[voice over]
Now it is waiting and nobody cares. And when your wait is over this room will still exist and it will continue to hold shoes and dress and boxes and maybe someday another waiting person. And maybe not. The room doesn't care either.
Caden Cotard
Philip Seymour Hoffman · 17 quotes
Millicent Weems
Dianne Wiest · 4 quotes
Hazel
Samantha Morton · 3 quotes
Sammy Barnathan
Tom Noonan · 3 quotes
Olive Cotard
Sadie Goldstein · 2 quotes
Most scenes together: Caden Cotard & Sammy Barnathan (2)
Synecdoche, New York quotes
Page 2 of 2Caden Cotard is a man already dead, living in a half-world between stasis and antistasis. Time is concentrated and chronology confused for him. Up until recently he has strived valiantly to make sense of his situation, but now he has turned to stone.
Dear diary, I'm afraid I'm gravely ill. It is perhaps times like these that one reflects on things past. An article of clothing from when I was young. A green jacket. I walk with my father. A game we once played. Pretend we're faeries. I'm a girl faerie. My name is Laura Lee. And you're a boy faerie. Your name is Tita Lee. Pretend, when we're faeries we fight each other, and I say "Stop hitting me I'll die!" And you hit me again and I say, "Now I have to die." And then you say, "But I'll miss you." And I say, "But I have to. And you'll have to wait a million years to see me again. And I'll be put in a box, and all I'll need is a tiny glass of water and lots of tiny pieces of pizza and the box will have wings like an airplane." And you'll ask, "Where will it take you?" "Home." I say.
Harold Pinter died [...] No, wait. He won the Nobel Prize.
Hazel, you've been a part of me forever. Don't you know that? I breathe your name in every exhalation.
I don't menstruate, so I don't know how I could smell like I'm menstruating.
I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.
I know how to do the play now. It will all take place over the course of one day. And that day will be the day before you died. That day was the happiest day of my life. Then I'll be able to live it forever. See you soon.
I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That's what I want to explore. We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't.
I've watched you forever, Caden, but you've never really looked at anyone other than yourself. So watch me. Watch my heart break. Watch me jump. Watch me learn that after death there's nothing. There's no more watching. There's no more following. No love. Say goodbye to Hazel for me. And say it to yourself, too. None of us has much time.
My father died. They said his body was riddled with cancer and that he didn't know, he went in because his finger hurt. They said he suffered horribly, and that he called out for me before he died. They said that he said he regretted his life. They said he said a lot of things, too many to recount, and they said it was the longest and the saddest deathbed speech any of them had ever heard.
So I'm reading The Trial [...] I'm such an idiot for not knowing about this book. It's famous, as it turns out.
Try to keep in mind that a young person playing Willie Loman thinks he's only pretending to be at the end of a life full of despair. But the tragedy is that we know that you, the young actor will end up in this very place of desolation.
We're a hit. Reviews are great. Times said it was brilliant casting young people as Willy and Linda.