Quotes

Dialogue

Mr. Vogler: You love someone, or more correctly, say you love someone, it nets you something... tangible. As tangible as words can be, I guess. Alma: Mr. Vogler, I'm not your wife. Mr. Vogler: You are also loved. You build a little fellowship, it generates security, you see the possibility of enduring, not so? Heh. How can I say everything I've thought without losing my way and boring you? Alma: Mr. Vogler, I'm not your wife. Mr. Vogler: Don't be so anxious, my darling. We have one another. We have faith, know each other's thoughts. We love one another. It's true, isn't it? It's the effort that's most important, not what we achieve. Isn't it? To see each other as children. Tormented and helpless lonely children. Elisabet!

Dialogue

Alma: Repeat after me. Nothing. Nothing. Elisabet: [whispering] Nothing. Alma: Good. That's how it should be.

Other

My dear: I'd always like to live like this. This silence, living cut off — this feeling how the battered soul finally begins to straighten out. Alma's spoiling me in the most moving manner. I think, by the way, that she's enjoying herself and is quite taken with me — even smitten in an unconscious and delightful way. It's fun studying her. Sometimes she cries over past sins — an episodic orgy with a totally strange boy followed by an abortion. She complains that her notions of life don't accord with her actions.