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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Saturday, January 24, 2004

Movie in Mind #1: Dangerous Liaisons





Sebastian Valmont

I often wonder how you managed to invent yourself....



Kathryn Merteuil

I had no choice, did I? I'm a woman. Women are obliged to be far more skillful than men. You can ruin our reputation and our lives with a few well-chosen words. So, of course, I had to invent not only myself but ways of escape no one has ever thought of before. But I succeeded because I've always known I was born to dominate your sex, and avenge my own.



Sebastian Valmont

Yes? But what I asked was, how?



Kathryn Merteuil

When I came out to this society, I was fifteen. I already knew that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table, I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear; philosphers to find out how we think; and novelists to see what I could get away with. And in the end, I distilled everything to one wonderfully simple principle: Win or die.


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich




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