"I even smoke in bed. Imagine smoking a cigar in bed, reading a book. Next to your bed, there's a cigar table with a special cigar ashtray, and your wife is reading a book on how to save the environment"
About this Quote
Raul Julia lands the joke with the elegance of a man admitting to bad behavior while refusing to feel small about it. The setup is pure indulgence: smoking a cigar in bed, reading a book, the whole scene staged like old-world luxury. Then he drops the counterweight: the wife beside him, dutifully reading an earnest manual on saving the environment. It is domestic comedy, but it doubles as a snapshot of a cultural pivot point, when personal pleasure started getting audited by public virtue.
The line works because it’s not really about cigars. It’s about friction: between private appetites and the new moral weather of the late 20th century, when smoking shifted from glamorous habit to social offense and environmental consciousness became a household language. Julia isn’t defending himself so much as dramatizing how righteousness enters intimacy. The “special cigar ashtray” is key; he’s not a slob, he’s curated. He’s constructed an aesthetic of excess, complete with accessories, which makes the environmental self-help book feel like an intruder from a different genre.
Subtext: this marriage, like the era, contains two scripts running at once. One partner performs cultivated hedonism; the other performs responsibility. Julia’s charm is that he frames the clash without bitterness. He makes hypocrisy sound almost tender: a couple sharing a bed, each absorbed in a different idea of the good life. It’s a wry acknowledgment that culture doesn’t change in a clean sweep; it changes in mismatched bedtime rituals.
The line works because it’s not really about cigars. It’s about friction: between private appetites and the new moral weather of the late 20th century, when smoking shifted from glamorous habit to social offense and environmental consciousness became a household language. Julia isn’t defending himself so much as dramatizing how righteousness enters intimacy. The “special cigar ashtray” is key; he’s not a slob, he’s curated. He’s constructed an aesthetic of excess, complete with accessories, which makes the environmental self-help book feel like an intruder from a different genre.
Subtext: this marriage, like the era, contains two scripts running at once. One partner performs cultivated hedonism; the other performs responsibility. Julia’s charm is that he frames the clash without bitterness. He makes hypocrisy sound almost tender: a couple sharing a bed, each absorbed in a different idea of the good life. It’s a wry acknowledgment that culture doesn’t change in a clean sweep; it changes in mismatched bedtime rituals.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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