- Catherine: [First lines] You said, "I love you." I said, "Wait." I was about to say, "Take me." You said, "Go away."
- Jules: Catherine never does anything halfway. She's an irresistible force that can't be stopped. Her harmony is never shaken because... she knows she is always innocent.
- Jim: You speak of her as if she was a queen.
- Jules: She is a queen. Let me be frank. She's not especially beautiful or intelligent or sincere... but she is a real woman. And that is why we love her... and all men desire her. Despite this, why did she make us a gift... of her presence? Because we treated her like a queen.
- Récitant: Catherine's plunge into the river so astonished Jim that he drew it the next day, though he didn't usually draw. Admiration for Catherine welled up in him and he sent her a kiss in his mind.
- Jim: I agree with you that in love a couple is not ideal. You only have to look around. You wanted to invent something better by rejecting hypocrisy and resignation. You wanted to invent love. But pioneers must be humble and unselfish. We must face the truth. We failed. We made a mess of everything. You tried to change me to suit you. I tried to spread joy, but I've created only pain.
- Jules: What's appalling about war is that it deprives man of his own individual battle.
- Jim: Yes, but I think he can wage his battle outside the field of war. I'm thinking of a gunner I met in the hospital. Returning from leave, he met a girl on the train. They talked from Nice to Marseilles. Stepping down onto the platform, she gave him her address. He wrote her frantically from the trenches every day for two years on bits of wrapping paper, by candlelight. As bombs rained down, his letters became ever more intimate. At first it was "Dear Miss" and "Yours truly." But the third letter he called her "My little lamb" and asked for her picture. Then it was "My adorable lamb." Then "I kiss your hand." Then "I kiss your forehead." Later he described the picture she'd sent and wrote of her breasts, which he thought he glimpsed under her robe. Soon he was addressing her intimately. "I love you terribly." One day he wrote to her mother, asking for the daughter's hand. He became her fiancé without ever seeing her again. As the war continued, his letters became even more intimate. "I make you mine, my love. I caress your adorable breasts. I press your naked body against mine." When she replied rather coldly, he was enraged and begged her not to flirt with him, for he could die at any time, and he was right. You see, Jules, to understand this extraordinary seduction by mail, you have to have known the violence of trench warfare, that collective madness where death is present every moment. So here's a man who took part in the Great War yet managed to wage his own individual battle at the same time and win a woman's heart through long-distance persuasion.
- [to Albert]
- Jim: Like you, he had a head wound when he arrived at the hospital, but he wasn't as lucky as you. He died after surgery on the eve of the Armistice. In his last letter to the fiancée he hardly knew, he wrote, "Your breasts are the only bombs I love."
- Récitant: Jim took it for granted that she belonged to Jules. Catherine wore that calm smile. It was natural and said everything.
- Catherine: At 15, I was in love with Napoleon. I dreamt I met him in an elevator. He got me pregnant and I never saw him again. Poor Napoleon.
- Jim: I'm afraid she'll never be happy on this earth. She's a vision for all, perhaps not meant for any one man alone.
- Catherine: You haven't known many women, but I've known plenty of men. It averages out. We might make an honest couple.
- Catherine: As a little girl I learned: "Our Father who art in heaven." I thought it said "who arts in heaven." I imagined my father with an easel painting outside the pearly gates.
- Récitant: Catherine had said, "One only truly loves for a moment," but for her, that moment came back again and again.
- Jules: Whatever Catherine does, she does fully. She's a force of nature that manifests in cataclysms. In every circumstance she lives in clarity and harmony, convinced of her own innocence.
- Récitant: Catherine, the French girl, had the smile of the statue on the island. Her nose, mouth, chin and forehead, bore the nobility of a province she personified as a child in a religious celebration.
- Récitant: Perhaps she was seducing him, though Jim was far from sure. It was impossible to tell. Catherine revealed her goals only when she'd achieved them.
- Catherine: I'm 32 and you're 29. When you're 40 and I'm 43, you'll want a girl of 25 and I'll be left all alone like a fool.
- Jules: The most important factor in any relationship is the woman's fidelity. The husband's is secondary. Who was it who wrote, "Woman is natural, therefore abominable?"
- Jim: Baudelaire, but he was describing a certain world.
- Jules: Not at all. He spoke of women in general. What he says about a young girl is magnificent: "Horror, monster, assassin of the arts, little fool, little slut. The greatest idiocy combined with the greatest depravity." Wait. I'm not finished. This is marvelous: "I'm always astonished they allow women inside churches. What could they possibly have to say to God?"
- Catherine: You're both fools.
- Jules: [Speaks a phrase in German] Translation, Catherine?
- Catherine: "Hearts yearning for each other. O God, O God, the pain they cause."
- Jules: Not bad. Though "O God, O God" was your addition. Good night. Give my regards to the others if you see them.
- Catherine: Would you lend me Goethe's "Elective Affinities" tonight?
- Jules: You just lent it to Jim.
- Catherine: To bad.
- Jim: [in bed] Listen, Gilberte. If Catherine decides she wants something and thinks no one will be hurt - - though she could be wrong, of course - - she does it for her own pleasure and to learn from the experience. She hopes this way to attain wisdom one day.
- Gilberte: That could take a long time.
- Jim: Don't be mean.
- Gilberte: I'm not being mean. I'm jealous.
- Catherine: One always feels guilty in a hotel room. I may not be very moral, but I have no taste for secrecy.
- Catherine: [singing] On every finger she wore rings, Round her wrists, bracelets and things, She sang in a voice all the while, That left my heart beguiled. Her eyes were like two opals bright, That gave me a thrill, gave me chill, Her face was like an opal white, As she moved in for the kill. As she moved in for the kill. We met, said adieu and then met anew, We lost touch and then we lost touch again, Once we did meet, For moments so sweet, Only to retreat. We went our own ways, In life's whirlpool of days, I saw her again in one evening's glow, It all seemed so long ago. It all seemed so long ago.
- Catherine: [singing] I recognized her as the banjos danced, That mysterious smile left my heart entranced, That voice so bright, That face so white, I fell into a trance. I drank and hear her song so gay, Alcohol takes time's sting away, I woke in her embrace, Felt her kisses on my face. Felt her kisses on my face. We met, said adieu and then met anew, We lost touch and then we lost touch again, Said hello from the heart, Then strayed apart, But then again it starts. We went our own ways, In life's whirlpool of days, We met again one night, and well, Into my arms again she fell, Into my arms again she fell.
- Catherine: [singing] When the first time you knew and the second time too, It was just right for you, Why say adieu, When you feel in your heart it's right from the start, Then you mustn't part. So we set off together anew, Spinning through life, just you and me, We whirl on through life this way, Embracing till this day. Embracing till this day. Embracing till this day.
- Récitant: Jules had no girls in Paris, and he wanted one. Jim had several. He introduced Jules to a musician. Things started out well. They were in love for about a week. Then a free and easy girl came along who stayed up all night in cafés. Next it was a pretty blonde widow. The three went out together. She confused Jules, whom she found nice but clumsy. She brought him a quiet friend - - too quiet for Jim's taste. Finally, against Jim's advice, Jules took up with professionals, but found no satisfaction there.
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