Women in Love (1969)

Alan Bates: Rupert Birkin

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Quotes 

• Rupert Birkin : Gudrun Brangwen. Gerald Crich. Tibby and Laura Lupton. Ursula Brangwen. Rupert Birkin. What peculiar names we all have. Do you think we've been singled out, chosen for some extraordinary moment in life, or are we all cursed with the mark of Cain?

• Gerald Crich : Do you know what it is to suffer when you're with a woman? lt tears you like a silk. And each bit and stroke burns hot. Of course, l wouldn't not have had it. lt was a complete experience. She's a wonderful woman, but l hate her somewhere. lt's curious.

  Rupert Birkin : You've had your experience now. Why work on an old wound?

  Gerald Crich : Because there's nothing else.

  Rupert Birkin : l've loved you, as well as Gudrun. Don't forget.

  Gerald Crich : Have you? Or do you think you have?

• Gerald Crich : Rupert, what is it you really want?

  Rupert Birkin : I want to sit with my beloved in a field, with daisies growing all around us.

• Rupert Birkin : I do believe in a permanent union between a man and a woman. Chopping about is merely an exhaustive process. But a permanent relationship between a man and a woman isn't the last word. lt certainly isn't.

  Gerald Crich : Quite.

  Rupert Birkin : We've got to take down this love-and-marriage ideal from its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the additional perfect relationship, between man and man. Additional to marriage.

  Gerald Crich : Well, I don't see how they can be the same.

  Rupert Birkin : No, not the same, but equally important... equally creative, equally - sacred, if you like.

  Gerald Crich : I know you believe something like that. Only, I can't feel it, do you see?

• Rupert Birkin : The proper way to eat a fig in society, is to split it in four, holding it by the stump and open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honeyed, heavy petalled, four petalled, flower. Then, you throw away the skin, after you have taken off the blossom with your lips. But, the vulgar way, is just to put your mouth to the crack and take out the flesh in one bite. The fig is a very secretive fruit. The Italians vulgarly say it stands for the female part - the fig fruit. The fissure. The yoni. The wonderful, moist conductivity towards the center. Involved. Inturned, One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light. Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won't taste it. And when the fig has kept her secret long enough, so it explodes, and you see through the fissure, the scarlet, and the fig is finished. The year is over. That's how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit. Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day. Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.

• Rupert Birkin : I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, and there would be no loss if every human being perished tomorrow.

  Ursula Brangwen : So, you want everybody in the world destroyed?

  Rupert Birkin : Yes, absolutely. Don't you yourself think it's a wonderful, clear idea? A world empty of people... just uninterrupted grass and a rabbit sitting there?

  Ursula Brangwen : You don't seem to see much love in humanity. What about individual love?

  Rupert Birkin : I don't believe in love any more than I believe in hate or grief. Love is an emotion. You feel or don't feel, according to your circumstances.

  Ursula Brangwen : If you don't believe in love, what do you believe in? Just in the end of the world and rabbits?

  Rupert Birkin : The point about L-O-V-E is that we hate the word, because we've vulgarised it. lt should be taboo, forbidden from utterance for many years... till we've found a new and better idea.

• Gerald Crich : By God, I've just reached the conclusion that nothing matters in the world except somebody to take the edge off one's being alone. The right somebody.

  Rupert Birkin : Meaning the right woman, I suppose?

  Gerald Crich : Yes, of course. Failing that, an amusing man.

• Rupert Birkin : I'm sorry if I spoiled your dance. It was an act of pure spontaneity.

  Hermione Roddice : My ass!

  Rupert Birkin : You can't bear anything to be spontaneous, can you? Cause then its no longer in your power. You must clutch things and have them in your power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark, sensual body of life! All you've got is your will and your lust for power!

• Rupert Birkin : I want the finality of love.

• Hermione Roddice : Dreadful. All this strife and dissension. If we could only realise that... in the spirit, we are all one, all equal in the spirit. All brothers there. The rest wouldn't matter. There'd be no more of this carping, envy... all this struggle for power, which destroys... only destroys.

  Rupert Birkin : It's just the opposite, Hermione, just the contrary. The minute you begin to compare, one man becomes far better than another. All the inequality in the world that you can imagine is there by nature. I want every man to have his fair share of the world's goods... so I can be rid of his importunity, so that I can say to him: 'Now you've got what you want, your fair share of the world's gear. Now, you mind yourself, and don't obstruct me.'

• Rupert Birkin : I would like to die from our kind of life. Be born again... through a love that is like sleep. With new air around one, that no one's ever breathed before.

• Ursula Brangwen : Say you love me. Say, "my love," to me.

  Rupert Birkin : Oh, I love you right enough. I-I just want it to be something else.

  Ursula Brangwen : Why? Why? Why isn't it enough?

  Rupert Birkin : Because we can go one better.

  Ursula Brangwen : We can't. We can only say we love each other. Say "my love" to me. Say it. Say it!

  Rupert Birkin : Yes, my love. Yes, my love. Let love be enough, then. I love you, then. I'm bored by the rest.

