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.