- Kurt Barnert: It's far too easy to love you. You're so beautiful, it's almost unromantic.
- [subtitled version]
- Professor Antonius van Verten: Don't vote for anyone. Never vote for another party again. Vote for art. It's either-or. In art only, freedom is not an illusion.After the Nazi catastrophe, only the artist can give people back their sense of freedom. Every individual, whether he's a garbage man or a farmer, has the chance to be an artist. if he develops his own subjective abilities without external guidelines. If you aren't free... completely free, then nobody else will be. By making yourselves free, you are liberating the world. You are priests. You are revolutionaries. You are liberators. Make your burnt offerings!
- Professor Carl Seeband: Socialist realism?
- Kurt Barnert: Is there anything else?
- Professor Carl Seeband: I hope not.
- Kurt Barnert: You're so beautiful, it's almost unromantic. It's far too easy to love you. Do you love me? Do you love me? Otherwise it doesn't work for me. Without love, it won't work.
- Professor Antonius van Verten: So, Lehmbruck. He said that each work of art must retain something from the first days of Creation. As if almost as if it were still divine... As if it were only just emerging from the primeval mass, from the rib... No. No, a different approach. Has anyone had an insight this week? A realization... you'd perhaps like to share?
- Kurt Barnert: Lottery numbers. If I tell you six numbers at random... 5, 7, 23, 29, 44, 11... that's just stupid. But if I read you the winning numbers from the lottery... May I?- "2, 17, 19, 25, 45, 48." Suddenly they have a true quality, something imperative, almost beautiful.
- Kurt Barnert: You smoke?
- Professor Carl Seeband: Sixty-three is the right age to start. The consequences will hardly catch up with me.
- Kurt Barnert: Not random. Real. Coherent. Consistent. Only reality is consistent. Every reality is consistent. Everything that's true is beautiful. Let's suppose I say six numbers to you now. It's just stupid. Pointless. But if the six numbers are the winning lottery numbers, then they mean something. They have consistency, value, almost beauty. It's the same with the photographs. I want the truth.
- NKWD Major Murawjow: If my child were born with health problems, should it be put to death?
- Professor Carl Seeband: It so happens that space and resources on this earth are limited. Who should have them? The healthy or the sick?
- NKWD Major Murawjow: Soon there will be one more place available on this earth.
- Kurt Barnert: Nobody has the intention. It usually means the opposite is true.
- Professor Antonius van Verten: But somehow it's almost art, that wall.
- Günther Preusser: If he likes your art, you'll get a gallery. Then you can buy your girlfriend a car.
- Kurt Barnert: I'm married.
- Günther Preusser: Then you can buy your wife and your girlfriend a car.
- Kurt Barnert: I just don't know if what I'm doing is good enough.
- Günther Preusser: Somehow it isn't. But it's all subjective anyway. And if it weren't subjective, it'd be craft.