- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: Don't you understand what we have to do, Sixten?
- Sixten Sparre: Don't say it.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: We must. We don't have any choice.
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: What you need is an admirer. In your profession, I'm sure you have many opportunities.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: He's not the first, that's true. But he's the best.
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: So far. There will be others.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: No, he's the last for me.
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: It's not just about people. He's betrayed his country, too.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: My mother is German. My father Danish. My stepfather is American. I have friends in France and Italy. Look, my hand is like a map.
- [shows Kristoffer her palm]
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: Here are lines, like borders. What does it matter where the lines are? I care about the hand. The whole hand.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: Don't talk about love, Sixten. We can't butter our bread with it.
- Sixten Sparre: You want me to find a job? Where? Tell me!
- Sixten Sparre: You want me to find a job. Tell me! Where?
- Sixten Sparre: How am I supposed to do it? Should I go in and say, "My name is Count Sparre. I've deserted from the Swedish army. Can you give me work?" Is that how I should do it?
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: War is a soldier's job, right? Our circus tent burned down in Paris. It was hit by a grenade. I was only 2, but they told me. It was in '71. All our animals died in the fire. I can remember the smell. War is not fancy parades, Sixten. It's the smell of burnt flesh.
- Sixten Sparre: You ask if I'm happy. Sometimes I ask myself if I deserve to be this happy. What we're doing is perhaps not allowed yet. But one day people will be able to choose more than one way to live. People will have courage to admit that they change.
- [out of money, Elvira and Sixten have resorted to scrounging for food, with Sixten stealing some eggs]
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: Don't be sad. We're just going out to have breakfast. How do you want your eggs?
- Sixten Sparre: Hard-boiled.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: How hard?
- Sixten Sparre: I'm sorry?
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: How many minutes?
- Sixten Sparre: Four.
- Elvira Madigan, alias Hedvig Jensen: From the start?
- Sixten Sparre: No, four minutes after the water boils. How many slices of bread do you want?
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: This is the fellow I know!
- Sixten Sparre: No, it isn't. I'm on the women's side now. Unravelling wool. Lying on the grass.
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: I know about lying in the grass. If you look at a blade of grass that's close to your eye, that blade is clear but nothing else is. Everything else is blurred. We have to make choices, Sixten.
- Sixten Sparre: I believe one blade of grass can be the entire world. And the world is nothing without grass. We need to start somewhere, start with something that is real. Words have lost their meaning for me lately. And other things have come to life instead. Our royal parades... the horses' hooves, the drums, the shining, sparkling bayonets. Do you know how many layers of skin a bayonet has to go through, before it reaches your guts? I looked it up in a medical book. Epidermis... dermis... subcutaneous layer... a thin layer of fat... then the fascia. Know what that is? It's like a skin which covers and protects the muscles. Then the muscles... through it all, before you reach the guts.
- [sighs]
- Sixten Sparre: You have to know it layer by layer. You have to see things up close.
- Kristoffer, Sixtens vän: [shakes his head] She's distorted your vision.
- Sixten Sparre: Yes, I agree, she has. But isn't that what love is? To... borrow another person's eyes... to-to experience the world... as your beloved sees and feels it. Isn't that what love is?