private lives

Victor: You're not a terrible gambler, are you?
Amanda: Inveterate. Chance rules my life.

---

Amanda: I'm not so sure I'm normal.
Victor: Oh, Mandy, of course you are, sweetly, divinely normal.
Amanda: I haven't any peculiar cravings for Chinamen or old boots, if that's what you mean.
Victor: [scandalized] Mandy!
Amanda: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives. It all depends on a combination of circumstance. If all the various cosmic thingummys fuse at the same moment, and the right spark is struck, there's no knowing what one mightn't do. That was the trouble with Elyot and me, we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle.

--

Amanda: What happens if one of us dies? Does the one that's left still laugh?
Elyot: Yes, yes, with all his might.
Amanda: [wistfully clutching his hand]: That's serious enough, isn't it?
Elyot: No, no it isn't. Death's very laughable, such a cunning little mystery. All done with mirrors.
Amanda: Darling, I believe you're talking nonsense.
Elyot: So is everyone else in the long run. Let's be superficial and pity the poor philosophers. Let's blow trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we can, like very small, quite idiotic school children. Let's savour the delight of the moment. Come and kiss me darling, before your body rots, and worms pop in and out of your eye sockets.

--
Elyot: [sitting on the edge of the sofa]: Things that ought to matter dreadfully, don't matter at all when one's happy, do they?
Amanda: What is so horrible is that one can't stay happy.
Elyot: Darling, don't say that.
Amanda: It's true. The whole business is a very poor joke.
Elyot: Meaning that sacred and beautiful thing, Love?
Amanda: Yes, meaning just that.
Elyot: [striding up and down the room dramatically]: What does it all mean, that's what I ask myself in my ceaseless quest for ultimate truth. Dear God, what does it all mean?
Amanda: Don't laugh at me, I'm serious.
Elyot: [seriously]: You mustn't be serious, my dear one; it's just what they want.
Amanda: Who's they?
Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in there damned sweetness and light.
Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.
Elyot: Certainly you must. We're figures of fun all right.