The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Gael García Bernal: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

Photos 

Quotes 

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : [voice over]  How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

• Miner's Wife : Are you two looking for work?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No, we aren't looking for work.

  Miner's Wife : No?... Then why are you traveling?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : We travel just to travel.

  Miner's Wife : Bless you... Blessed be your travels.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : [voice over]  What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Even though we are too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only confirmed this belief, that the division of American into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race from Mexico to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to free ourselves from narrow minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a United America.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : I want to be useful, somehow.

  Silvia (Peru) : You're wasting your time.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Why?

  Silvia (Peru) : Life is pain.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Yeah, it's pretty screwed up. You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Me, I'm not the same me, at least not the same spiritual me.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : [voice over]  What we had in common - our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.

• Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Argentina) : Son, tough times are ahead. To tell the truth, I've always dreamt of doing something like this. I confess that if I were a few years younger, I'd climb on that motorcycle with you.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Imagine I'm doing it for both of us.

• Silvia (Peru) : What is wrong with you?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : I was born with bad lungs.

  Silvia (Peru) : What a shame!

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No, is not that bad. Thanks to that i skipped the military service, I didn't have to shine anyone boots.

  Silvia (Peru) : Is that why you became a doctor? Because you are sick?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Is possible.The first word i learned was injection. I want to be useful in some way.

  Silvia (Peru) : You are wasting your time.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Why?

  Silvia (Peru) : This life is hell.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Yes, it's really fucked up, but we have to fight for every breath and tell Death to fuck off.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Mother.

  Mother Sister Alberto : Yes?

  Alberto Granado : We want to eat.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : We deserve to eat like everyone else.

  Mother Sister Alberto : Yes, but you didn't go to mass.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No.

  Mother Sister Alberto : Then, how do you expect to feed the body if you didn't feed the soul first?

  Alberto Granado : Er, denying food is not very Christian-like.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Yes, I doubt Jesus would act like this.

  Mother Sister Alberto : In this house, we have a set of rules that have to be followed.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : [to Alberto now, as she turns away]  I haven't read any rule book.

  Alberto Granado : Neither did I. I think that if I find it I would eat it.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : "On the boat I heard the moist slap of bare feet and foresaw faces dark with hunger. My heart was a pendulum between her and the street. I don't know what strength broke me free from her eyes, loose from her arms. She remained clouded by tears, her anguish hidden by the rain."

  Alberto Granado : Is that Lorca?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No.

  Alberto Granado : Neruda?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No.

  Alberto Granado : Who?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : I don't remember.

• Alberto Granado : It is rumored that Chilean girls are the most daring on the continent.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Rumors have no scientific value, Dr. Granado. Time to do some research.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Are you talking to the motorcycle again?

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : [voiceover]  The goal: to explore a continent we had only known in books.

• Alberto Granado : We land on the Guajira Peninsula. The tip of a great continent. Bellies full of wine and two tropical beauties, hopefully sisters.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : That's good beer, huh?

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : All you want is to get laid in every country in South America.

  Alberto Granado : In every town too, if we're lucky. Adds a little spice.

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Don't your parents realize that the deeper you bury the diamonds, the more determined the pirate is to take them?

  Chichina Ferreyra : Believe me, this diamond wouldn't mind being taken.

• Chichina Ferreyra : I'd like for you to stay like this: silent. I want to look at you; I won't see you for a long time. I will wait for you, but don't take forever.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Define "forever".

  Chichina Ferreyra : Thin ice, mister!

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Listen, when we're old and tired of traveling, we should come back and set up a clinic on this lake.

• Jazmin, Chilean Sister : Are you two Argentinian?

  Alberto Granado : How'd you know?

  Jazmin, Chilean Sister : Well, because of your accent, because Argentinians always say "che".

  Alberto Granado : Had you noticed, Che?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Not at all, Che.

• Alberto Granado : Fuser, you still haven't asked about the research I did on our Chilean sisters.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : You can't imagine how depressed I am that you're the sexual ambassador of Argentina!

  Alberto Granado : It's true.

• Truck Driver (Chile) : There she is, Valparaíso.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : "I love Valparaíso, all you encompass, all you radiate, lover of the ocean, far from - "

  Alberto Granado : Federico García Lorca.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : No.

  Truck Driver (Chile) : Neruda!

• Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Sir, I wonder, which of these walls is Incan?

  Don Néstor, Cuzco Guide : This one here is Incan and that one is Spanish. As a joke we say this wall was made by the Inca and that wall was made by the Inca-pables. That's what we call the Spanish.

• Alberto Granado : Fuser, here's my idea; I'll marry an Inca descendant. We'll start an indigenous party under these conditions: we'd encourage the people to vote, reactivate Tupac Amaru's revolution, the Indo-American revolution, Fuser. How's that sound?

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : A revolution without guns? It would never work.

• Alberto Granado : Ernesto, This is Luz...

  Luz (Peru) : Hola!

  Alberto Granado : Which means "light". "Electrifying light that dazzles my dreams. Get ready, you've no clue what's coming to you."

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : Neruda?

  Alberto Granado : Granado!

• Alberto Granado : I think there's a young lady interested in dancing with you.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : I should ask her, right?

  Alberto Granado : The bird of youth flies away and doesn't come back, man. Fly, man, fly!

• Alberto Granado : Che.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : What?

  Alberto Granado : It's not too late to come work with me in Cabo Blanco. You could come back after you graduate. I'll wait for you.

  Ernesto Guevara de la Serna : I don't know. I just don't know. You know, Mial, all this time we spent on the road, something happened. Something I'll have to think about for a long time. So much injustice.