Home > Work > Among the Porcupines

Among the Porcupines QUOTES

Among the Porcupines QUOTES

1 " Worrying about clothes, though, is easy to understand. When it comes to clothes, people are very competitive, especially if they're movie stars. I think every smart woman devises a look for herself. Margaret Sullivan had a look: romantic, young, pretty, smart. Katharine Hepburn made a look for herself as this wonderful old salty character. Marilyn Monroe had a look; it was like, "Fuck me with sadness"... "

― Carol Matthau , Among the Porcupines

2 " I love you because I love your sweet lies.’

‘I love you because you know I’m lying and you let it go. I hate this business of nailing each other every time you hear a lie, particularly because you know the truth is a bore.’

‘How much did the dress cost?’

‘Walter, you know how I feel about things. I told you about that quote I read in The New York Times years ago.’

‘What quote?’

‘We are not here to see through one another. We are here to see one another through.’
‘Carol, how much did the dress cost? "

― Carol Matthau , Among the Porcupines

3 " On a cold winter day, a group of porcupines huddled together closely to save themselves by their mutual warmth from freezing. But soon they felt the mutual quills and drew apart. Whenever the need for warmth brought them closer together again, this second evil was repeated, so that they were tossed back and forth between these two kinds of suffering until they discovered a moderate distance that proved most tolerable. – Thus the need for company, born of the emptiness and monotony inside them, drives men together; but their many revolting qualities and intolerable faults repel them again. The medium distance that they finally discover and that makes association possible is politeness and good manners. Whoever does not keep this distance is told, among the British: keep your distance! – To be sure, this only permits imperfect satisfaction of the need for mutual warmth, but it also keeps one from feeling the prick of the quills. – But whoever possesses much inner warmth of his own will prefer to avoid company lest he cause or suffer annoyance.

Schopenhauer, as quoted by Carol Matthau "

― Carol Matthau , Among the Porcupines

4 " Walter was nominated for a Tony Award. I wrote a wonderful speech for him, thanking his beautiful, young, rich, wife. Walter did win and made that speech so successfully that it was picked up by a lot of winners that night, including Margaret Leighton, who said, ‘I feel just as Walter feels, and I want to thank my beautiful, young, rich wife. "

― Carol Matthau , Among the Porcupines