Quills (2000)

Joaquin Phoenix: Coulmier

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Quotes 

• Coulmier : Murderer... Your words... your words drove Bouchon...

  Marquis de Sade : Oh, for fuck's sake, Abbe! Suppose one of your precious inmates attempted to walk on water and drowned. Would you condemn the Bible? I think not.

• The Marquis de Sade : I have a proposition.

  Coulmier : You always do.

  The Marquis de Sade : Madeleine. She's besotted with me. She'd do anything I asked. She could pay you a visit.

  Coulmier : I don't know who you insult more, her or me.

  The Marquis de Sade : Part the gates of heaven, as it were.

  Coulmier : That's enough!

  The Marquis de Sade : You're too tense, darling. You could do with a long, slow screw.

  Coulmier : Good night, Marquis.

  [walks out the room] 

  The Marquis de Sade : [shouts]  Then bugger me! Goddamn you, Abbe! Have you no true sense of my condition? Of its gravity? My writing is involuntary, like the beating of my heart. My constant erection!

• Coulmier : It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. One man killed his wife after reading them.

  Marquis de Sade : It's a fiction, not a moral treatise.

• Coulmier : Listen to me Abbe and listen well. I've stared into the face of evil and I've lived to tell the tale and now, I beg you, for your sake, let me write it down.

• Coulmier : It's not even a proper novel. It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. Frankly, it even fails as an exercise in craft. The characters are wooden, the diologue is inane. Not to mention the repetition of words like "nipple" and "pikestaff".

  Marquis de Sade : There I was taxed; it's true.

  Coulmier : And such puny scope. Nothing but the worst in man's nature.

  Marquis de Sade : I write of the great, eternal truths that bind together all mankind. The whole world over, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die.

  Coulmier : But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.

• Madeleine : How can we know who is good - and who is evil?

  Coulmier : All we can do is guard against our own corruption.

• Coulmier : But why must you indulge in his pornography?

  Madeleine : It's a hard days' wages slaving away for madmen, what I've seen in life - it takes a lot to hold my interest.

• Coulmier : An innocent child is dead.

  Marquis de Sade : So many authors are denied the gratification of a concrete response to their work. I am blessed.

• Madeleine : It's a sin against God for me to refuse your kindness. But my heart's held fast here...

  Coulmier : By whom? The Marquis?

  Madeleine : Mother's not half so blind as you.

• Marquis de Sade : This is a rare vintage from an obscure village in Bordeaux. Rather than crush the grape underfoot, they place the fruit on the belly of a bride, and reap its juices when the young husband steers his vessel into port. Full-bodied flavor, with just a hint of wantonness. Bottoms up.

  Coulmier : It's from our own cellar. I recognize the taste.

  Marquis de Sade : I should have told you it was the blood of Christ. You'd believe that, wouldn't you?

• Coulmier : I love you Madeleine... as a child of God.

• Coulmier : Your terrible secret revealed, you're a man after all.

• Coulmier : You're not the anti-Christ. You're only a malcontent who knows how to spell.

• Coulmier : There are certain things... feelings... we must not voice.

  Madeleine : Why?

  Coulmier : They incite us to act on what we should not... cannot.

• Abbe du Coulmier : You are not to entertain visitors in your quarters.

  Marquis de Sade : I'm entertaining you now, aren't I?

  Abbe du Coulmier : Yes, but I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption.

  Marquis de Sade : Don't be so sure.

• Abbe du Coulmier : I am not the first man God has asked to shed blood in his name. And I am not of the last.

• Royer-Collard : Will you sleep soundly tonight?

  Coulmier : No. Put frankly, I never expect to sleep again.