[Mme. Wallace is reading an old letter from her long-deceased husband. — Amélie

"Arthus de Penguern — Hipolito, the Writer"

"The titular heroines search for love and meaning in Montmartre made the world fall for her and the city as viewed through her eyes. Amélie, released in 2001, is one of the UKs highest-grossing foreign language films. But 15 years later, does its director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (pictured below) think he could make the film today given the tragic events the city has faced? "This period is more cynical, especially in France," says Jeunet from his Parisian office. "Fifteen years ago I showed the film in Toronto and the day after the screening it was 9/11. I was stunned like everybody, and I thought – Amélie is finished in the USA. But it was the opposite. People need positive stories, they need something with joy, something light. "Just two days ago it was screening in a theatre in Paris packed full of young people. Everybody had seen the film before – only two people hadnt – but when you have something positive in a story, its always a success because its not easy to write a positive story without it being sugary like stupid American films."

"Jean-Pierre Jeunets Amelie is a delicious pastry of a movie, a lighthearted fantasy in which a winsome heroine overcomes a sad childhood and grows up to bring cheer to the needful and joy to herself. You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile. Audrey Tautou, a fresh-faced waif who looks like she knows a secret and cant keep it, plays the title role, as a little girl who grows up starving for affection. Her father, a doctor, gives her no hugs or kisses and touches her only during checkups—which makes her heart beat so fast he thinks she is sickly. Her mother dies as the result of a successful suicide leap off the towers of Notre Dame, a statement which reveals less of the plot than you think it does."

"Voilà, ma petite Amélie, vous navez pas des os en verre. Vous pouvez vous cogner à la vie. Si vous laissez passer cette chance, alors avec le temps, cest votre cœur qui va devenir aussi sec et cassant que mon squelette. Alors, allez y, nom dun chien!"

"In the apartment downstairs from Amélie lives Raymond Dufayel; they call him "The Glass Man." He was born with bones as brittle as crystal. All his furniture is padded. A handshake could crush his fingers. Hes stayed inside for twenty years. Time has changed nothing."

"Vous au moins, vous ne risquez pas dêtre un légume, puisque même un artichaut a du cœur."

"Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading."

"In a Thumbnail Sketch here is [the Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness] so far:There is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a Central Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of "narrative" play short-lived roles in the modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift succession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its "von Neumannesque" character) is not a "hard-wired" design feature, but rather the upshot of a succession of coalitions of these specialists.The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-recognizing, grasping, throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often opportunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their talents may more or less suit them. The result is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves part of the design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the predesigned gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless "images" and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind."

"Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here? Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully."

"Far transcend my weak invention. ’Tis a simple Christian child, Missionary young and mild, From her store of script’ral knowledge (Bible-taught without a college) Which by reading she could gather, Teaches him to say Our Father To the common Parent, who Colour not respects nor hue. White and Black in him have part, Who looks not to the skin, but heart."

"The writing accompanying this oddity was, aside from a stack of press cuttings, in Professor Angells most recent hand; and made no pretense to literary style. What seemed to be the main document was headed "CTHULHU CULT" in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of."

"“Surfing the Web” (as dubious a metaphor as “the information highway”) is, as a friend of mine has it, “like reading magazines with the pages stuck together.” My wife shakes her head in dismay as I patiently await the downloading of some Japanese Beatles fans personal catalog of bootlegs. “But it’s from Japan!” She isnt moved. She goes out to enjoy the flowers in her garden."