The Cobweb (1955)

John Kerr: Steven W. Holte

Photos 

Quotes 

• Steven Holte : Artists are better off dead.

  Karen McIver : Why?

  Steven Holte : People pay more attention to them when they're dead. That's what's so troublesome.

  Karen McIver : Is that what you are, a painter?

  Steven Holte : They said Van Gogh was crazy because he killed himself. He couldn't sell a painting while he was alive, and now they're worth thirty million dollars. They weren't that bad then and they're not that good now, so who's crazy?

• [last lines] 

  Steven Holte : Seem to keep running into these things.

• Steven Holte : Red and green. Derain died last fall in a hospital. You wouldn't know who he was.

  Karen McIver : It happens I do.

  Steven Holte : Who?

  Karen McIver : A French painter. One of les Fauves.

  Steven Holte : He died in a hospital in a white bed in a white room, doctors in white standing around. The last thing he said was, "Some red, show me some red. Before dying, I want to see some red with some green."

• Steven Holte : Everybody's tilted here. That's why you didn't know who I was. You can't tell the patients from the doctors.

  Karen McIver : Oh, but I can.

  Steven Holte : How?

  Karen McIver : The patients get better!

• Steven Holte : You're still supposed to be making me fit for normal life! What's normal? Yours? If it's a question of values, your values stink! Lousy, middle-class, well-fed, smug existence. All you care about is a paycheck you didn't earn and a beautiful thing to go home to every night. "Stewart, darling! Welcome home! There's a fatted calf on the stove!"

• Steven Holte : You talk a lot, don't you?

  Karen McIver : Don't you, ever?

  Steven Holte : I could talk your eyes out of your head.

• Steven Holte : I get out here.

  Karen McIver : You're from the clinic?

  Steven Holte : That's right. I'm - out of touch with reality.

• Steven Holte : Well, there it is. The House of Usher. They talk of environmental therapy. Some environment! You should see the inside. Like the inside of a dead fish!

• Steven Holte : Your wife, who, looks as if anybody breathed on her she'd break out in a thick frost! What is she? A nymphomaniac or something? What did you marry her for, anyway? To wear on your lapel?

• Meg Faversen Rinehart : My mother did her loving best to ruin me. I fooled her, though. Got over it. Withstood it, anyway.

  Steven Holte : How?

  Meg Faversen Rinehart : Got analyzed. Now, I'm perfect.

  Steven Holte : You mean people - get better?

  Meg Faversen Rinehart : It helps, if you work at it. Now, beat it.

• Steven Holte : An hour ago I - don't laugh - I thought I was well enough to get out of here. It's like trying to get out of a greased well.

• Steven Holte : Being with you right now, is real, only, my feelings about now, how do I know where they come from, or have I got them all mixed up with something else?

• Steven Holte : It's hard for everybody, but particularly for us. Because all the sick feelings out of the past hook onto things in the present.