Before Sunrise (1995)
Ethan Hawke: Jesse
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Quotes
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Jesse : Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life
Celine : What?
Jesse : Um... I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right?
Celine : Yeah, me too.
Jesse : Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the capital.
Celine : What?
Jesse : Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.
Celine : What would we do?
Jesse : Umm, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train.
Jesse : Alright, alright. Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.
Celine : Let me get my bag.
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Jesse : I kind of see this all love as this, escape for two people who don't know how to be alone. People always talk about how love is this totally unselfish, giving thing, but if you think about it, there's nothing more selfish.
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Jesse : You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like "Hey, I'm glad you're gone".
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Celine : Yeah.
Jesse : OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking... I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?
Celine : I don't know. Wait a minute, I'm not sure... I don't...
Jesse : Yeah, hang on, hang on. It's a, it's a totally scattered thought. It... which is kind of why it makes sense.
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Jesse : Why is it, that a dog, sleeping in the sun, is so beautiful, y'know, it is, it's beautiful, but a guy, standing at a bank machine, trying to take some money out, looks like a complete moron?
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Celine : You know, I've been wondering lately. Do you know anyone who's in a happy relationship?
Jesse : Uh, yeah, sure. I know happy couples. But I think they lie to each other.
Celine : Hmf. Yeah. People can lead their life as a lie. My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad.
Jesse : I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually.
Celine : How do you know? You don't know them.
Jesse : Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality.
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Jesse : Everybody's parents fucked them up. Rich kids parents gave them too much. Poor kids, not enough. You know, too much attention, not enough attention. They either left them or they stuck around and taught them the wrong things.
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Jesse : You know what drives me crazy? It's all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, "With the time I've saved by using my word processor, I'm gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out". I mean, you never hear that.
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Jesse : I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens.
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Jesse : Listen, if somebody gave me the choice right now, of to never see you again or to marry you, alright, I would marry you, alright. And maybe that's a lot of romantic bullshit, but people have gotten married for a lot less.
Celine : Actually, I think I had decided I wanted to sleep with you when we got off the train. But now that we've talked so much, I don't know anymore.
Celine : Why do I make everything so complicated?
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Jesse : Sometimes I dream about being a good father and a good husband. And sometimes it feels really close. But then other times it seems silly like it would ruin my whole life. And it's not just a fear of commitment or that I'm incapable of caring or loving because... I can. It's just that, if I'm totally honest with myself I think I'd rather die knowing that I was really good at something. That I had excelled in some way than that I'd just been in a nice, caring relationship.
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Celine : I don't think we should sleep together. I mean, I want to, but since we're never gonna see each other again, it will make me feel bad. I'll wonder who else you're with. I'll miss you.
Celine : I know. It's not very adult. Maybe it's a female thing. I can't help it.
Jesse : Let's see each other again.
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Jesse : I wish I'd meet you earlier. I really like talking to you.
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Jesse : I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves.
Jesse : Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else.
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Jesse : I feel like this is, uh, some dream world we're in, y'know.
Celine : Yeah, it's so weird. It's like our time together is just ours. It's our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.
Jesse : And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.
Celine : Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly.
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Jesse : This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath... all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn't get it out of his head. And I think that's so true, I mean, all - everything is so finite. But don't you think that that's what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?
Celine : Yeah, I know. It's the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see each other again, right?
Celine : We, maybe we should try something different. I mean, it's no so bad if tonight is our only night, right? People always exchange phone numbers, addresses, they end up writing once, calling each other once or twice...
Jesse : Right. Fizzles out. Yeah, I mean, I don't want that. I hate that.
Celine : I hate that too, y'know.
Jesse : Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway?
Celine : Yeah, why. It's stupid.
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Jesse : I'm having kind of an odd situation here, which is that... is... you see that girl over there? Yeah, well, this is our only night together. Here's the problem: The problem is that she wants a bottle of red wine, and I don't have any money. I was thinking that you might want to, um, give me the address of this bar, no, I know... and I would promise to send you the money, and you would make our night complete
Bartender : You would send me the money?
Jesse : Yes.
Bartender : Your hand?
Bartender : Okay. For the greatest night in your life.
Jesse : Thank you very much
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Jesse : I can never get very excited about other people ambitions for my life.
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Jesse : I mean, just once, I'd love to see, some little old lady save up all her money, to go to the fortune teller, and she'd get there, all excited about hearing her future, and the woman would say, "Um-humm. Tomorrow, and all your remaining days will be exactly like today. A tedious collection of hours. And you will have no new passions, and no new thoughts and no new travels, and when you die, you'll be completely forgotten.
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Jesse : Would you be in Paris by now, if you hadn't gotten off the train with me?
Celine : No not yet. What would you be doing?
Jesse : I'd probably be hanging around the airport, reading old magazines, crying in my coffee cause you didn't come with me.
Celine : Aww... Actually, I think I'd probably have gotten off the train in Salzburg with someone else.
Jesse : Oh, yeah? Oh, I see. So, I'm just that dumb American momentarily decorating your blank canvas.
Celine : I'm having a great time.
Jesse : Really?
Celine : Yeah.
Jesse : Me too.
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Jesse : There's these breeds of monkeys, right, and all they do is have sex, all the time, you know? And they turn out to be the least violent, the most peaceful, the most happy, you know? So maybe fooling around isn't so bad.
Celine : Are you talking about monkeys?
Jesse : Yes I'm talking about monkeys.
Celine : Ah, I thought so...
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Jesse : Well, I was driving around with this buddy of mine, he was a big atheist, and we came to a stop, next to this homeless guy. And my buddy takes out a 100 dollar bill, and leans out the window, and he says, "Do you believe in God?". And the guy looks at my friend, and he looks at the money, he says, uh, "Yes, I do". My friend says, "Wrong answer", and we drove away.
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Jesse : Do you believe in reincarnation?
Celine : Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
Jesse : Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul, right?
