Antoine Vitez Quotes

Jean-Louis I shock you, I know. I've had affairs with girls I loved and thought of marrying. But I've never just slept with a girl; that simply doesn't appeal to me.

Vidal Yes, but let's suppose you met a lovely girl you knew you'd never see again. There are circumstances in which it's difficult to resist.

Jean-Louis Fate, I won't say God, has kept me from such circumstances. I was never lucky with brief encounters. Remarkably unlucky.

Vidal Just in that respect I have been lucky. Once in Italy with a Swedish girl. In Poland with an English girl. Those two nights are perhaps the happiest of my life. I'm all for affairs on journeys or at conferences. At least they avoid the clinging, bourgeois element.

Jean-Louis In principle, I'm against. But since such a thing never happened to me...

Jean-Louis Are you still a Marxist?

Vidal Absolutely. For a Communist, ] is very relevant today. Personally, I very much doubt that history has any meaning. Yet I wager that it has, so I'm in a Pascalian situation. Hypothesis A: Society and politics are meaningless. Hypothesis B: History has meaning. I'm not at all sure B is more likely to be true than A. More likely the reverse. Let's even suppose B has a 10% chance of being true and A has 90%. Nevertheless I have no choice but to opt for B, because only the hypothesis that history has meaning allows me to go on living. Suppose I bet on A, and B was true, despite the lesser odds. I'd have thrown away my life. So I must choose B to justify my life and actions. There's an 90% chance I'm wrong but that doesn't matter.

Jean-Louis Mathematical hope. Potential gain divided by probability. With your hypothesis B, though the probability is slight, the possible gain is infinite. In your case, a meaning to life. In Pascal's, eternal salvation.

Vidal It was ], ] or maybe ] who said about the ] that the situation forced them to choose the one chance in a thousand. Because hope became infinitely greater if you took that chance than if you didn't take it.

Jean-Louis You come here a lot?

Vidal Almost never. And you?

Jean-Louis I've never set foot in here before.

Vidal And yet our paths cross right here. How strange.

Jean-Louis On the contrary. Our ordinary paths never cross. Therefore, the point of intersection must be outside those ordinary paths. I've been dabbling in mathematics in my spare time. It would be fun to calculate our chances of meeting in a two-month period.

Vidal Can it be done?

Jean-Louis It's a matter of data and how you handle it. Provided the data exists. Obviously, if I don't know where a person lives or works I can't work out the odds of running into them.

Jean-Louis My Christianity and my affairs are different, conflicting matters.

Vidal Yet they co-exist in you.

Jean-Louis In a warlike fashion. Now I may shock you once again but pursuing girls does not estrange one from God any more than pursing mathematics, for example.

Vidal She's - very beautiful.

Jean-Louis Marry her.

Vidal No, we've gone into all that. We don't get on with each other, day in, day out. But we're the best of friends. I asked you to come because otherwise I know she and I will make love.

Jean-Louis I won't come.

Vidal But we would only do it to pass the time and that's no solution, for her or me. I'm a puritan, as you know.

Jean-Louis More than me?

Vidal Much more.