Eugene: How am I going to become a writer if I don't know how to suffer? Actually, I'd give up writing if I could see a naked girl while I was eating ice cream.

More from Brighton Beach Memoirs

• Eugene: She wants me to write quietly. If that was the only sentence I published in my memoirs, it would be a bestseller.
• Eugene: Why don't you just say you lost the money? You had a hole in your pocket. You can tear a hole in your pocket.
• Eugene: You don’t get too far talking to Laurie. Sometimes I think the flutter in her heart is really in her brain.