- Alex Joyce: What noisy people! I've never seen noise and boredom go so well together.
- Katherine Joyce: Oh I don't know, Uncle Homer lived here for 40 years without getting bored.
- Alex Joyce: Uncle Homer was not a normal person.
- Katherine Joyce: He wrote some beautiful verses.
- Alex Joyce: I'll buy his books.
- Katherine Joyce: He never published them. You think a young poet can find a publisher?
- Alex Joyce: So how do you know them?
- Katherine Joyce: He would read to me, and I copied many of them down. "Temple of the spirit. No longer bodies, but pure, ascetic images, compare to which thought itself becomes leaden, opaque, heavy." He wrote those verses here in Italy, during the war.
- Count of Melissa: Your compliment hides the usual veiled criticism, the "dolce far niente."
- Katherine Joyce: No, not at all.
- Count of Melissa: How do you say "dolce far niente" in English?
- Count of Trebisonda: I think they use the Italian phrase, but I think you could translate it as "how sweet to do nothing."
- Katherine Joyce: What did Charles's cough tell you?
- Alex Joyce: That he was a fool.
- Katherine Joyce: He was not a fool. He was a poet.
- Alex Joyce: What's the difference?
- Katherine Joyce: I wanted you to take a rest. It didn't occur to me that it'd be so boring for you to be alone with me.
- Alex Joyce: What's that got to do with it? I'm just bored because I've got nothing to do.
- Katherine Joyce: This is the first time that we've been really alone ever since we married.
- Alex Joyce: Yes, I suppose it is.
- Alex Joyce: Are you sure you know when I'm happy?
- Katherine Joyce: No, ever since we left on this trip I'm not so sure. I realised for the first time that we... we're like strangers.
- Alex Joyce: That's right. After eight years of marriage, it seems like we don't know anything about each other.
- Katherine Joyce: At home everything seemed so perfect, but now that we're away, alone...
- Alex Joyce: Yes, it's a strange discovery to make.
- Alex Joyce: Where did we meet him?
- Katherine Joyce: At the Smith's house.
- Alex Joyce: Was he an attorney?
- Katherine Joyce: No. No. A poet. He was slender, blond, tall, so delicate and romantic.
- Countess of Melissa: They say all Neapolitans are indolent. But you tell me, can you call a castaway indolent? In a way, we're all castaways. We have to fight so hard just to stay afloat.
- Katherine Joyce: I would say it's a very pleasurable shipwreck.
- Duke of Lipoli: Especially when I look into your eyes, stars in the night.
- Katherine Joyce: Ha-ha-ha...
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