My Dinner with Andre (1981)

Wallace Shawn: Wallace Shawn

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Quotes 

• Wally : Suppose you're going through some kind of hell in your own life, well you would love to know if friends have experience similar things. But we just don't dare to ask each other.

  Andre : No, It would be like asking your friend to drop his role.

• Andre : What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold, don't in any way affect us? I mean, were animals after all. I mean... what does that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars, we're living in a fantasy world of our own making.

  Wally : Yeah, but I mean, I would never give up my electric blanket, Andre. I mean, because New York is cold in the winter. I mean, our apartment is cold! It's a difficult environment. I mean, our life is tough enough as it is. I'm not looking for ways to get rid of a few things that provide relief and comfort. I mean, on the contrary, I'm looking for more comfort because the world is very abrasive. I mean, I'm trying to protect myself because, really, there's these abrasive beatings to be avoided everywhere you look!

  Andre : But, Wally, don't you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean, you like to be comfortable and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility.

• Wally : I've lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side. And when I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat. Riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm 36, and all I think about is money.

• [Upon entering the restaurant] 

  Wally : I was beginning to realize that the only way to make this evening bearable, would be to ask Andre a few questions. Asking questions always relaxes me. In fact, I sometimes think that my secret profession is that I'm a private investigator, a detective. I always enjoy finding out about people. Even if they are in absolute agony, I always find it very interesting.

• Andre : Our minds are just focused on these goals and plans, which in themselves are not reality.

  Wally : Goals and plans are not... they're fantasy. They're part of a dream-life.

• Wally : I'm adequate to *do* any sort of a task, but I'm not adequate just to *be* a human being.

• [last lines] 

  Wally : [going home in a taxicab]  I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets. There wasn't a street, there wasn't a building, that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There, I was buying a suit with my father. There, I was having an ice cream soda after school. And when I finally came in, Debbie was home from work, and I told her everything about my dinner with Andre.

• [first lines] 

  Wally : The life of a playwright is tough. It's not easy as some people seem to think. You work hard writing plays and nobody puts them on. You take up other lines of work to try to make a living. I became an actor and people don't hire you. So, you just spend your days doing the errands of your trade.

• Wally : [V.O]  The reason I was meeting Andre was that an acquaintance of mine, George Grassfield, had called me and just insisted that I had to see him. Apparently, George had been walking his dog in an odd section of town the night before, and he suddenly come upon Andre leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing. Andre had explained to George he had just been watching the Ingrid Bergman movie, "Autumn Sonata" about twenty-five blocks away and he'd been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said, "I could always live in my art, but never in my life."

• Wally : That trip is going to be successful or unsuccessful based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot, and the cookie is in no position to know about that.