A Late Quartet

Juliette Gelbart:
Why are you so angry with me? What did I do to cause you to talk to me in this way? I mean, did we just spoil you too much? Is that what it is?

Alexandra Gelbart:
Do you think I had fun? Do you think it was fun growing up with two roving quartet players as parents? Who were gone 7 months of the year and I was always taking a back seat to a violin and a viola? Always. Is that fun? Does that seem fun to you?

Juliette Gelbart:
You have always been our first priority.

Alexandra Gelbart:
That is bullshit! That's bullshit, that's just words. That's nothing.

[first lines]

Peter Mitchell:
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. Or say that the end precedes the beginning, and the end and the beginning were always there before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now.

Juliette Gelbart:
She seems nice.

Robert Gelbart:
Yeah, she's... she's nice.

Juliette Gelbart:
You took this whole "alternating chairs" theme a little too far, though, don't you think?

Alexandra Gelbart:
When the gates are secured, emotions are welcomed. We can all sit down ready to be swept away. It's the ideal quartet.

Alexandra Gelbart:
You treat him like a doormat and he's going to start to wonder what's outside the door.

Peter Mitchell:
Casals emphasized the good stuff, the things he enjoyed. He encouraged. And for the rest, leave that to the morons, or whatever it is in Spanish, who judge by counting faults. "I can be grateful, and so must you be," he said, "for even one singular phrase, one transcendent moment."

Robert Gelbart:
Did you love me, or was I just convenient?

Little Girl in Subway:
People expect old men to die. They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look at them with eyes that wonder when... People watch with un-shocked eyes, but the old men know when an old man dies.