- Marie: I don't believe God exists. And if he does, I hate him. And I'll never stop hating him. If he stood before me, I'd spit in his face. I'll hate him for as long as I live. I won't forget. I'll hate him till the day I die.
- Marie: I'd like to cry all this week and next. Cry away all my shabbiness and all the wasted time. Funny... I can't seem to cry. If I really search inside myself I'm actually... happy!
- Ballet Master: You only see your life clearly once, when all protective walls have crumbled. You stand there, naked and cold, seeing yourself just the way you are. Once only.
- Marie: Everyone's alive. They run around in the streets. And here I am, eating and drinking. At the theater we dance and fool around. And Henrik lies out there, starting to rot. A moment earlier we were laughing about everything. He lay in my arms. I kissed his lips. That's how life is. Is there no meaning anywhere?
- Uncle Erland: No, my child. Nothing means anything in the long run.
- Ballet Master: We want to be happy, get something out of life. We have our memories, don't we? We want to start all over. All lies, Marie. Gibberish and nonsense. You dance. Period. That's your rule. Stick to it, or you'll get in trouble. Take a look in the mirror. You look ridiculous. So do I, for that matter.
- Marie: Yet there you sit in that clown costume you don't dare take off.
- Ballet Master: What about your own costume?
- Marie: It's true. It's like it's branded onto my body.
- Ballet Master: Think I don't understand, Marie? You don't dare take your makeup off, and you don't dare put it on. You don't dare leave, yet you don't dare stay.
- Marie: One night, after a scorching summer day of blazing sunlight... there was an immense silence that reached all the way up to the starless vault of heaven. The silence between us was immense as well.
- Marie: Now you have a lover. How does it feel? Exciting? I'm sure you'll tell your friends. Will you boast about us?
- Henrik: I can't give any guarantees, but we will get married.
- Marie: But now? How do you feel right now? Haven't you longed for this? I never imagined it would be like this.
- Henrik: I was quite afraid, actually.
- Marie: And you're not now?
- Henrik: No. Are you?
- Marie: No, I'm never afraid of anything.
- Henrik: I am.
- Marie: How does it feel?
- Henrik: What?
- Marie: You said you're in love with me.
- Henrik: You feel it in your chest and stomach. It's like your knees are full of applesauce, and your toes curl up. But it's mostly in the chest.
- Marie: In the heart?
- Henrik: I don't know. What about you?
- Marie: Who said I was in love with you?
- Henrik: You're right.
- Marie: [She laughs lightly, pulling his arm around her shoulder] I think it's in my skin. I want you to touch me and stroke my skin with your hands. It's in my shoulders and elbows, and the palms of my hands. It tickles all over.
- Marie: It was the ship's horn in the distance... and other things too: the music and the moonlight... the silence and the anticipation... the blood whispering in our ears. A strange mood set in... almost like a melody. A new room opened up in our minds.
- The Priest: I'm here out of professional interest.
- Henrik: How so?
- The Priest: It may sound ridiculous, but I have a feeling of sitting next to Death himself. It's highly rewarding, seen from a professional point of view.
- Uncle Erland: Don't call me 'uncle.' At my age it's less agreeable to be 'uncle' to a beautiful young woman.
- Nisse, janitor at the Opera: What do you want?
- Henrik: I'm seeing a friend.
- Nisse, janitor at the Opera: Who?
- Henrik: I don't know.
- Uncle Erland: No sugar, as usual?
- Marie: Yes please, two lumps.
- Uncle Erland: You never used to take sugar.
- Marie: That was someone else.
- Marie: I stand here looking at your hands. They're beautiful, yet ugly somehow. I can't explain why. I think of Henrik's hands, and I can't understand why I let you touch me.
- Uncle Erland: I'm disgusting?
- Marie: Yes.
- Uncle Erland: Maybe it even rubbed off on you.
- Marie: It did. But I'm aware of it, and that's good.
- Uncle Erland: Your mother, Marie, used to dance for me on evenings like these... when it was quiet and still and the room was moonlit. We were alone... Forgive me of taking the liberty of saying we were alone. Your father... Forgive me, dear Elisabeth. She sat over there. I played... and looked at her face. I wondered whether I was in reality, or outside it. Was what surrounded me, the piano and the floor, unreal? Were the moonlight and the music all that was real and substantial? Now, all the clocks in the house have stopped. The flowers in the windows have wilted and died. We were alive in those days. There were red geraniums and the clocks were ticking away. Outside, the gulls were screeching.
- Nisse, janitor at the Opera: There's never even a scrap of gossip about her.
- Karl, janitor at the: Because for 40 years you've been throwing out the press.
- Nisse, janitor at the Opera: She keeps herself in shape.
- Karl, janitor at the: That's quite so... But her legs are too fat.
- Nisse, janitor at the Opera: It's muscle. All classical dancers have thick calves and thighs.
- Marie: I'm never going to die. I'll get really, really old, but I'm not going to die.
- Henrik: I'm scared. Scared that I, Henrik... will tip over the edge into something black, something unknown.
