A Paddy Chayefsky Valentine (Part 2 of 3)

Eddie:
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“I want to be alone. I have a great deal of unfinished business with myself. I need to confront myself. Because the self I have at the moment is a very shoddy, makeshift thing, contrived, illusory, unreal, lacking truth and substance, constantly pretending, constantly lying, shifting, taking different forms. I want to find a true self, an immutable self. I want to get down to the embedded rock of life, what Saint John would call the bare and barren soul. It’s me that wants the divorce, Arthur, not Emily. She’s quite content to go on the way we are. She insists she’s in love with me, whatever that is. What she really means is she prefers this arbitrary structure we’ve created to being alone. She prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I’m not afraid of that solitary pain. I’m like one of the early patristic anchorites. I want to go off into the desert like Saint Anthony. If I can’t find God, I at least want to find my self.”

Paddy Chayefsky
“Altered States” — The Novel


“Altered States” — The Film

“Altered States” — The Wiki Page


Paddy Chayefsky — Wiki Page