Henry Fool Quotes

Henry Fool is a television program that first aired in 1970 . Henry Fool ended its run in 1970.

It features Larry Meistrich as producer, Hal Hartley in charge of musical score, and Michael Spiller as head of cinematography.

Henry Fool is recorded in English and originally aired in United States. Each episode of Henry Fool is 137 minutes long. Henry Fool is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.

The cast includes: Thomas Jay Ryan as Henry Fool, James Urbaniak as Simon, James Urbaniak as Simon Grim, Parker Posey as Fay Grim, and Kevin Corrigan as Warren.

Henry Fool Quotes

Thomas Jay Ryan as Henry Fool

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "We gotta talk. What the hell were you trying to do when you wrote this thing?"
• (James Urbaniak) "Nothing."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Well, you know, you wrote it in a kind of iambic pentameter."
• (James Urbaniak) "Iambic what?"
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Verse. Look. In my opinion, this is pretty powerful stuff. Though your spelling is Neanderthal and your reasoning a little naive, your instincts are profound. But the whole thing needs to be given a more cohesive shape. It can be expanded, followed through, unified. Do you see what I'm getting at? Are you willing to commit yourself to this? To really work on it? To give it its due in the face of adversity and discouragement? To rise to the challenge you yourself have set? And don't give me that wonderstruck "I'm only a humble garbage man" bullshit, either."
• (James Urbaniak) "It hurts to breathe."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Of course it does."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "An honest man is always in trouble, remember that Simon."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "I've been bad. Repeatedly."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "The greats all say the same thing: little. And what little there is to be said is immense. Or, in other words, follow your own genius to where it leads without regard for the apparent needs of the world at large, which, in fact, has no needs as such, but, rather, moments of exhaustion in which it is incapable of prejudice. We can only hope to collide with these moments of unselfconsciousness. This divine fatigue. This --"
• (Parker Posey) "Push over."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "As I tried to make plain in Paris: 'Nous savons que nous avons chuté parce que nous savons qui nous sommes.' 'We know we have fallen because we know who we are."
• (Parker Posey) "When were you in Paris?"
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "That's beside the point. But did they listen to me? Of course not."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Once; I forget where I was. Central America, maybe. Somewhere hot. Stupid job, bad pay, dangerous location, and water so foul the natives wouldn't even piss in it; this crowd of drunken motherfuckers hired by the local drug cartel showed up at my hotel room and threatened to tear me limb from limb. And I say, "Listen hombres, OK, you got me outnumbered here four to one and you're gonna kill me here tonight and not a soul in this dimly lit world is gonna notice I'm gone. But one of you, one of you, one of you is gonna have his eye torn out. Period." Silence. "I repeat myself: One of you poor, underpaid jerks is gonna have an eye ripped out of its socket. I promise. It's a small thing perhaps, all things considered, but I will succeed, because it's the only thing I have left to do in this world. So why don't you just take a good look at one another one last time, and think it over a few minutes more.""
• (James Urbaniak) "And then what happened?"
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Well. Here I am, still, after all."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "I don't discriminate between different ways of knowing."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Look, Simon, I made love to your mother about half an hour ago, and now I'm beginning to think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "The world is full of shit indeed."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "A prophet is seldom heeded in his own land."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Opportunity will move out of the way to let a man pass it by."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "You see Simon, there's three kinds of "there". There's "there", t-h-e-r-e: "There are the donuts." Then there's "their", t-h-e-i-r, which is the possessive: "It is their donut." Then finally, there's "they're", t-h-e-y-apostrophe-r-e. A contraction meaning: "They're -- they're the donut people." Got it?"

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "She was an ugly and mean-spirited kid, but she knew how to play upon my weaknesses, which, I admit, are deep and many."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Certain work needs to be experienced all at once in order for one to appreciate the full force of it's character."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "You can't put a fence around a man's soul, we think and feel where and when we think and feel. We are servants of our muse and we toil where she commands."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Perhaps I wasn't made to walk through shit."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "It's a philosophy. A poetics. A politics, if you will. A literature of protest. A novel of ideas. A pornographic magazine of truly comic book proportions. It is, in the end, whatever the hell I want it to be. And when I'm through with it it's going to blow a hole this wide straight through the world's own idea of itself."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "They're throwing bottles at your house. Come on. Let's go break their arms."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "We know we have fallen, for we know who we are."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Can you sit there, look me straight in the eye and tell me that you don't think this poem is great? That it is not at once a poem of great lyrical beauty and ethical depth; that it is not a genuine, highly profound meditation on the miracle of existence?"
• (James Urbaniak) "I --"
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Can you?"
• (James Urbaniak) "No. I can't."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "So you see you have no choice."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Only someone who really cares doubts."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "You can't go to work. You have to stay home and write."

• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "You can't argue about taste."

Parker Posey as Fay Grim

• (Parker Posey) "Ned, have you been drinking?"
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "His throat hurt from smoking."

James Urbaniak as Simon

• (Unnamed) "Be reasonable."
• (James Urbaniak) "Why?"

• (James Urbaniak) "I worked, while you sat back and comfortably dismissed the outside world as too shallow, stupid and mean to appreciate your ideas."
• (Thomas Jay Ryan) "Is that such a priority? Is that some sort of measure of a man's worth? To drag what's best in him out into the street so every average slob with some pretense to taste can poke it with a stick?"
• (James Urbaniak) "Maybe. Maybe it is."

Kevin Corrigan as Warren

• (Kevin Corrigan) "Are you a registered voter?"
• (Parker Posey) "Don't you dare talk to me that way."

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