- Gabriele: We always end up conforming to what others think, even when they're wrong.
- Gabriele: As they say, "Tidiness is the virtue of a mediocre mind."
- Antonietta: Then I'm a genius.
- Gabriele: I don't think I'm an antifascist. If anything, fascism is anti-me.
- Gabriele: Meeting you, getting to know you, talking with you, spending the whole day with you - - today of all days - - has been very important to me.
- Gabriele: So why aren't you laughing? You should have everything you want? A home, a husband, six children. Why aren't you laughing?
- Gabriele: That's the worst part. You try to seem different from what you really are. They force you to feel ashamed of yourself. To hide.
- Gabriele: What were you hoping for? What were you hoping for? Kisses? Love bites? My hands up your dress? Is that what you've been waiting for? Is that what a man does when he's alone with a woman? All men are the same, right?
- Antonietta: What is it you have against him?
- Caretaker: I say this for your own good. Certain people are bad for your name. I didn't want to say it... but that one from the sixth is a wart, a traitor... an antifascist. In short, a bastard.
- Antonietta: Why are you laughing?
- Gabriele: Just because - life is made up of so many different moments, and sometimes I get this urge to laugh - just like that, like a sneeze.
- Gabriele: [after looking at a photo album of Mussolini] They say he rides a horse to exhaustion every morning and a woman every night. Poor horses. Poor women!
- Antonietta: They say a lot of things about him.
- Gabriele: [reading a Mussolini quote] "Genius is incompatible with the physiology and psyche of the female and is always strictly masculine." You agree?
- Antonietta: Of course I agree. Why? Aren't the history books always full of men?
- Gabriele: Sure. Maybe too full. There's no room for anyone else. Least of all women.
- Antonietta: You know, you're a tough one to figure out.
- Gabriele: My mother, for example, wasn't male, but she was a genius. She wrote. She painted. She worked as a bookkeeper and supported the family, not my father. She made all the decisions. The only decision my father ever made was to walk out on us. She was a great woman, but she couldn't hold on to her husband. Or maybe she just didn't want to.
- Arnaldo Taberi: [singing] Those Serbs would grab Dalmatia but we won't let that pass, If they try to take it we'll kick 'em in the ass...
- Antonietta: You and your filthy language!
- Arnaldo Taberi: It's the patriotic song we learned for the parade.
- Antonietta: It's still vulgar.
- Antonietta: A family only gets one mother. This family needs at least three. One to clean the rooms. One to handle the kitchen. And one to lie in bed all day. I could be that one.
- [singing]
- Antonietta: Mamma, My song wings its way to you alone, Mamma, You'll be with me, You'll never again be alone.
- Antonietta: He's such a decent man. He can't be an antifascist.
- Caretaker: Decency has nothing to do with it. I know a thief who plied his trade in this very building. Now he's an officer in the army. So what if a man's a scoundrel? What matters is whether he's faithful to the Party. That's the important thing, right?
- Gabriele: Sorry, but you got me wrong, sweetheart. I'm not the virile stud you were hoping for. I'm a faggot. A faggot! That's what they call us.
- Gabriele: What do you know about anything? You're just an ignorant little housewife in heat, but, oh so very proper! One of those who say, "It was a moment of weakness. What must you think of me?" Prepared to fornicate on the roof, but ready to judge and condemn.
- Antonietta: There are lots of times when I feel humiliated too. Treated like a nobody. My husband doesn't talk to me. He orders me around, day - and night. We haven't laughed together since we were engaged. He does his laughing elsewhere now, with other women.
- Gabriele: You mean he's unfaithful? You seemed so secure and happy.
- Antonietta: "Faithful" - to the fatherland. You know those places where men go and pay for women? They know him better there than in his own office.
- Antonietta: Maria Luì, get up. You'd keep even Hitler waiting.
- Fabio Taberi: They stole the pom-pom off my cap.
- Emanuele Taberi: "Pom-pom" is a foreign word! Use "tassel" or "plume." Or Italianize it: pompono!
- Gabriele: Today's a very particular day for me, you know. It's like a dream where you want to scream but nothing comes out.
- Caretaker: I don't want to be involved. I don't want to know. But he's a queer fish, an eccentric old codger, a bad sort. I won't mince words: I don't like him and he doesn't like me!
- Antonietta: You know, I crossed paths with him once, four years ago, face to face.
- Gabriele: Really? Where?
- Antonietta: Villa Borghese. He was on horseback. I stopped and he glanced my way as he galloped by. It was like a fire flared up inside me. Mind you, my arms were full of groceries. My legs turned to jelly, everything started spinning around me, and I fell to the ground in a faint.
- Gabriele: From one glance as he galloped by?
- Antonietta: Yeah. Some passers-by helped me up and I managed to get on the streetcar.
- Gabriele: Hey, concierge! Concierge! That way everyone will finally know for sure that the tenant on the sixth floor is a queer, a pansy, a homosexual! A faggot.
- Emanuele Taberi: Antoniè, a day like today calls for a celebration and if we have a seventh we'll call him Adolf.
- [spanks Antonietta on the behind]
- Antonietta: No, not tonight.
- Emanuele Taberi: Just hurry up and come to bed. We'll discuss it then.
- Antonietta: It's funny, I don't feel guilty at all. Just the opposite. It was never like that with him. I never thought it could be like that. What about you?
- Gabriele: The way I am doesn't mean I can't make love to a woman. It's different. It was very nice... but it doesn't change anything.
- Gabriele: What did she say about me?
- Antonietta: About you? Nothing. Why? What do you think she said?
- Gabriele: I'm generally her favorite topic - - after her late husband, that is. In his death throes he refused last rites and asked to be buried in his fascist black shirt.
- Antonietta: He was a great man, a true fascist. He wasn't a naysayer or one of those - subversives.
- Gabriele: Like me, right? So she did tell you.
- Gabriele: So I tried to bluff by showing them a medical certificate stating I wasn't a homosexual, that I was a normal man.
- Antonietta: Did they believe you?
- Gabriele: Are you kidding? It only made things worse. That was a bad move. If you're not a homosexual, you don't walk around with a certificate to that effect.
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