The Perfect Sleep (2009)

Anton Pardoe: The Narrator

Photos 

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  The Narrator : You see, in our own way she's mine and I am hers. Perfection and imperfection. That is why I close my eyes now, I realize what she has taught me, an imperfect sleep can be the most perfect sleep of all. And now that I've had a perfect sleep, I will finally have a different kind of sleep, a sleep from which I will never awake again.

• The Narrator : The French dig this kind of visual... and I dig the French.

• The Narrator : [first lines - surveying windmill park]  I know. I know what you're thinking, not the first to use it. But with a visual like this, what does it matter. So much can be drawn, endless numbers in constant motion, yet rooted in the ground. Would be easy to point out how so many turn in the same way, but never quite together. And then, there is my favorite.

  [one not turning] 

  The Narrator : There are those who could use poetic imagery to comment on tilting at these modern windmills. Me, I just like the way they look.

  [struck in the head from behind] 

  The Narrator : [driven into the city]  In case you were wondering, these fellows ain't taking me on a picnic. No, they're getting me ready for The Rajah. The man who spent the better part of a decade trying to find me. Well, looks like he found me. So they're going to hurt me, to reintroduce me to lady pain, almost to the point of dying - almost, but not quite.

  The Narrator : [being kicking from all sides]  Say, maybe they'll get tired of beating me after a while.

  [now being punched] 

  The Narrator : Well, it's not a perfect plan, but it will have to do... for now.

• The Narrator : The suave devil you see here is Walter. His boys just gave me a beating that will have *them* waking up sore in the morning.

• The Narrator : Maybe it's best just to sleep on it. The only problem is when I sleep, I remember. And nothing hurts quite like that.

• The Narrator : Just once, just once, I'd like to keep the perfect sleep. You know the one I'm taking about. You fall asleep on a train, or someone's couch, or in a hospital, and it's perfect. The ecstasy of the unlikely. And then some bastard wakes you up and you can't get it back, no matter how hard you try. You never knew it was perfect until you lost it. And all you have left is that sick burning desire to get it back. The perfect sleep.

• The Narrator : If you don't like to focus on yourself, a rare quality, you might listen to others, an even rarer quality. If you observe and anticipate, you might just get something accomplished.

• The Narrator : And there he is, the Rajah's prize possession, Captain Keller. He's killed more people than you've met. A good man to avoid.

• The Narrator : Like Winston Churchill told me, I never, never, never, never - in nothing great or small, large or petty - never give in.

• Kolya : You ever find a gun you like?

  The Narrator : Yeah, the other guy's.

• The Narrator : Soon Nikolai's men will enter this room ready to kill me. Seems like a good time to catch up on my sleep.

• The Narrator : How do you expect to survive against me?

  Nikolai : Because, I want to kill you more than you want to live.

• The Narrator : For the first time in my life I feel like I've been part of a job well done. The operative word being *done*.