Sophie's Choice (1982)

Kevin Kline: Nathan Landau

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Nathan Landau : [about Sophie]  When I first met this one here, she was a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. And that was a whole year-and-a-half after the Russians had liberated the camp she was in.

• Sophie : Yeah umm it looked like something that the... the scares the birds... you know... what is that... umm scur... scrul... I had scurbutt!

  Nathan Landau : [to Stingo]  No, no, no she means scurvy.

  Sophie : Yeah...

  Nathan Landau : And typhus, and anemia and scarlet fever...

  Sophie : Yeah...

  Nathan Landau : Was fucking miracle that she emerged from that camp alive.

  Sophie : Right.

• Nathan Landau : This toast is in honor of my disassociation of you two creeps. Disassociation from you, coony captive cunt of King's county. And you, the dreary dregs of Dixie.

• Nathan Landau : On this bridge on which so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words to give America its voice... looking toward the land that gave them Whitman... from its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words... on this span of which Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote, we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods... whose words are all we know of immortality. To Stingo!

• Nathan Landau : To Stingo!

• Nathan Landau : You spent the whole fucking afternoon with him, or should I say, you spent the whole afternoon fucking him.

• Nathan Landau : I need you like death! Hear me? Like death!

  Sophie : No, Nathan!

  Nathan Landau : Go back to Krakow, baby. Back to Krakow!

• Nathan Landau : But I'm a biologist

  Sophie : [looks away confusedly]  Yeah...

• Nathan Landau : We put the little sweetie here on a massive doses of ferrous sulphate and she began to bloom like a rose. A rose. A rose. A beautiful fucking rose. You're something!

  Sophie : Thank you for making me to bloom like a rose.

  Nathan Landau : Not "to bloom", just "bloom".

• Sophie : This is ridiculous language and there's too many words! The word for "velocity", okay, there's "fast", "quick", "rapid" and they all mean the same thing.

  Nathan Landau : "Swift". "Speedy".

  Stingo : "Hasty".

  Nathan Landau : "Fleet".

  Stingo : "Brisk".

  Nathan Landau : Expeditious".

  Stingo : "Accelerated".

  Nathan Landau : "Winged".

  Sophie : No, no! Stop it! It's ridiculous! Oh, in French it's so easy. You say: "vite". Or in Polish, "szybki" and in Russian, "bystro". It's only in the English it's so complicated!

• Nathan Landau : Tell me. Tell me, Sophie. The same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such a worldwide renown that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along, protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule, handful of people who lived - while the millions died? Tell me. Tell me why? Explanation, please! Tell me why, old lucky number 11379, tell me, why you inhabit the land of the living? What splendid little tricks and strategems sprang from that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath the clear Polish air? While the multitudes at Auschwitz choked - slowly - on the gas?

  Sophie : No!

  Nathan Landau : Explain!

  Sophie : Stop it!

  Nathan Landau : Explain!

• Nathan Landau : You wipe out six million Jews - and the world lets them escape. You want to join me in a little lynching party, Southern boy? I expect you might have a lot to teach me there.

• Nathan Landau : However, look on it optimistically. You might be on the verge of a whole new form, the southern comic book.

• Stingo : I bet your father is a - very interesting man.

  Sophie : Yeah, my father was - a civilized man. That's a word, yeah? "Civilized"?

  Nathan Landau : A very good word.

  Sophie : Yeah? My father was a civilized man living in a uncivilized time. The civilized, they was the first to die.

• Sophie : Good morning, Stingo.

  Stingo : Good morning.

  Sophie : We wanted to make friends and to take you out on this beautiful summer day! We want you to come up and to have breakfast with us.

  Nathan Landau : And then...

  Sophie : Yes?

  Nathan Landau : Coney Island.

  Sophie : Coney Island! Oh boy.

• Nathan Landau : What do you think, Polish baby?

• Nathan Landau : A baby Southern artiste defending a little Pollack whore.

• Nathan Landau : [imitating a southern accent]  Well, shut my mouth, if it isn't our new literate figure from the South. Too bad I won't be around for a little lively conversation. We'd've had great time, you and I, shootin' this shit. We could've talked about - sports. Southern sports. like lynchin' niggers, or coons I think you all call 'em down there. So long cracker. See you in another life.

• Nathan Landau : You were - you were in that concentration camp?

  Sophie : Yeah, I can't - I can't talk about that, though.

• Nathan Landau : Jewish? Jewish? No, no, no. No, Sophie's Catholic.

  Sophie : Yeah, well, it's okay; but, I'm not anymore Catholic, so...

  Nathan Landau : Well, Catholic-ish.