Top 30 Quotes From Gil

Gil: Would you read it?
Ernest: Your novel?
Gil: Yeah, it's about 400 pages long, and I'm just looking for an opinion.
Ernest: My opinion is I hate it.
Gil: Well you haven't even read it yet.
Ernest: If it's bad, I'll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it's good, I'll be envious and hate all the more. You don't want the opinion of another writer.

Gil: He's a pseudo-intellectual. Just a little bit.
Inez: Ah, Gil, I hardly think he'd be lecturing at the Sorbonne if he's a pseudo-intellectual.

Gil: Hi Mr. Hemingway.
Ernest: The assignment was to take the hill. There were four of us, five if you counted Vicente, but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off and couldn't fight as could when I first met him. And he was young and brave, and the hill was soggy from days of rain. And it sloped down toward a road and there were many German soldiers on the road. And the idea was to aim for the first group, and if our aim was true we could delay them.
Gil: Were you scared?
Ernest: Of what?
Gil: Of getting killed.
Ernest: You'll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?
Gil: Yeah, I do. I'd say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.
Ernest: It's something all men before you have done, all men will do.
Gil: I know, I know.
Ernest: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?
Gil: Actually, my fiancé is pretty sexy.
Ernest: And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion. And you for at least that moment lose your fear of death.
Gil: No, that doesn't happen.
Ernest: I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing. And when the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face like some rhino hunters I know, or Belmonte, who's truly brave. It is because they love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds, until the return that it does to all men. And then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

[Final lines]
Gabrielle: By the way, my name is Gabrielle.
Gil: I'm Gil.
Gabrielle: Nice to meet you.
Gil: It's a pretty name.

Inez: You're in love with a fantasy.
Gil: I'm in love with you.

Gil: I'm a huge Mark Twain fan. I think you can make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.
Ernest: Do you box?
Gil: No. Well... Not really, no.

Gil: You can fool me, but you cannot fool Ernest Hemingway!

Ernest: I think a woman is equal to a man in courage. Have you ever shot a charging lion?
Adriana: Never.
Ernest: Would you like to know how that feels?
Adriana: I don't think so.
Ernest: You ever hunted?
Adriana: No.
Ernest: You?
Gil: Only for bargains.

Gil: I'm having trouble because I'm a Hollywood hack who never gave real literature a shot.

Gil: I'm jealous and I'm trusting. It's cognitive dissonance. F. Scott Fitzgerald talked about it.

Gil: Wow! Didn't take Gauguin long to start steaming in.

Adriana: Well, good luck with your book and your wedding
Gil: Thanks, I think you would like Inez she has a, a very sharp sense of humour and attractive, I wouldn't say that we agree on everything
Adriana: But the important things
Gil: Yeah, or actually maybe the small things, sometimes there is a little bit of a disconnect with the big things. She wants to live in Malibu and wants me to work in Hollywood... but i will say that we both like Indian food, not all Indian food, but the pita bread, we both like pita bread, I guess its called naan

Gil: She's right, I recently read a two-volume biography of Rodin, and Rose was the wife, Camille the mistress.

Gil: You're very kind, but I wouldn't call my babbling poetic. Although I was on a pretty good roll there.

[first lines]
Gil: This is unbelievable! Look at this! There's no city like this in the world. There never was.
Inez: You act like you've never been here before.
Gil: I don't get here often enough, that's the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!
Inez: Why does every city have to be in the rain? What's wonderful about getting wet?

Gil: Thomas Stearns Eliot? T.S. Eliot? T.S. Eliot? Prufrock is like my mantra.

Helen: We saw a wonderfully funny American film last night.
Inez: Who was in it?
Helen: Oh, I don't know. I forget the name.
Gil: Wonderful but forgettable. It sounds like a film I've seen. I probably wrote it.

Ernest: You'll never be a great writer if you fear dying, do you?
Gil: Yeah, I do. I would say it's my greatest fear.

Gil: You know how I think better in the shower, get all those positive ions flowing.

Gil: That's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying.

Man: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Luis: I see a film!
Gil: I see an insurmountable problem!
Salvador: I see a rhinoceros!

Inez: Why don't you tell them about the lead character that you're working on right now?
Carol: Yes! Oh, come on.
Gil: I don't like to discuss my work.
Inez: Well, dear, you don't have to tell them the whole plot, just the character.
Gil: No, No, No.
Inez: Okay. He works in a nostalgia shop.
Carol: What's a-- What's a nostalgia shop?
Paul: Oh, not one of those stores where they sell Shirley Temple dolls and old radios? And I never know who buys that stuff. Who'd want it?
Carol: I don't know.
Inez: Well, people who live in the past, people who think that their lives would be happier if they lived in an earlier time.
Paul: And just which era would you have preferred to live in, Miniver Cheevy?
Inez: Paris in the '20s, in the rain.
Gil: Wouldn't have been bad.
Inez: When the rain wasn't acid rain
Paul: I see. And no global warming, no TV and suicide bombing, and nuclear weapons, drug cartels.
Carol: Usual menu of cliched horror stories.

Gil: That was Djuna Barnes? No wonder she wanted to lead.

Adriana: I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.
Gil: No, you can't, you couldn't pick one. I mean I can give you a checkmate argument for each side. You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can't. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.

Gil: Listen. Where I come from, people measure out their lives with coke spoons.

Gil: These people don't have any antibiotics!
Adriana: What are you talking about?
Gil: Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you'll start imagining another time was really your... You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life's a little unsatisfying.
Adriana: That's the problem with writers. You are so full of words.

Gil: Yes, but you're a surrealist! I'm a normal guy!

Gil: It's understated but elegant. That's what you always say.
Helen: Cheap is cheap is what I always say.

Gil: 500 francs for a Matisse? Yeah I think that sounds fair! You know, I wonder if actually I can pick up 6 or 7?

Gil: Gil Pender.
Ernest: Hemingway.
Gil: Hemingway?
Ernest: You liked my book?
Gil: Liked? I loved all of your work.
Ernest: Yes. It was a good book because it was an honest book, and that's what war does to men. And there's nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully. And then it's not only noble but brave.