Marquis de Sade quotes from Quills (2000)

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

Suppose one of your precious inmates attempted to walk on water and drowned - would you comdemn the Bible? I think not.

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

Ah, you've come to read my trousers.

Marquis de Sade

Why should I love God? He strung up his son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he'd do to me.

Marquis de Sade

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.

Marquis de Sade

Lock her up as well so she knows how it feels! The gorgon, the sow!

Marquis de Sade

And nor should you. That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The one who orders the execution never drops the blade!

Marquis de Sade

Two chapters. One for each cheek!

An innocent child is dead.

Marquis de Sade

So many authors are denied the gratification of of a concrete response to their work. I am blessed.

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 drops the execution never drops the blade.

Madeleine LeClerc

Your publisher says I'm not to leave without another manuscript.

Marquis de Sade

I've just the story. It's the unhappy tale... of a virginal laundry lass. The darling of the lower wards where they entomb the criminally insane.

Madeleine LeClerc

Is it awfully violent?

Marquis de Sade

Most assuredly.

Madeleine LeClerc

Is it terribly erotic?

Marquis de Sade

Fiendishly so. But it comes with a price. A kiss for each page.

Marquis de Sade

Beloved reader, I leave you now with a tale penned by the Abbe du Columier, a man who found freedom, in the most unlikely places: at the bottom of an inkwell, on the tip of a quill. However, be forewarned, its plot is blood-soaked, its characters deprived, and its themes... unwholesome at best. But in order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the full measure of man. So come: I dare you.... Turn the page...

Marquis de Sade

If someone would try to walk on water and drowned, would you blame the Bible.

You are not to entertain visitors in your quarters.

Marquis de Sade

I'm entertaining you now, aren't I?

Yes, but I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption.

Marquis de Sade

Don't be so sure.

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

It's an entire religion based on an oxymoron.

Marquis de Sade

It's only a play.

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 dialogue is inane. Not to mention the repetition of words like "nipple" and "pikestaff".

Marquis de Sade

There I was taxed; it's true.

And such puny scope. Nothing but the worse 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 ****, we kill and we die.

But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

What you need, darling, is a long, slow screw.

Marquis de Sade

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