One of my favorite quotes of all time:
(Vivian Bearing walks on the empty stage pushing her IV pole. She is fifty, tall and very thin, barefoot, and completely bald. She wears two hospital gowns - one tied in the front and one tied in the back - a baseball cap, and a hospital ID bracelet. The house lights are at half strength. Vivian looks out at the audience, sizing them up)
Vivian: (In false familiarity, waving and nodding to the audience) Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. That's just great. (In her own professional tone) This is not my standard greeting, I assure you.
I tend toward something a little more formal, a little less inquisitive, such as, say, "Hello."
But it is the standard greeting here.
There is some debate as to the correct response to this salutation. Should one reply, "I feel good," using "feel" as a copulative to link the subject "I" to its subjective complement "good," or "I feel well," modifying with an adverb the subject's state of being?
I don't know. I am a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.
So I just say, "Fine."
I LOVE this play. It's so beautiful and tragic at the same time.
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