Complicit Quotes

“Envy is built into the immigrant experience. It is what drives the American dream, after all.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“And once he was bankrolling the production, he felt that everything was ultimately his. Including Holly.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Haunting the background of this video, like something from a Japanese horror film.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“None of those guys would have made a film without any money, and the same goes to all of you. So show some fucking respect. And now, who wants more champagne?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“The thing is … who didn’t have anything to gain by having a close relationship with him? All that money? He drew us all in like flies to honey – and he knew it the entire time.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Hugo can say whatever the fuck he wants,’ Sylvia snapped. ‘But he’s not the one who built this production company from scratch.’ But he is the one funding it now, I thought.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“And everywhere I look, it’s the same. Who’s raising the kids most of the time? Who’s trying to make sure that everyone’s happy? There’s just so much emotional work that goes into … being a woman. [pause] I envy the men sometimes. They get to be single-syllable lumps who nod their heads and everyone listens to them. Barely lifting a finger because ‘oh, they can’t multitask.’ They have to focus on their artistic vision, or their financial vision, or their vision to screw every single girl in sight, so don’t bother them. I mean, what the fuck is that?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Once your boss realises she can’t function without you, then you’re in a position to do more interesting work.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“There are no lists for fifty under-fifty. Because if we haven’t made it by then, we probably don’t belong in this world.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“What do you think is crazy about it?’ ‘I mean, why’s this all coming out now, when they were quiet about it before? It’s kind of suspicious, isn’t it?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“We who pick through the papers to catch a glimpse of that celebrated life – what do we really know of these marquee names, these reputations now ground into the dust?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Forty minutes gone, just like that, trawling through a flood of virtual detritus.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Because it reduces you, a woman, down to simply that: sexual meat for the desires of someone else. Everything that comprises you as an individual – your intelligence, your talent, your education, your years of experience, or an entire lifetime spent idolising movies – all that is obliterated the moment you are unwillingly pushed up against a wall, grabbed, manhandled, or worse.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“didn’t explain much to Karen either. She wouldn’t get it, with her stable accounting career and her new life as a suburban mom. I’d just bury the whole business and try to move on with my life.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“No, it felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart. Like everything I’d done for Xander and that script, for the company – like all my contributions had been totally erased, overlooked. That was the worst part of all.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“looked around, at the whole room of us, primped and styled to the nines, all of us speaking in a similar tone of voice, humble-bragging, or outright bragging, about our latest accomplishments, our exciting new projects. All of us stroking each other’s egos, angling for some connection, some subtle promotion of our individual interests in this silly moneyed charade. I wasn’t any different from the rest of them. Or was I?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Was it literally that easy to walk off with thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery in this town? Like everything else here, it was all for show, and it was all borrowed. Genuine ownership was such a slippery concept in LA.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Xander paused and looked at me. Perhaps this might work. Every single feminist molecule of my body seethed in revolt, but I pressed on. ‘You know what he’s like. With women.’ And maybe Xander knew exactly, and maybe he didn’t. But he was still standing there, considering what I’d said. ‘It’s literally only going to take you five minutes,’ I added. ‘Room 72. Please. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be asking you.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Wealthy LA neighbourhoods are their own grotesque spectacle. A pastiche of every imaginable genre and style, writ large into the buildings themselves.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Sarah,’ Hugo smirked, ‘we’re only making movies here, not inciting a Marxist uprising. I mean, there’s only room in history for one film-maker like Tarkovsky, right?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“It’s not like I invented the casting couch, Thom. Or led Hugo to a new form of debauchery. That guy had been alive for fifty-plus years, operating in these very moneyed circles, where, I’m sure, he had plenty of access to young, pretty girls. It’s not just the film industry where these things happen – and it’s certainly not just one single film shoot that’s responsible for it all.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“It’s a cut-throat industry. Maybe I was afraid that Sarah would somehow use her youth and beauty to win Hugo over? Start to phase me out? [pause] God, it was all so petty, looking back on it.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“didn’t mind cutting the occasional line of coke for Hugo at a party, but, increasingly, these requests resembled the grunt work from my very first year at Firefly.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Yes, you do offer something else, Sarah. Not just one of these brainless bimbos who spreads her legs at the slightest promise of reward.’ He pointed at me. ‘Believe me, a smart woman knows the right moment to give it up.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Sarah, you’ve got a really promising career ahead of you, if you play your cards right. But what it really comes down to is this: How hungry are you?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Often, I found Los Angeles to be a vast hellish concrete pit of parking lots and strip malls and freeways, which magnified the heat in cruel and unpredictable ways.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“Film was a legitimate industry, paying for thousands of livelihoods out here, and everyone took it seriously. But, also, everyone here knew how to have fun.”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“But none of these school lessons ever warned you that at some point, working in the film industry, at 3 a.m. in a private members’ club, your two male bosses would force you to snort a line of coke off a naked woman’s breasts. That”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“I couldn’t quite believe it, the first time I’d seen the game in person. But my embarrassment for the girls gave way to shock. You’d be surprised how many willing young women volunteered to strip and become a human cocaine-snorting surface. Or to kiss Hugo. I guess for some women, kissing a fifty-something billionaire”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit

“I glance wryly at Thom Gallagher. He, whose family has become so emblematic of American leadership … What does it feel like to be spoken about like this?”
― Winnie M. Li, Complicit