before sunset

• JESSE: It seems like we're designed to be slightly discontented with everything. Always trying to better our situation. You satisfy one desire and it just agitates another. But then I think, well, desire is the fuel of life. Do you think it's true that we'd never be unhappy if we never wanted anything?
• CELINE: But I feel human when I want something more than just basic survival needs. Wanting, whether it's intimacy with another person or a new pair of shoes is kind of beautiful. I like that we have ever-renewing desires.
• CELINE: Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.
• CELINE: It's funny I read [my journal] from '83 the other day. What really surprised me is that I was dealing with life the same way I am now. I was much more naive and hopeful, but the core, and the way I was feeling things is exactly the same as it is now. I haven't changed much at all.
• JESSE: I don't think anyone does. No one wants to admit it, but it's like we have these innate set points, and nothing much is going to change our general disposition.
• CELINE: I'm not depressed but I worry I'll get to the end of my life feeling I haven't done all I wanted to do.
• JESSE: I've always felt there was some kind of mystical core to the universe. But I don't believe that me, my personality, has any permanent place here. And the more I believe that, the more I can't go through life and think "This is no big deal." This is it. What do you see? What do you feel?
• CELINE: People just have an affair or even a relationship, they break up and they forget, they move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to really forget anyone I've been with, because each person has their own specific qualities, and you can never replace anyone, what is lost is lost. Each relationship when it ends, really damages me, I never fully recover. That is why I'm very careful with getting involved because it hurts me too much... or even getting laid, actually I don't do that. I will miss of the person the most mundane things. Like I'm obsessed with little things. Maybe I'm crazy, when I was a little girl my mom told me I was always late to school, so one day she followed me to see why I was late. I was looking at.. chestnuts falling from the trees and rolling down the side walk or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf cast a shadow on a tree trunk, little things. It is the same with people, I see in them little details so specific to each of them that move me, that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details.
• CELINE: For me, it's better I don't romanticize things as much anymore. I was suffering so much all the time. I still have lots of dreams but they are not in regard to my love life. It doesn't make me sad, it is the way it is.
• JESSE: Wait a second, you just said you need to love and be loved.
• CELINE: Yeah, but when I do, it quickly makes nauseous. It's a disaster. I feel really happy only when I am on my own. Even being alone is better than sitting next to lover and feeling lonely. (getting mad) It's not so easy for me to be all romantic. You start off that way and after you've been screwed over a few times you give up on all your delusional ideas and you just take whatever comes into your life. That's not even true I haven't been screwed over, I've just had too many blah relationships. They were not mean, they cared for me but there was no real excitement or connection, or at least not from my side.
• JESSE: I wasn't going to say this, but I have these dreams where I'm standing on a platform and you keep going by on a train, again and again and again and then I wake up with the fuckin' sweats. And then there's this other dream where you are pregnant beside me in bed naked and I want to touch you so bad but you tell me not to and then you look away and I touch you anyway, right on your ankle, and your skin is so soft and I wake up in sobs and my wife is sitting there looking at me and I am ten million miles from her and I know something is wrong and I can't keep living like this. There's got to be more to love than commitment. I have to tell you I put the whole idea of romantic love to bed when you weren't there that day I swore it off.