Swimming to Cambodia Quotes

Spalding Gray: So five years of bombing, a diet of bark, bugs, lizards and leaves up in the Cambodian jungles, an education in Paris environs in a strict Maoist doctrine with a touch of Rousseau, and other things that we will probably never know about in our lifetime. Including perhaps an invisible cloud of evil that circles the Earth and lands at random in places like Iran, Beirut, Germany, Cambodia, America, set the Khmer Rouge out to commit the worst auto-homeo genocide in modern history

Movie: Swimming to Cambodia
Spalding Gray: [as "Jack Daniels"] The Russians are stupid people, they're backwards. You know on their ships, they don't even have electrical intercoms? They still speak through tubes? [as himself]
Spalding Gray: Suddenly, I had this enormous fondness for the Russian navy, for all of Mother Russia. The thought of these men like innocent children speaking through empty toilet paper rolls, empty paper towel rolls, where you can still hear doubt, confusion, brotherly love, ambivalence, all those human tones, coming through the tube.

Movie: Swimming to Cambodia
[On Cambodia's history and people]
Spalding Gray: What a fantastic land it was, how it was Shangri-La before it was colonized... Thailand was a Nordic country compared to Cambodia, and they're right next to each other. And he said 90% of the land was owned by the people; it was earth, it was dirt, but it was THEIRS, and it was good. And-and they knew how to have a good time. They knew how to have a good time. They knew how to have a good time getting born, a good time growing up, a good time going through puberty, a good time falling in love, a good time staying in love, a good time getting married, a good time staying married, a good time having children, a good time raising children, a good time growing old, a good time dying... they even knew how to have a good time on NEW YEAR'S EVE! [stunned]
Spalding Gray: I couldn't believe it!

Movie: Swimming to Cambodia
[On dealing with the annoying upstairs neighbor]
Spalding Gray: Renee is not practicing Buddhist tolerance. She's walking up and down... she's got STEAM screaming out of her navel. And there are people say we should start a collection to hire a vigilante to off this woman, to kill her, and I find I'm not saying "no"? That's how New York has changed me? I'm willing to put money into the pot?

Movie: Swimming to Cambodia