• Gerald Crich : You know, I always believe in love, in true love. But where do you find it nowadays?

  Rupert Birkin : I don't know. Life has all kinds of things. There isn't only one road.

  Gerald Crich : I don't care how it is with me... as long as I feel... that I've lived. I don't care how it is, as long as I feel that.

• Rupert Birkin : If all women are either wives or mistresses, then Gudrun is a mistress.

  Ursula Brangwen : And all men are either lovers or husbands. Why not both?

  Rupert Birkin : No. No, the one excludes the other.

  Ursula Brangwen : Then I want another.

  Rupert Birkin : No you don't.

  Ursula Brangwen : Oh, yes I do.

• Rupert Birkin : It almost breaks my heart. My beloved country. It had something to express, even when it made this chair. Now all we can do is to fish amongst rubbish heaps... for remnants of the old expression. There's no production in us anymore... just sordid and foul mechanicalness.

  Ursula Brangwen : I hate your past. I'm sick of it.

  Rupert Birkin : Not as sick as I am of the accursed present.

  Ursula Brangwen : Well, I don't want the past to take its place. I don't want old things.

  Rupert Birkin : The truth is, we don't want things at all. The thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me.

• Rupert Birkin : You struck the first blow.

  Gudrun Brangwen : And I shall strike the last!

• Hermione Roddice : How can you not think me sensual?

  Rupert Birkin : All you want is pornography! Looking at yourself in mirrors. Watching your naked animal actions in mirrors.

• Rupert Birkin : There is a golden light in you, which I wish that you would give me.

  Ursula Brangwen : I always think I'm going to be loved - and then I'm let down.

• Ursula Brangwen : We must live somewhere!

  Rupert Birkin : No, not somewhere! Anywhere! Not a definite place. Just you and me and a few others. Where we needn't wear any clothes! Where we can be ourselves without any bother.

• Rupert Birkin : I don't want love. I don't want to know you. I want to be gone out of myself and I want you to be lost in yourself.

• Ursula Brangwen : Rupert, whatever did you mean? You, me and a few other people?You've got me!

  Rupert Birkin : Well, I always imagined our being happy with a few other people.

  Ursula Brangwen : Why should we be?

  Rupert Birkin : I don't know? One has a hankering after a sort of further fellowship.

  Ursula Brangwen : Why? Why should you hanker after other people? Why should you need them?

  Rupert Birkin : Don't you need them? Or, does it just end with us two then?

  Ursula Brangwen : Yes. What more do you want?

• Ursula Brangwen : I think we've all gone mad!

  Rupert Birkin : Pity we aren't madder!

  [singing] 

  Rupert Birkin : Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll, let me put my arms around me...

• Rupert Birkin : Oh, we shouldn't talk when we're tired and wretched.

• Ursula Brangwen : Oh, say you love me. Oh, please. Please. Say you love me. Say it. Say it! Oh, say it. Oh, please. Oh, no. Oh. Oh! Oh! Say it. I do love you. I do. Oh. Oh.

  Rupert Birkin : Must it be like this?

• Rupert Birkin : Must one - just, go on as if one's alone in the world?

  Ursula Brangwen : You've got me. Why should you need others?

• Rupert Birkin : Women - there's a lust for passion and a greed for self-importance in love.

• Ursula Brangwen : Do you love me?

  Rupert Birkin : Far too much. I couldn't bear this cold, eternal place without you.

  Ursula Brangwen : Oh, do you hate it then?

  Rupert Birkin : If you weren't here, it would kill the very quick of my life.

  Ursula Brangwen : It's good that we are warm and together.

• Ursula Brangwen : Gudrun might rush into marriage like we have. Wouldn't that be nice?

  Rupert Birkin : Rubbish! Gudrun is a born mistress, just as Gerald is a born lover.

• Rupert Birkin : Its the fact you want to emphasize, not the impression. And what's the fact: red little spiky stigmas of the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yellow pollen flying from one to the other.

• Hermione Roddice : What are you doing?

  Rupert Birkin : Catkins.

  Hermione Roddice : Really? What do you learn about them?

  Rupert Birkin : Well from these little red bits, the nuts come - if they receive pollen from these long danglers.

  Hermione Roddice : Little red flames. Little red flames, are the beautiful! I think they're so beautiful.

  Rupert Birkin : Did you never notice them before?

  Hermione Roddice : No. Never before.

  Rupert Birkin : Well, now you'll always see them.

  Hermione Roddice : Now I shall always see them. Thank you, so much, for showing me. I think they're so beautiful. Little red flames.

• Rupert Birkin : I did not want it to be like this. I didn't want it to be like this.

• Ursula Brangwen : [Last lines]  I don't believe it. Its an obstinance here. A theory. A perversity. You can't have two kinds of love. Why should you?

  Rupert Birkin : It seems as if I can't. Yet I wanted it.

  Ursula Brangwen : You can't have it, because its impossible.

  Rupert Birkin : I don't believe that.