Velvet Goldmine

Mandy Slade:
It's funny how beautiful people are when they're walking out the door.

Brian Slade:
Ha! Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner!

Brian Slade:
I should think that if people were to get the wrong impression of me, the one to which you so eloquently refer, it wouldn't be the wrong impression in the slightest.

Jerry Divine:
That man sitting over there in the white suit... is the biggest thing to come out of this country sinced sliced Beatles.

Mandy:
Today, there'd be fighting in the streets. But in 1972, it was more like dancing.

Mandy:
Now, just because someone sees, you know, two naked people asleep in bed together, it doesn't necessarily prove sex was involved. It does, however, make for a very strong case.

Mandy:
"You live in terror of not being misunderstood.

Curt Wild:
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

Arthur:

Curt Wild:
We set out to change the world... ended up just changing ourselves.

Arthur Stuart:
What's wrong with that?

Curt Wild:
Nothing, if you don't look at the world.

Curt Wild:
Listen, a real artist creates beautiful things and puts nothing of his own life into them, OK?

Cecil:
Brian was elegance walking arm and arm with a lie.

Mandy Slade:
I needn't mention how essential dreaming is to the character of the rock star.

Cecil:
Style always wins out in the end.

Cecil:
According to legend, when Kurt was 13 he was discovered in the family loo at the service of his older brother, and was promptly sent off for eighteen months of electric shock treatment. It was guaranteed the treatment would fry the fairy clean out of him, but all it did was make him go bonkers whenever he heard an electric guitar.

Brian Slade:
Oh yes. Quite soon we actually plan to take over the world!

Mod Girlfriend:
So what are you, a mod or a rocker?

Brian Slade:
Six of one, half a dozen of the other, really.

Curt Wild:
Make a wish, and see yourself on stage, inside out. A tangle of garlands in your hair. Of course you are pleasantly surprised.

Malcolm:
I don't believe that there is much of a future to speak of.

Pearl:
We're in a bit of a decadent spiral, aren't we?

Billy:
Sinking fast.

Ray:
Big Brother, baby, all the way.

Malcolm:
Which is why we prefer impressions to ideas.

Billy:
Situations to subjects.

Pearl:
Brief flights to sustained ones.

Ray:
Exceptions to types.

Pearl:
And yourself?

Curt Wild:
Let me raise a toast to the loveliest man in Europe.

Brian Slade:
And they say it isn't natural!

Brian Slade:
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person... Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth.

Mandy:
I don't think I have what you're looking for.

Arthur:
I think you do, actually.

Mandy:
Oh, yeah? what makes you say that?

Arthur:
That smile for one thing.

Mandy:
Well, smiles lie.

Arthur:
Exactly.

Brian Slade:
Rock and Roll is a prostitute, it should be tarted up.

Mandy Slade:
I was beaming, truly, like someone's mum.

Brian Slade:
They despised him.

Mandy Slade:
Yeah...

Brian Slade:
Wish I'd though of it.

Brian Slade:
There is suffering at the birth of a child just as there is suffering at the birth of a star.

Female Narrator:
For once, there was an unknown land, full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes; a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream; a land where all things are perfect and poisonous.

Curt Wild:
A real artist creates beautiful things and... puts nothing of his own life into them. Okay?

Arthur Stuart:
Is that what you did?

Curt Wild:
No. No. We set out to change the world and ended up... just changing ourselves.

Arthur Stuart:
What's wrong with that?

Curt Wild:
Nothing... If you don't look at the world.

Brian Slade:
I knew I should create a sensation, gasped the Rocket, and he went out. (Oscar Wilde - from the Remarkable Rocket)

Curt Wild:
Everyone’s into this scene because it’s supposedly the thing to do right now. But you just can’t fake being gay. You know, if you’re gonna claim that you’re gay you’re gonna have to make love in gay style, and most of these kids... just aren’t going to make it. That line, ‘Everybody’s bisexual’, that’s a very popular thing to say right now. Personally, I think it’s meaningless.

Curt Wild:
He thought he f***ing was Maxwell Demon in the end – you know? And Maxwell Demon...he thought he was God.

Curt Wild:
Heroin used to be my main man. You could be my main man.

Mandy Slade:
You all know me – subtlety’s my middle name. It’s as subtle as the piece of skin between my vagina and my anus – ooh la! la! Now what’s that called, I can never quite remember...No man’s land? Oh gosh – my geesh, dah-ling!

Mandy Slade:
I knew it was over. I just didn't know it was up to me to make it stop.

Mandy Slade:
Time, places, people,... they're all speeding up. So, to cope with this evolutionary paranoia, strange people are chosen who, through their art, can move progress more quickly.

Arthur Stuart:
Softly, he said, "I will mangle your mind".

Opening Text:
Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should never the less be played at maximum volume.

Female Narrator:
Histories like ancient ruins are the fictions of empires. While everything forgotten hangs in dark dreams of the past, ever threatening to return.

Oscar Wilde:
I want to be a pop idol.

Young Boy:
Put out the torches. Hide the moon. Hide the stars.

Female Narrator:
Childhood, adults always say, is the happiest time in life. But as long as he could remember, Jack Fairy knew better.

Child on Subway:
Yesterday upon a stair, I saw a man who wasn't there, He wasn't there again today, How I wish he'd go away.

Trevor:
Rock music has always been a reaction against accepted standards. And homosexuality has been going on for centuries. At the moment having a ‘gay’ image is the ‘in’ thing, just like a few years ago it was trendy to wear a long grey coat with a Led Zeppelin record under your arm.

Lou:
I want you because you remember.

Cecil [about Curt]:
The doctors guaranteed the treatment would fry the fairy clean out of him. But all it did was make him bonkers everytime he heard electric guitar.