Quills
Quills is a 2000 film based on a play that was inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The movie was adapted by Doug Wright and was directed by Philip Kaufman.
There are no bad words... only bad deeds. Taglines
Marquis de Sade
- Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
- Are your convictions so fragile they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your god so flimsy, so weak? For shame!
- Suppose one of your precious inmates attempted to walk on water and drowned - would you comdemn the Bible? I think not.
- I didn't create this world of ours. I merely recorded it.
- You've already stolen my heart... as well as a more prominent organ, south of the Equator.
- Ah, you've come to read my trousers.
- I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. We're all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade... the rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet... I've been to hell, young man, you've only read about it.
- Why should I love God? He strung up his son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he'd do to me.
- In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.
- Lock her up as well so she knows how it feels! The gorgon, the sow!
- And nor should you. That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The one who orders the execution never drops the blade!
- Two chapters. One for each cheek!
Madeleine LeClerc
- Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference.
- If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life.
- He's a writer, not a madman.
- Don't come any closer, Abbe, God's watching.
- You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can't you?
Simone
- Tell him I'm no fool, a prison's still a prison, even with Chinese silks and chandeliers.
Dialogue
- Madeleine LeClerc: How can we know who is good - and who is evil?
- Abbe du Coulmier: All we can do is guard against our own corruption.
- Abbe de Columier: It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. One man killed his wife after reading them.
- Madeleine LeClerc: It's a fiction, not a moral treatise.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: If you're going to martyr yourself, do it for God, not the chambermaid.
- Renee Pelagie: Desperation has driven me past etiquette, all the way to frenzy.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: My schedule is not the subject to the whims of lunatics.
- Renee Pelagie: I beg to differ, you work in a madhouse. Your every walking moment is governed by the insane.
- Renee Pelagie: If you cure him, I mean really cure him, harness the beast that rages his soul.
- Renee Pelagie: Can I impart to you his cruelest trick?
- Dr. Royer-Collard: Of course.
- Renee Pelagie: Once, long ago in the folly of youth, he made me love him.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: You prefer a book to your husband's company? Well no wonder, I'm only flesh and blood - that's no match for the printed page!
- Abbe de Columier: I love you Madeleine.... as a child of God.
- Simone: Sign it quickly, then you can ravish me again in the linens for which he so dearly paid.
- Prouix, the Architect: And then I beg you on the bearskin rug in his study. And finally, as a crowning gesture, we'll leave puddles of love on the Peruvian marble.
- Abbe du Columier: But why must you indulge in his pornography?
- Madeleine LeClerc: It's a hard days' wages slaving away for madmen, what I've seen in life - it takes a lot to hold my interest.
- Dr. Royer Collard: We produce books for the discriminating collector. The compulsive inmates set the type, the listless ones do the binding and prepare the ink.
- Abbe du Columier: Listen to me Abbe and listern 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.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: Some men are beyond redemption.
- Abbe du Columier: An innocent child is dead.
- Marquis de Sade: So many authors are denied the gratification of of a concrete response to their work. I am blessed.
- Abbe du Columier: Your terrible secret revealed, you're a man after all.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: You know how I define idealism, Monsieur Delbenet? Youth's final luxury.
- Abbe du Columier: You're not the Antichrist. You're only a malcontent who knows how to spell.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: I won't sully my hands with him.
- Marquis de Sade: Nor should you. That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The man who drops the execution never drops the blade.
- Madeleine LeClerc: Your publisher says I'm not to leave without another manuscript.
- Marquis de Sade: I've just the story. It's the unhappy tale... of a virginal laundry lass. The darling of the lower wards where they entomb the criminally insane.
- Madeleine LeClerc: Is it awfully violent?
- Marquis de Sade: Most assuredly.
- Madeleine LeClerc: Is it terribly erotic?
- Marquis de Sade: Fiendishly so. But it comes with a price. A kiss for each page.
- Marquis de Sade: [voiceover, as Columier writes] Beloved reader, I leave you now with a tale penned by the Abbe du Columier, a man who found freedom, in the most unlikely places: at the bottom of an inkwell, on the tip of a quill. However, be forewarned, its plot is blood-soaked, its characters deprived, and its themes... unwholesome at best. But in order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the full measure of man. So come: I dare you.... Turn the page...
- Abbe du Columier: There are certain things.... feelings.... we must not voice.
- Madeleine LeClerc: Why?
- Abbe du Columier: They incite us to act on what we should not.... cannot.
- Marquis de Sade: If someone would try to walk on water and drowned, would you blame the Bible.
- Abbe du Columier: You are not to entertain visitors in your quarters.
- Marquis de Sade: I'm entertaining you now, aren't I?
- Abbe du Collumier: Yes, but I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption.
- Marquis de Sade: Don't be so sure.
- Marquis de Sade: Welcome to our humble madhouse, Doctor. I trust you'll find yourself at home.
- Marquis de Sade: It's an entire religion based on an oxymoron.
- Marquis de Sade: It's only a play.
- Adde du 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 dialogue is inane. Not to mention the repetition of words like "nipple" and "pikestaff".
- Marquis de Sade: There I was taxed; it's true.
- Adde du Columier: And such puny scope. Nothing but the worse 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.
- Adde du Columier: But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.
- Adde du Columier: I am not the first man God had asked to shed blood in his name. And I am not the last.
- Marquis de Sade: Prepare yourself for the most impure tale ever to spring from the mind of man.
- Marquis de Sade: What you need, darling, is a long, slow screw.
- Marquis de Sade: My glorious prose filtered through the minds of the insane. Who knows they might improve it.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: Take this beast back to his cage!
- Prouix, the Architect: Madame, how could you- have you actually read this volume?
- Simone: I've memorized it. Would you like me to recite?
- Prouix, the Architect: There comes a time in a young lady's life when she has to cast books aside, and learn from experience.
- Simone: That, Monsieur, requires a teacher.
- Madeleine LeCleric: It's a sin against God for me to refuse your kindness. But my heart's held fast here-
- Adde du Coulmier: By whom? The Marquis?
- Madeleine LeCleric: Mother's not half so blind as you.
- Dr. Royer-Collard: Will you sleep sound tonight?
- Adde du Coulmier: No. Put frankly, I never expect to sleep again.
- Simone: Tell him that if he discovers his whereabouts, you'll slit your wrists with a razor, and I'll drive a hatpin through his heart.
- Prouix, the Architect: You'd do that, rather than forsake our love.
- Simone: No. But tell him I would anyway.
Taglines
- There are no bad words... only bad deeds.
- Meet the Marquis de Sade. The pleasure is all his.
Major cast
- Geoffrey Rush - Marquis de Sade
- Kate Winslet - Madeleine LeClerc
- Joaquin Phoenix - Abbe du Coulmier
- Michael Caine - Dr. Royer-Collard
- Billie Whitelaw - Madame LeClerc
- Ameila Warner - Simone