One day, FJA dictated to me a list of one-liners, sayings and movie quotes of various sorts that, for one reason or another, stayed with him to his 91st year. The selection Forry gave follows his own introduction. See how many of these you can identify…many are still mysteries to me!
“Out of the trillions of words that I have seen in my life in books, magazines or newspapers, or words that I have spoken to someone, phrases from fiction I have read, or maybe just a nonsense phrase or two that has remained in my mind, I will now dictate all that I can remember:”
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When Romeo took his loved one to dinner, he was presented with the bill Romeowed Juliet.
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The song in the Umbrellas of Sherbourg that begins, “If it takes forever, I will wait for you.”
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“You can’t fool me, I’m too ignorant!”
Forry beams in the embrace of Maria the Robotrix.
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“People are dying every day who never died before.”
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“Has anybody here seen me?”
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Newspaper headline: ‘Lon Chaney Is Dead.’
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Some friend over the telephone, telling me Marilyn Monroe has died.
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While riding on a train from Fort MacArthur to Los Angeles, I remember word spreading like wildfire: “FDR HAS DIED.”
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Seeing on television and hearing, “JFK has just been assassinated.”
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Fritz Lang shouting at me, “You lie!”
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The first words the woman who was to become my wife ever spoke to me were, “May I help you, sir?” The last words of her life as she was dying were, “Help me, Forry.”
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There lies the best of my life.
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The tomb of Jules Verne.
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The grave of the wife of Georges Gallet.
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I stood on the Earth, high above the spot where, deep below, lay the remains of Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun when they committed suicide.
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The last words I understand Al Jolson spoke were, “I’m going”.
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The last words I understand Isaac Asimov spoke, “I’m still Isaac Asimov.”
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INTO EACH LIFE SOME PAIN MUST FALL.
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“Here’s a kiss for Cinderella.”
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“Ackerman, you’re a basket case of ack-rimony.” “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to science fiction.” “Are you crazy?” “You’re crazy!” “You’re not fit to be a member of the human race!”
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Upon being given my first razor by my father, he saying, “Now I suppose you’re going to cut your throat!”
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My beloved grandfather saying, “I’m through with you!” From that time on, he had no conversation with me.
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I didn’t know I could cry so many tears.
- FJA with a wax statue of Lon Chaney’s Phantom. Forry holds a copy of Lon of 1,000 Faces, a book he took a tremendous degree of pride in.
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Catherine Moore, dying of Alzheimer’s Disease, saying to me after I’d read her a few paragraphs from one of her own stories, saying, “Yes, I think I read that somewhere, sometime.”
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They met — Martin and Julie — a short while before they were born.
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“Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?”
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“I made it, Ma! Top of the world!”
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The Mystery of the Thirteen Stolen Idiots
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“We’re Bonnie and Clyde. We rob banks!”
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Forever, by Mildred Kram
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I am nothing.
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“Oh, the Bloody Fool.”
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“Tap, tap, tap…for ol’ tap lager, ol’ tap lager beer.”
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“If it’s a trip for pleasure or fun, call the flying Irishman. It‘s such a simple thing to do, call Hudson 2-7272.”
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“I’m a ready teddy. I’m a ruined bruin.”
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“Red haired boy with cheeks of tan.”
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Shave and a haircut, two bits.
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An urn with Bram Stoker’s ashes.
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An urn with Bram Stoker’s son’s ashes.
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The shades of night were falling fast, but I got a good look anyhow!
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Even tide and setting sun and one clear call for me,
And may there be no weeping at the bar when I set out to sea.
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“When we’ve lived our brief season on this mad, mundane mass, and both body and reason to eternity pass our impression will linger like the dew after dawn, like the hole made by fingers when from water withdrawn.” (Harry Warner Jnr.)
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Here they come with an insulting, thick rope!
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This is a strange and bitter fruit.
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I imagine most of you will not know that “gay” was not always the name by which homosexual men were known. In my youth, before “gay”, they were known as “fruits”. I understand much earlier, maybe during World War I, they were known as “fags”.
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“Do you have Prince Albert in a can? Well, let him out!”
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Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
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Once a special wristwatch was made where the inner workings were completely visible. James Warren gave me such a watch, which I wear on my wrist to this day.
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George Pal’s Girl Friday, Gae Griffith.
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Dig you later, alligator!
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After a while, crocodile!
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Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.
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Madamoiselle from Armentieres,
She hasn’t been screwed in fifty years,
Hinky, dinky parlez vous.
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The city of the year 2000.
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I remember a film in which two sides were fighting and a young soldier and a girl fell in love. She was, I think, from some exotic country and she knew very little English. She didn’t know how to say “I love you,” she’d only heard soldiers saying one word frequently, so she embraced her lover and passionately declared, “I fuck you!”
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People are dying to get into cemeteries.
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In burlesque there was a comedian who’d say, “Slowly, I turn.” There was something he added to it, but I can’t remember what the extra words were that made it so funny.
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“Poor old Boss. Dead and his world dead with him.”
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“If we don’t end war, war will end us.”
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“Shoot, shoot ‘em I say! Shoot!”
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“We’ll never see men in the air again.”
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“I dreamed of those fellows last night. Great, black, inhuman chaps come bombing and bombing.”
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“I’m a solider too, daddy.”
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The forever war.
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The world below.
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Ralph 124 C for one plus.
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Waterbabies.
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In the language of the great apes, Tarzan means “white skin”.
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My yellow jacket girl.
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Mary had a little lamb; the doctor fainted.
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“It is this or that. All the universe…or nothing. Which shall it be?”
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I didn’t know you were old enough to have a grandfather.
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There was a comedian who sat down on a park bench with dew at one end and a girl on the other. “Some dew, isn’t there?”, he asked. “Some don’t!”, she replied.
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“This is a war of pundine punishment!”
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“Oh, and you smoke too much! You‘re not eupeptic.”
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London is so full of fog that it has penetrated our minds, set boundaries for our visions.
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