Marquis de Sade

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

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.

Are your convictions so fragile they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your god so flimsey, so weak! For shame.

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.

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.

I didn't create this world of ours. I merely recorded it.

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 orders the execution never drops the blade.

You've already stolen my heart... as well as another more prominent organ, south of the Equator.

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 only 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.

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.

Welcome to our humble madhouse, Doctor. I trust you'll find yourself at home.

It's an entire religion based on an oxymoron.

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.

Prepare yourself for the most impure tale ever to spring from the mind of man.

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!

My glorious prose filtered through the minds of the insane. Who knows, they might improve it.

It's a powerful aphrodisiac, isn't it? Having power over another man.

These chastity vows of yours. How strict are they? Suppose you only put it in her mouth?

Quills (2000) by Philip Kaufman