West: See, I told you she would be a distraction
Artemus Gordon: How so? I merely said she was a breast of fresh air.
Captain James West: For goodness sakes, it's time for bed, let's get some shut-ass

Anyway this is a thread for lines that you notice, those that jump out and hit you when you are watching a film or reading a book. Now it may be that you notice something cos it is very good, perhaps it is profound... it reveals some truth that you'd never clocked before, or perhaps it says something you and everyone else have always known but expresses it more neatly than anyone has previously managed. Or maybe it's a real stinker, a misfired attempt at humour or gnomic wisdom... or it could be like the Wild Wild West one, just really really shit.

 

[IdleRich]

There was a great one in The House by the Churchyard by Le Fanu... I wish I could find it again, but basically it described the grave as the "narrow end" of one's life and it had this imagery of a living person being an accretion of stuff that travels inevitably towards that end with everything you do or are - or even can be - inexorably focused on that destiny until ultimately you reach the grave with everything stripped away from you. Not a cheerful one I have to say but he - much more than I can do - skilfully linked the physical narrowness of a coffin to this limiting of our horizons... in fact of us.