The Big Sur (1965)

Richard Burton: Self, Narrator

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Richard Burton : "Dark scant pasture drawn thin, Over rock shaped like flame / The old ocean at the land's foot, the vast gray extension beyond the long white violence... / This place is the noblest thing I've ever seen." The noblest thing I've ever seen. This is how the American poet, Robinson Jeffers, felt and wrote about this primitive, angry, beautiful part of the world called: the Big Sur.

• Richard Burton : And so they came, the artists and writers, the sculptors and composers, the ones who knew that a spot of American earth remained that was still wild and untamed.

• Richard Burton : This was all they asked of it: a place to be free and to grow. And this is all it gave. Wind. Rain. Sun. Silence. And a place to be free and to grow.

• Richard Burton : And, they came. Men like Henry Miller who called the Big Sur "a place of grandeur and eloquent silence." Emil White, the artist, who came to the Big Sur with Miller and stayed to become the leader of its art movement.

• Richard Burton : Art, in all its forms, is communication. And these artists, who have withdrawn from one way of life, communicate with each other in a way and a place they have chosen.

• Richard Burton : This place is called Nepenthe - the Greek word meaning "no sorrow." Originally a cabin owned by Orsen Welles, it is now a place where artistic freedom finds expression and expression finds freedom. A place where a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, beside me, sitting in the wilderness, is all I ask of paradise.

• [last lines] 

  Richard Burton : It must be wonderful to live in such a place - forever. But, think twice before you try it. For it is a land not always quiet and serene, but often dramatic, violent, awesome. This is Big Sur - even today.