Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Philip Elliott

Quote by Philip Elliott

“Hollywood Boulevard at night was a dream in neon. Mickey cruised along the strip, colorful lights blurring by like hallucinations. On his right, the El Capitan Theatre lured customers in like a Vegas casino, while the Walk of Fame preserved stardom on his left. Tourists bustled beneath the blinking signs like extras in the giant story of this land of stories, hoping for a real-life glimpse of that other world just behind the veneer of this place. In the ’50s, Hollywood Boulevard had looked different—less buildings, less vehicles, less pedestrians—but the aura of the strip, the energy, hadn’t changed at all.”

Quote by Philip Elliott

Work

Porno Valley

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Philip Elliott

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Philip Elliott. more

You May Also Like

“It wasn’t only benches, Charlie found, that bore names on them. There were rocks with names, buildings with names, parks with names, streets with names, even tables with names. Charlie thought it was a wildly large ask for a man to expect people to know who he was after he’d left. It’s too hard to compete with the excited men today who want to be remembered tomorrow. But no one could ever live that long. We don’t remember Lincoln every hour, or Jackie Robinson every meal. Charlie supposed the only solace a man could own is knowing he did plenty of good things in the time he had. It was all we got and a noble insufficiency was enough. He also figured if you were going to make a bench, not to inscribe your name on it, but instead something awesome like, “This Bench Was Made with One Hand.” No fool was going to remember your name, for God’s sake. But they might laugh at a spectacle such as a one-handed achievement.”

“These people have already attained, at whatever age, a degree of celebrity you a--holes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame is, essentially, God -- all you people know that, believe it, even if you don't admit it. As children you watched him, in the basement, cross-legged in front of the TV, and you thought you should be him, that his lines were yours, that his spot on Battle of the Network Stars was yours, that you'd be so good on the obstacle course - you'd win for sure! So doing all this, when he's no longer such the world-conquering celebrity, gives you power over him, the ability to embarrass him, to equalize the terrible imbalance you feel about your relationship to those who project their charisma directly, not sublimated through snarky little magazines. You and everyone like you, with your Q&As or columns or Web sites - you all want to be famous, you want to be rock stars, but you're stuck in this terrible bind, where you also want to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing, are read by your little coterie, while secretly seething about the Winona Ryders and Ethan Hawkes.”

“When a studio puts you under contract, its publicity department starts turning out news copy about you that you read with astonishment. You think, can this be me they’re talking about? They don’t really manufacture untruths, but they play up whatever makes interesting reading, and then a columnist adds his own little embellishments and another adds to that until there’s a whole body of so called ‘facts’ floating around—almost like another you—that simply isn’t real. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t real, either.”

“ஒருவனின் செல்வத்தைக் கவர்ந்திட போரிட்டால் அந்தப் போரில் வெற்றி தோல்வி உண்டு. ஆனால், ஒருவனின் புகழை எதிர்த்து இன்னொருவனால் போரிடவே முடியாது. நீரைப் பாறைகொண்டு நசுக்க முடியாது.”