My Virtual Reading Room

Vincent. Ah, l'amour, l'amour! You see my darling one, on this earth where all our hopes are shattered, where all is deception and pain and disappointment, it's a marvelous consolation to remember we still have our love...

Mother. My big bear...

Vincent. All men are liars, Lucienne, faithless, false, hypocritical, vainglorious, or cowards; all women are perfidious, artificial, vain, capricious, or depraved; the world is nothing but a bottomless sink where the most monstrous beasts disport and distort themselves through oceans of slime. But there is one holy and sublime hope left in the world--the union of these two imperfect and horrible beings!

Mother. Yes, my darling. Perdican's big speech.

Vincent. [stops, surprised]. Is it? I've played it so often!

(From Jean Anouilh's "Eurydice")