- Marie: Why do you talk about that?
- Henrik: I don't know. It's something I'm struck by now and again. But it's interesting, don't you think? And you started it.
- Mrs. Calwagen, Henrik's aunt: You're both waiting for me to die. Henrik will inherit me. According to the experts, I should have died three months ago.
- The Priest: The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
- Mrs. Calwagen, Henrik's aunt: I have cancer, you see. Whoever seeks to own his life, shall lose it, says the Father here. That's a lie.
- The Priest: Save his life.
- Mrs. Calwagen, Henrik's aunt: It's still a lie. I like living, and that's why I'll survive the lot of you. You too, dear Henrik.
- Kaj, ballet dancer: I bet you there'll be an evening rehearsal. We never get to make love at normal hours.
- Kaj, ballet dancer: We look great, of course... But this job wears you down, at least your toes... and your immortal soul.
- Uncle Erland: Marie... if you weren't my old friends' daughter, I'd tell you something. But I won't. I can't, and I daren't, my dear little girl.
- Marie: Pretend I'm someone else, like my mother.
- Uncle Erland: We'd run away, you and I.
- Marie: Run away?
- Uncle Erland: Go far, far away and live life to the full.
- Marie: Live life to the full...
- Uncle Erland: Seize the moment and hold it.
- Marie: I do seize the moment.
- Uncle Erland: You think so, poor girl? Lucky is he... lucky is the man who will teach you. Life... is so much.
- Marie: Have you ever had a dream and then woken up so soft inside that you just want to cry? And then tried hard to find out what the dream was about... or just walked away from it all?
- Kaj, ballet dancer: I never had anyone to have such dreams about.
- Marie: You wake up in the morning, with the dream still present. You're all soft inside...
- Marie: It was about thirteen years ago. The ballet school spring show. Yes, the show... A day of joy, a day of disappointment. Of dashed expectations, tension, hysteria, excitement. A day unlike any other in the year.
- Marie: Days like pearls: Round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string. Days filled with fun and caresses. Nights of waking dreams. When did we sleep? We had no time for sleeping.
- Marie: Look, how cold I am. But in my stomach and on my breasts, I'm feverishly hot.
- Henrik: Let me feel...
- Marie: You're tickling!
- Henrik: Such a fine breast, miss. Would you like to sleep with me tonight?
- Marie: With you?
- Henrik: You'd like that, wouldn't you?
- Marie: That depends on the reward, dear sir. I'm still a poor little virgin.
- Henrik: Then it's out of the question.
- Marie: But if you would consider engagement, I promise you won't be disappointed.
- Henrik: Then we have to wait. The goldsmith has taken Sunday off, and is lazing the day away.
- Marie: My dear sir, this kind of engagement is validated with rings of grass, and 24-carat kisses...
- Ballet Master: Empty theatres at night are strange. Strange and a bit ghostly. Dwarfs with humps and big heads watch you from every corner.
- Marie: Yes...
- Ballet Master: They've always been there. They grow in numbers as the theatre gets older. Their eyes are luminous.
- Uncle Erland: There's only one thing one can do: Protect oneself, build walls. Protect oneself from the touch of misery. I'll help you. I'll help wall you up. I'll teach you, Marie.
- Marie: Oh, I just feel like crying tonight. It's like toothache in the soul. The soul's in the stomach... that's where it hurts.
- Kaj, ballet dancer: I don't like that tone of voice.
- Marie: Neither do I. But without it, I'll start crying. I am like a painted puppet with strings. If I cry, the paint will run. Go now. Let me mourn my youth in peace.
- Ballet Master: Young man, I could transform you into a sugar lump. So beware!
- David Nyström: Old man, I could spirit away your talent, your secret, your good name and social standing. I happen to be a journalist!
- Ballet Master: Great master, you are the mightiest. Your humble slave awaits orders.
- David Nyström: Get lost!
- Ballet Master: I'm leaving, slowly. And I won't listen behind the door, I have manners.
- Marie: That winter I worked hard, without thinking. In the spring, Uncle Erland took me on a long journey. In this way I forgot Henrik. The wall grew around me. In the end I wasn't just protected, but locked up. In this way I forgot Henrik. I forgot Henrik.
- Ballet Master: I came into the ballet hall this morning. It was big and empty. There you were in your black leotard, bending and twisting arms and legs. Slowly, quietly, you didn't notice me. It was as if you'd been drawn with five black lines. And I thought... for 20 years she's been standing like that, morning, noon and night. For 20 years. Eight years left, then she's finished. Out... Bye-bye!
- Marie: What about yourself?
- Ballet Master: I'm the ballet-master. I create. I grow old and esteemed, no burden to anyone. You'll be pensioned off.
- David Nyström: Let's stop talking nonsense now.
- Marie: Fine, I'll call you tomorrow.
- David Nyström: Maybe you haven't noticed I'm here now!
- Marie: Don't talk to me like a child. I'm probably older than you.
- David Nyström: I'm sure, I've always been attracted to older women.