Quote 1
I told the driver to go to the Parc Montsouris, and got in, and slammed the door. Brett was leaning back in the corner, her eyes closed. I sat beside her. The cab started with a jerk.
"Oh, darling, I’ve been so miserable," Brett said. (3.40)
Despite Brett’s earlier show of high spirits, she can admit her misery to Jake; their intimate relationship allows her to let down her guard and reveal her feelings to him.
Quote 2
"Oh darling," Brett said, "I’m so miserable."
I had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. "You were happy a minute ago." (7.30)
Brett’s misery is never too far beneath the surface. Every time she’s with Jake, his mere presence seems to remind her of her feelings for him, and the impossibility of their situation.
Quote 3
"Come on," she whispered throatily. "Let’s get out of here. Makes me damned nervous."
Outside in the hot brightness of the street Brett looked up at the treetops in the wind. The praying had not been much of a success.
"Don’t know why I get so nervy in church," Brett said. "Never does me any good." We walked along.
"I’m damned bad for a religious atmosphere," Brett said. "I’ve the wrong type of face." (18.14)
Brett can’t take the contemplative atmosphere of the church—her own demons make her too nervous in such a setting. The "nervy" feeling she gets in church probably has more to do with her denial of her own unhappiness than with anything else.
Quote 4
"You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a b****."
"Yes."
"It’s sort of what we have instead of God."
"Some people have God," I said. "Quite a lot." (19.55)
After leaving Romero, Brett finally feels as though she’s done something right, even if it makes her miserable; this gives her a sense of some kind of spiritual wholeness for the first time, which she puts in the place of God. Jake, whose faith perseveres throughout the novel, corrects her when she implies that nobody believes in God in their world.
Quote 5
"I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m not going to be one of those b****es that ruins children." (19.49)
Brett’s affair with Romero (who’s only nineteen) has forced her to confront her conscience for the first time—yes, she actually has one! Her obsessive wondering in the last two chapters about whether or not she is a "b****" reaches its culmination here, where she has apparently made up her mind not to be one.
Quote 6
"When I think of the hell I’ve put chaps through. I’m paying for it all now."
"Don’t talk like a fool," I said. "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it."
"Oh, no. I’ll lay you don’t."
"Well, let’s shut up about it."
"I laughed about it too, myself, once." She wasn’t looking at me. "A friend of my brother’s came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?"
"No," I said. "Nobody ever knows anything." (4.4)
Brett sees Jake’s ordeal as a punishment for her own mistreatment of men (rather a selfish way of approaching it). She admits that even she has laughed about a similar situation before it affected her directly—emasculated men are "supposed" to be comic figures, rather than tragic ones.
Quote 7
"It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you can get in the bar of a big hotel," I said.
"Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite anymore."
"No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." (19.53)
Brett and Jake hang on to an old-fashioned idea of gentility associated with hotel bars (and curiously enough, horse racing)—in this scene, the hotel bar is a place of refuge from the pressures of the outside world and the consequences of Brett’s actions.
Quote 8
"Don’t get drunk, Jake," she said. "You don’t have to."
"How do you know?"
"Don’t," she said. "You’ll be all right."
"I’m not getting drunk," I said. "I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine."
"Don’t get drunk," she said. "Jake, don’t get drunk." (19.58)
For the only time, Brett actually begs Jake to stay sober; she doesn’t want to drink herself, and needs him to stay with her in her state of honesty and unhappiness.
Quote 9
"You’re getting damned romantic."
"No, bored." (3.35)
This brief interchange between Brett and Jake (Jake is the bored one) cancels out the possibility of real romance—it’s just something to pass the time.
Quote 10
"It’s funny," I said. "It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love."
"Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again.
"I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling."
"No," she said. "I think it’s hell on earth." (4.4)
Brett can’t handle her feelings for Jake—she wants him but can’t have him, which creates the sensation of "hell on earth" for her. Jake, on the other hand, experiences a kind of simultaneous pain and pleasure in seeing Brett.
Quote 11
"Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?"
"I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it." (7. 7)
Jake attempts to find some kind of unconventional solution to their no sex problem, but Brett knows herself too well to accept it. Her statement that she’d just tromper (cheat on) Jake with everyone is true, and both of them know it.
Quote 12
"Do you still love me, Jake?"
"Yes," I said.
"Because I’m a goner," Brett said.
"How?"
"I’m a goner. I’m mad about the Romero boy. I’m in love with him I think."
"I wouldn’t be if I were you."
"I can’t help it. I’m a goner. It’s tearing me all up inside." (16. 48)
Brett expresses a marked sense of resignation here; she recognizes that her feelings for Romero are actually love, or something akin to it, at least, which she links to death ("I’m a goner"). This reiterates Brett’s earlier claim, in relation to Jake, that love is hell on earth.
Quote 13
"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" (19.60)
This line gets us every time. As the novel closes, Jake doesn’t even have the energy to imagine a happy ending – he knows that he and Brett can’t be together, and now that this possibility has been irrevocably cancelled out, he recognizes that it could never have happened, even in the past. The idea of their relationship is simply a pretty but impossible dream.
Quote 14
"My dear, I am sure Mr. Barnes has seen a lot. Don’t think I don’t think so, sir. I have seen a lot, too."
"Of course you have, my dear," Brett said. "I was only ragging."
"I have been in seven wars and four revolutions," the count said.
"Soldiering?" Brett asked.
"Sometimes, my dear. And I have got arrow wounds. Have you ever seen arrow wounds?" (7.18)
The count’s definition of "seen a lot" is associated with war—as though war is the only real experience a man can have.
Quote 15
"What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back."
"Don’t be an ass."
"Were you in the war, Mike?" Cohn asked.
"Was I not."
"He was a very distinguished soldier," Brett said. "Tell them about the time your horse bolted down Piccadilly." (13.28)
Mike’s questionably sarcastic wish that the war was back is telling. Can it be that the war gave him a sense of purpose that he’s now lacking?
Quote 16
"The bulls are my best friends."
I translated to Brett.
"You kill your friends?" she asked.
"Always," he said in English, and laughed. "So they don’t kill me." (16.57)
Romero voices an idea that runs through the entire novel—his relationship to the bulls is a parallel to the relationships of Jake and his friends. Everyone is engaged in a constant state of barely-disguised warfare.