Love and Death

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

— But if there is no God, then life has no meaning. Why go on living? Why not just commit suicide?
— Well, let's not get hysterical. I could be wrong. I'd hate to blow my brains out, then see they found something.

— Nothingness. Non-existence. Black emptiness.
— What did you say?
— Oh, I was just planning my future.

I never want to marry. I just want to get divorced.

— Remember that nice boy next door? Raskolnikov?
— Yeah?
— He killed two ladies.
— No! What a nasty story.
— Bobick told it to me. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers.
— He must have been possessed.
— Well, he was a raw youth.
— Raw youth? He was an idiot.
— And he acted insulted and injured.
— I hear he was a gambler.
— You know, he could be your double.
— Really? How novel.

Don't get me wrong, I love him like a brother. Just not one of mine.

— Are you suggesting passive resistance?
— No, I'm suggesting active fleeing.

— Come to my quarters tomorrow at three.
— I can't.
— Please!
— It's immoral. What time?
— Who is to say what is moral?
— Morality is subjective.
— Subjectivity is objective.
— Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality.
— Not as an essential extension of ontological existence.
— Can we not talk about sex so much?

Father, Boris is trying to commit suicide. Last week he contemplated killing himself by inhaling next to an Armenian.

— One, two! One, two! One, two!
— Three is next, if you're having any trouble.

— What are you going to do when the French soldiers rape your sister?
— I don't have one.
— That's no answer.
— They won't rape Ivan. They'd throw up.

— Forgive my haste. We have always heard that Spanish blood is the hottest.
— I had mine cooled for the summer.

— Any news of cousin Sonja?
— Only that she and Voskovec are unhappy and she takes lovers.
— She takes uppers?
— Lovers.
— Oh, lovers.

— Sex without love is an empty experience.
— Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

— What's a Jew?
— You never saw a Jew? Here, I have some sketches. There are Jews.
— No kidding! They all have these horns?
— No. This is the Russian Jew. The German Jew has these stripes.

— You're a tyrant and a dictator and you start wars.
— Why is he reciting my credits?