“Children of the night. What music they make!”

THE CLASSIC BOOK AND MOVIE QUOTES: “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” [1924 novel] “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!” [1931 movie]        Dracula         One of his most famous lines in the novel by Bram Stoker and the popular Universal Studios movie adaptation         In Stoker’s novel and the 1931 film Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, the title character says the “children of the night” lines about the wolves howling outside his castle in Transylvania. The book and movie versions of the quotation are almost identical, with the exception of the word the in front of children in the book.        Dracula says the lines to Jonathan Harker, a British legal solicitor who is sent to Dracula’s home to facilitate the Count’s purchase of a property in England. The quote comes early in the book (in Chapter 2) and in the movie, as do two other famous quotes that are well known to Dracula fans.        As Harker enters the Count’s spooky castle, Dracula greets him with the words: “I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome.” In the 1931 movie, this is broken into two lines, separated by a comment by Harker.        In the movie, as Dracula is standing on the huge stone stairway after welcoming Harker, they hear the wolves howling and Lugosi speaks the famous “children of the night” lines. Shortly thereafter, in the next scene, Dracula serves some food to Harker, then pours him a glass of “very old wine.”        “Aren’t you drinking?” asks Harker. Lugosi, smiling, says a third line immortalized by the movie: “I never drink – wine.”        This chuckleworthy nod to the fact that Dracula survives solely by drinking human blood is not in the novel. In that, as Harker is preparing to eat, Dracula apologizes for not joining him, saying: “I have dined already, and I do not sup.” He does offer Harker some “very old tokay wine.” But he says nothing about never drinking wine himself.

CLASSIC COMEDY SPOOF VERSION #1: “Children of the night – shut up!”        Actor George Hamilton as Dracula, in the comedy movie Love at First Bite (1979)        Hamilton says the line in the opening of the movie as he’s playing the piano and the howling of wolves interrupts and annoys him.

CLASSIC COMEDY SPOOF VERSION #2:     “Children of the night. What a mess they make.”        Actor Leslie Nielsen, as Dracula, in Dead and Loving It (1995)        In this campy version, Nielsen says the line after pointing to some bats flying above him as he stands on the stone stairway of his castle. The camera briefly shows a dollop of bat poop on one of the stone steps. Then we see Nielsen’s shoe step on the poo, causing him to slip and fall down the stairs.

NOT-SO-CLASSIC MOVIE VARIATION #1: “Fame has bitten Robert Pattinson...His mere arrival at a promotional autograph session is enough to set off a sonic frenzy of squeals and shrieks. Tweens, teens and Twilight moms scream en masse with pent-up desire and devotion, delighted to just gaze upon their idol in the flesh. Listen to them. Children of the night. What a racket they make.”        Susan Wloszczyna        American movie reviewer        In an article about Pattinson in USA TODAY published in 2008, at a time when the first movie in the Twilight series was suddenly making him a huge celebrity – at least among teenage movie fans.        Pattinson has suggested he’s not personally a fan of the movies that made him world famous. In one interview, when asked what his view of the series might be if he weren't in it, he responded: “I would just mindlessly hate it.”

NOT-SO-CLASSIC MOVIE VARIATION #2: “The entertainment value in Argento’s sad, befuddled decline wears thin before long; after that it’s just boring. It isn’t until the 70-minute mark that the promise of the opening credits – ‘and Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing’ – is fulfilled, and by then it’s too late for anything to salvage the wreck. Listen to the children of the night! What garbage they make.”        Eric D. Snider        American movie reviewer        In his review of Dario Argento’s movie Dracula 3D, posted on Movies.com site on May 20, 2012

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Related reading and viewing…

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

THE FAMOUS FEMINIST SLOGAN: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”        Irina Dunn        Australian writer, filmmaker and political activist        Feminist slogan said to have been coined by Dunn in 1970        This modern humorous saying, suggesting that women can get along fine without men, was often attributed to American feminist leader and writer Gloria Steinem until Steinem set the record straight in a letter to the editor she sent to TIME magazine in 2000. Steinem credited Dunn with coining the phrase and Dunn later confirmed Steinem’s attribution. As noted on many websites, Dunn said: “Yes, indeed, I am the one Gloria referred to. I was paraphrasing from a phrase I read in a philosophical text I was reading for my Honours year in English Literature and Language in 1970. It was ‘A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle’. My inspiration arose from being involved in the renascent women’s movement at the time, and from being a bit if a smart-arse.”        Some sources, such as THE YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, say that Dunn was probably referring to a quote by U.S. Psychologist Charles S. Harris. In a 1955 introduction to one of his philosophy classes at Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College, Harris wrote “A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle.” His line was used in an early rock musical performed at Swarthmore in 1957 and reprinted in the April 8, 1958 issue of the Swarthmore College Phoenix, in a humor column Harris wrote for that campus publication.         Many posts on the Internet identify a similar quote — “Man needs religion like a fish needs a bicycle” — as “Vique’s Law.” No sources I have found clearly identify who Vique was, what he said the line in or when he said it. So, that quotation remains elusive and may be phony. However, there is proof in old news clips that quips using the “...like [some animal] needs a bicycle” formulation have been around almost as long as bicycles. For example, the excellent, always well-researched Phrase Finder website notes an example in a December 1898 edition of The Hartford Courant newspaper, in which a writer opined that Aragon, Spain “didn’t need an American consul any more than a cow needs a bicycle; for it had no trade with America, and no American tourist ever dreamed of stopping there.”

