Madeleine LeClerc Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference.
Played by Kate Winslet 
Quills (2000) · 56 quotes
Quills (2000) · 56 quotes
Most-quoted character in Quills (2000): in 42 of its 56 quotes
Most scenes with: Marquis de Sade (13), Dr. Royer-Collard (10), Abbe du Columier (7)
If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life.
More lines from Madeleine LeClerc
4 quotes Madeleine LeClerc Madeleine LeClerc He's a writer, not a madman.
Madeleine LeClerc Don't come any closer, Abbe, God's watching.
Madeleine LeClerc You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can't you?
Scenes with Madeleine LeClerc
37 scenes Madeleine LeClerc How can we know who is good - and who is evil?
All we can do is guard against our own corruption.
It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. One man killed his wife after reading them.
Madeleine LeClerc It's a fiction, not a moral treatise.
If you're going to martyr yourself, do it for God, not the chambermaid.
Desperation has driven me past etiquette, all the way to frenzy.
My schedule is not the subject to the whims of lunatics.
I beg to differ, you work in a madhouse. Your every walking moment is governed by the insane.
If you cure him, I mean really cure him, harness the beast that rages his soul.
Can I impart to you his cruelest trick?
Of course.
Once, long ago in the folly of youth, he made me love him.
You prefer a book to your husband's company? Well no wonder, I'm only flesh and blood - that's no match for the printed page!
I love you Madeleine.... as a child of God.
Tell him I'm no fool, a prison's still a prison, even with Chinese silks and chandeliers.
Sign it quickly, then you can ravish me again in the linens for which he so dearly paid.
Prouix, the Architect
And then I beg you on the bearskin rug in his study. And finally, as a crowning gesture, we'll leave puddles of love on the Peruvian marble.
But why must you indulge in his pornography?
Madeleine LeClerc It's a hard days' wages slaving away for madmen, what I've seen in life - it takes a lot to hold my interest.
We produce books for the discriminating collector. The compulsive inmates set the type, the listless ones do the binding and prepare the ink.
Listen to me Abbe and listern well. I've stared into the face of evil and I've lived to tell the tale and now, I beg you, for your sake, let me write it down.
Some men are beyond redemption.
An innocent child is dead.
So many authors are denied the gratification of of a concrete response to their work. I am blessed.
Your terrible secret revealed, you're a man after all.
You know how I define idealism, Monsieur Delbenet? Youth's final luxury.
You're not the Antichrist. You're only a malcontent who knows how to spell.
I won't sully my hands with him.
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.
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?
Most assuredly.
Madeleine LeClerc Is it terribly erotic?
Fiendishly so. But it comes with a price. A kiss for each page.
[voiceover, as Columier writes]
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...
There are certain things.... feelings.... we must not voice.
Madeleine LeClerc Why?
They incite us to act on what we should not.... cannot.
If someone would try to walk on water and drowned, would you blame the Bible.
You are not to entertain visitors in your quarters.
I'm entertaining you now, aren't I?
Abbe du Collumier
Yes, but I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption.
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.
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".
There I was taxed; it's true.
Adde du Columier
And such puny scope. Nothing but the worse in man's nature.
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.
Adde du Columier
But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.
I am not the first man God had asked to shed blood in his name. And I am not the last.
Prepare yourself for the most impure tale ever to spring from the mind of man.
What you need, darling, is a long, slow screw.
My glorious prose filtered through the minds of the insane. Who knows they might improve it.
Take this beast back to his cage!
Prouix, the Architect
Madame, how could you- have you actually read this volume?
I've memorized it. Would you like me to recite?
Prouix, the Architect
There comes a time in a young lady's life when she has to cast books aside, and learn from experience.
That, Monsieur, requires a teacher.
Madeleine LeCleric It's a sin against God for me to refuse your kindness. But my heart's held fast here-
By whom? The Marquis?
Madeleine LeCleric Mother's not half so blind as you.
Will you sleep sound tonight?
No. Put frankly, I never expect to sleep again.
Tell him that if he discovers his whereabouts, you'll slit your wrists with a razor, and I'll drive a hatpin through his heart.
Prouix, the Architect
You'd do that, rather than forsake our love.
No. But tell him I would anyway.
