"Nick Smith: The cha cha is no more ridiculous than life itself."
"Fred Neff: Men are dates, date substitutes or potential dates. I find that dehumanizing."
"Nick Smith: Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest,
conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic.
In short, highly attractive to women."
"Charlie Black: I can't believe you don't have a driver's license.
Tom Townsend: Of course I don't. I live in Manhattan."
"Tom Townsend: You don't have to read a book to have an opinion."
"Nick Smith: I've always planned to be a failure anyway, that's why I plan to marry an extremely wealthy woman."
"Jane Clark: Whatever. And, that you're completely impossible and out of control, with some sort of drug problem and a fixation on what you consider Rick Von Sloneker's wickedness. You're a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious, and tiresome. And lately, you've gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?
Nick Smith: I'm not tiresome."
"Man at Bar: The acid test is whether you take any pleasure in responding to the question "What do you do?" I can't bear it."
"Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?
Tom Townsend: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author."
"Tom Townsend: I've never been this drunk before.
The problem is, with Fred no longer drinking, I can't pace myself."
"Nick Smith: Playing strip poker with an exhibitionist somehow takes the challenge away."
"Tom Townsend: He seems less pessimistic than you.
Charlie Black: I know: it doesn't ring true."
"Nick Smith: The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them."
"Serena Slocum: I didn't save your letters but I didn't throw them away.
Tom Townsend: I don't understand, is that a riddle?"
"Cynthia McLean: Is our language so impoverished that we have to use acronyms of French phrases to make ourselves understood?
Nick Smith: Yes."
"Nick Smith: Tom's hardly a phoney. Just mildly deluded. He's a perfectly nice guy.
Charlie Black: That's just another aspect of his phoniness. He's a terrible phoney, and when he's not being a phoney, he's a bastard.
Nick Smith: Oh, come on."
"Nick Smith: I guess you could say it's extremely vulgar, I like it a lot."
Metropolitan, 1990