THE SEXIST IDIOTS VERSION: “A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS WITHOUT A WOMAN WITNESS IS LIKE A FISH WITH A BICYCLE.”        David Cohen        American editorial cartoonist and musician         Bumper sticker slogan shown in a Cohen cartoon included in a recent issue of FUNNY TIMES. The cartoon was Cohen’s comic jab at a Republican and male-dominated Congressional committee that decided to prevent any women from testifying in favor of the Obama administration's rule requiring health insurers to cover birth control, at a so-called hearing on February 16, 2012. The morning panel of “experts” who testified consisted entirely of men from conservative religious organizations that opposed the rule.

THE IDIOT SEXIST’S VERSION: “A man with a woman is like a fish with a bicycle. He doesn't really need it and the maintenance is a bit of a drag, but what the hell, at least he has something to ride if the mood takes him.”        An enlightening comment by “Memnoch”        In the “Jokes & Humour > Words of Wisdom” section of the BC Forums site — “The forum that lets you SPEAK YOUR MIND! AND lets you play unlimited arcade games.”

A HAPPILY MARRIED FEMINIST’S VARIATION: “I have to admit now I sure need my husband a whole lot more than a fish needs a bicycle. In my case, maybe I could change the analogy to ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs that little snail that eats all the crud off the walls of the tank and makes the place a little less lonely.’ But the spirit of sisterhood the original statement implies is still something I believe in…probably now more than ever. A woman needs her girlfriends.”        From a post by the unnamed woman author of the “Are You Finished Yet?” blog

THE LATE, GREAT LESLIE NIELSEN’S VARIATION: “It has been said that a woman with a man is like a fish without a bicycle. So it must be said that roses are red and violets are blue and I'm a schizophrenic — and so am I.”        Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010)        Canadian actor and comic genius (who I sorely miss)        In his funny golf instruction video Bad Golf My Way (1994)

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Related and recommended reading…

Asses, atheists, elephants, donkeys and cows “come home to roost”

QUOTE: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”        Rev. Jeremiah Wright (b. 1941)        Commenting on the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.        In a “sermon” he gave on September 16, 2001

COUNTERQUOTE: “Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by [Jerry] Falwell and [Pat] Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.”        Christopher Hitchens (b. 1949)        English-American author, journalist and advocate for atheism        In his column in The Nation, October 8, 2001

GOP ELEPHANT QUOTE: “All of this infusion of trillions of trillions of spending by this administration and this Congress comes home to roost...It roosts in the back pockets of small business owners in this country, which this [Obama] administration has done zip for.”        Republican Party Chair Michael Steele (b. 1958)        Commenting on recent GOP gubernatorial recent wins in Virginia and New Jersey        Interview on ABC News, November 8, 2009

DEMOCRAT DONKEY QUOTE: “Some people say don’t count your chickens before they're hatched. Well, the Republicans have already hatched their chicken in this campaign and George Bush is a dead duck.”        Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy (1932-2009)        Speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 19, 1988        Incorrectly predicting that Democrat Michael Dukakis would beat George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election (though Bush’s goose was cooked by Bill Clinton in 1992)

NAKED COW QUOTE: “Looks like the cows have come home to roost.”        Leslie Nielsen (b. 1926) as Lt. Frank Drebin        In the movie Naked Gun 2½ (1991)

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“The rich are different” – and so are politicians and the French

FAMOUS QUOTE AND COUNTERQUOTE: F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from you and me.” Ernest Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”        Their legendary quote-counterquote exchange

UPDATED COUNTERQUOTE: “The rich are different from you and me: they cheat more on their taxes.”        Lynn Brenner        American financial writer        Newsday, April 2, 1995

POLITICIANS VERSION: “Politicians are different from you and me. The business of reaching for power does something to a man…he instinctively calculates each new situation and each new situation and each other man with the simplest question: What can this do for me.”        Richard Reeves        American presidential historian          in his book A Ford, not a Lincoln (1975)

NAKED TRUTH VARIATION “The French are different from you and me, assuming, of course, that you're not French, in which case the French are different from me, and the Americans are different from you.”        Leslie Nielsen        Canadian actor and comic genius        In his book The Naked Truth (1994)

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Hills of Beans

QUOTE:

“Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957)
Casablanca (1942)

---> See more stuff by and about Bogie

 

COUNTERQUOTE:

“It’s a topsy-turvy world, Jane.  And maybe the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans, but this is our hill, and these are our beans.” 
Leslie Nielsen (b. 1926)
The Naked Gun (1988)

---> See more stuff by and about Leslie