Conversational Excerpt:

You got him a book?
Yeah. Metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis...
It's Kafka.
Very romantic.
I think it's romantic.
I know I’ve always dreamed that some day a guy would get me a really confusing Czechoslovakian novel.
I think he'll appreciate it.
A book sends the wrong message.
What are you talking about??
You have to look at what a gift says to the other person, not to you. Remember two years ago, I got my mom that perfume?
Yeah.
Ok, to me that said, ‘Hey mom, you work hard, you deserve something fancy’. Now to my mother, it said ‘Hey mom, here’s some smelly sex juice, the kind I use to lure boys with’ and resulted in me being sent to Bible camp all summer.
Yeah, but-
Just imagine that you actually gave him something really romantic and he gave you a football. Your hypothetical romantic present is saying that you really, really like him. And his present is saying ‘Hey man, let’s just be friends’.
And you're saying this book is...
A Czechoslovakian football, yes.

What are you talking about??

"You know these new novels make me tired. My God! Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I've read 'This Side of Paradise.' Are our girls really like that? If it's true to life, which I don't believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I'm sick of all this shoddy realism." - The Beautiful and Damned