Flan Kittredge Quotes in Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

Flan Kittredge: Why do you stay in South Africa?

Geoffrey: One has to stay there. To educate the black workers. And we'll know we've been successful when they kill us.

Ouisa Kittredge: Oh, goodness.

Flan Kittredge: Planning the revolution that will destroy you.

Ouisa Kittredge: Putting your life on the line.

Geoffrey: We don't think of it like that. I wish you'd come and visit.

Ouisa Kittredge: Oh, would we visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor? "Oh, are you sure they're the worst off? I mean, we've come all this way. I mean, we don't want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock." You know it doesn't seem right, sitting on the East Side, talking about revolution.

Flan Kittredge: Never bullshit a bullshitter.

Flan Kittredge: This is what I dreamt. I didn't dream, so much as realize this. I feel so close to the paintings. I'm not just selling, like, pieces of meat. I remembered why I loved paintings in the first place, what got me into this. I thought... dreamt... remembered... how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then, one day, he loses it. Loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting. I remembered asking my kids' second-grade teacher: 'Why are all your students geniuses? Look at the first grade - blotches of green and black. The third grade - camouflage. But your grade, the second grade, Matisses, every one. You've made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade. What is your secret?' 'I don't have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.' 'I dreamt of colour. I dreamt of our son's pink shirt. I dreamt of pinks and yellows. And the new Van Gogh the Museum of Modern Art got. And the Irises that sold for $53.5 million. And, wishing a Van Gogh was mine, I looked at my English hand-lasted shoes, and thought of Van Gogh's tragic shoes, and remembered me as I was-a painter losing a painting.'

Flan Kittredge: Having a rich friend is like drowning and your friend makes lifeboats.

Ouisa: Only your friend gets very touchy if you say one word: lifeboat.

Flan Kittredge: I thought, dreamt, remembered how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then one day he loses it - loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting.