Anthony QuinnQuotes

Eufemio Zapata: [to Fernando] I love you—but I do not like you.

Zampanò: Why don't you remarry?

Widow: What? Another husband? I'm the only one who gives orders around here.

Zampanò: Is that all a husband is good for? Giving orders?

Widow: Think I'm not made of flesh and blood? Everybody likes sweets after a good meal.

Zampanò: You always eat standing up like a horse?

Widow: I always eat on my feet. Who's going to keep the house going if not me?

Prostitute: What line of work are you in?

Zampanò: I'm a traveling artist. This is my sidekick. I taught her everything. When I took her on, she couldn't even quack.

Zampanò: Get in.

Prostitute: Is this piece of junk your car?

Zampanò: Don't you like it?

Prostitute: Are you crazy?

Zampanò: It's American. Hasn't broken down once in seven years.

Gelsomina: You're one of those men who runs around with women.

Zampanò: What?

Gelsomina: Who runs around with women.

Zampanò: If you want to stay with me, you've got to learn one thing - to keep your mouth shut!

Gelsomina: Where are you from?

Zampanò: My hometown.

Gelsomina: You don't talk like us. Where were you born?

Zampanò: My father's house.

Zampanò: [reciting his act by rote before a crowd; collecting money from the crowd; with seemingly great effort, he breaks the chain] Here we have a piece of chain that is a quarter of an inch thick. It is made of crude iron, stronger than steel. With the simple expansion of my pectoral muscles, or chest, that is, I'll break the hook. Thank you, thank you. Now, to do this feat, I must fill myself up like a tire. If a blood vessel should break, I would spit blood. For instance, in Milan a man weighing 240 pounds lost his eyesight doing this trick. That is because the optical nerves take a beating, and once you lose your eyes, you are finished. If there's any delicate person in the audience, I would advise him to look away cause there could be blood.

Zampanò: Do only what I tell you to.

Zampanò: Come here. There should be something here to fit you. I want you to look elegant. I don't want to see you in rags. My women have always looked smart.

Alexis Zorba: [when dancing] Whoopa! Whoopa! Whoopa!

Alexis Zorba: Why'? Will no man ever do something without a why'? Just like that, for the hell of it.

Alexis Zorba: Listen to that bitch—the sea—that maker of widows.

Alexis Zorba: Boss, why did God give us hands? To grab. Well, grab!

Alexis Zorba: When my little boy, Dimitri, died, everybody was crying. Me? I got up, and I danced. They said, Zorba is mad. But it was the dancing—only the dancing—that stopped the pain. You see, he was my first. He was only three. When I'm happy, it's the same thing.

Alexis Zorba: You bastard mountain! I'll eat your guts!

Alexis Zorba: Do you know how old I am? Ah, never mind, that's a secret. But I... have got to go fast. You know, they... they say that age kills the fire inside of a man. That he hears death coming. He opens the door, says, "Come in. Give me rest." That is a pack of God damned lies. I've got enough fight in me to... to devour the world! So... I fight!

Alexis Zorba: Those damn cats!

Alexis Zorba: The lamb, it will burn!

Alexis Zorba: No more fooling around, not in this place. We'll pull our pants up and make a pile of money.

Alexis Zorba: There will be no funeral. She was a Frank, she crossed herself with four fingers. The priest will not bury her like everybody else.

Alexis Zorba: Silly old bitch. She's not alone, she's with Suleiman Pasha having a hell of a time.

Alexis Zorba: Hey boss, did you ever see a more splendiferous crash?

Alexis Zorba: And, as for women, you make fun of me that I love them. How can I not love them? They are such poor, weak creatures. They think so little. A man's hand on their breast, and they give you all they got.

Alexis Zorba: All right, we go outside where God can see us better.

Alexis Zorba: What kind of man are you, don't you even like dolphins?

Alexis Zorba: Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I'm a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything, the full catastrophe.

Alexis Zorba: [slaps table] Remember this: if a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive : if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go. I know, because a very wise old Turk told me.

Alexis Zorba: They hate her because they cannot have her. Only one man here can. You.

Alexis Zorba: Look, boss: a big, beautiful, wild widow.

Alexis Zorba: You think too much. That is your trouble. Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.

Alexis Zorba: Zorba, you are in paradise.

Alexis Zorba: On a deaf man's door, you can knock forever!

Peter: [Arrested for arson, Barabbas has been brought to the dungeons housing the Christians falsely accused of the act] This burning city is no work of ours. This isn't how the new kingdom is going to be made. You were wrong.

Barabbas: Who are you to tell me I'm wrong?

Peter: Many years ago, we spoke together. Do you remember?

Barabbas: No.

Peter: You asked me why I was making a net so far from the sea.

Barabbas: Jerusalem. The street of the potters.

Peter: You were as mistaken then as you are again now.

Female Christian: We didn't set fire to the city.

Male Christian: You've done the work of the wild beasts of the emperor.

Female Christian: Are you a lunatic?

Male Christian: It was his fire, you fool. Not God's.

Barabbas: [the realization of his error sinks in] Why can't God make himself plain? What's become of all the fine hopes, the trumpets, the angels, all the promises? Every time I've seen it end up in the same way, with torments and dead bodies, with no good come of it. Huh? All for nothing.

Peter: Do you think they persecute us to destroy nothing? Or, for that matter, do you think that what has battered on your soul for twenty years has been nothing? It wasn't for nothing that Christ died. Mankind isn't nothing. In His eyes, each individual man is the whole world. He loves each man as though there were no other.

Barabbas: I was the opposite of everything he taught, wasn't I? Why did He let Himself be killed instead of me?

Peter: Because being farthest from Him, you were the nearest.

Barabbas: I'm no nearer than I was before.

Peter: Nor any farther away. The truth of the matter is, He's never moved from your side. I can tell you this: there has been a wrestling in your spirit back and forth in your life which, in itself, is knowledge of God. By the conflict you have known Him. I can tell you as well that so it will be with the coming of the kingdom. A wrestling back and forth and a laboring of the world spirit, like a woman in childbirth. We are only the beginning. We won't see the time when the earth is full of the kingdom. And yet, even now, even here, the hour at the end of life, the kingdom is within us. There's nothing more to fear. Upon us, the years will be but many years, many martyrdoms. The ground of men is very stubborn to mature. But men will look back to us in our day, and will wonder, and remember our hope. It is the end of the day. We shall trust ourselves to a little pain, and sleep, saying to world, "Godspeed.

Pontius Pilate: It seemed to me at the time, Barabbas, when you were given your liberty before, it wasn't a fortunate exchange. They were calling for death and disorder when they called your name. This is what I thought and this is what has occurred. They put the scourge back into the fist. By that I mean you and your life. And many men have suffered and died in consequence.

Barabbas: [referring to Christ] The other man, too. They're dying because of that.

Pontius Pilate: This is a local matter, which I hope will soon be adjusted. The shock and fear of an unreasoning fanaticism will pass. But the appetite to destroy which, alas, the human being shares with the wild beast, is always with us. And it has rigorously to be disciplined in the name of civilization, and according to the law.

Barabbas: That's what you say. But I tell you, whichever side of the law we're on, we're the same men. You and your kind, and me and my kind. How else have you lived except my way? What we haven't got, we go out and take!

Pontius Pilate: Let him speak!

Barabbas: [the guards unhand him, and he continues] Well, how else have you lived except my way? Whoever's against us or gets in our way, we get rid of. My knife may have bitten a few throats, but what about your weapons? They've spit at thousands upon thousands. If I've taken a passing woman to myself, your armies have looted and raped across continents - and have been called the glory of the earth for doing it! You were born according to the law and raised according to the law. I was born by a girl thrown out of a brothel, who gave birth and cursed me before she died. But I tell you, we belong to the same herd.

Pontius Pilate: Unfortunately for you, Barabbas, the law is indispensable. The law is the pass and permit to life in this world. You were without it. However, the law here tells me that a man who has been released by the will of the people at a holy festival cannot thereafter be given a capital punishment.

Barabbas: Huh? Y-you can't kill me?

Pontius Pilate: Easier on you if we could. I sentence you to transportation for life, whatever that's worth, to the sulfur mines on the island of Sicily.

Barabbas: I... I can't... be killed. He meant me to live... No killing for Barabbas. No death for Barabbas. He died in my place!

T.E. Lawrence: My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money...

Auda abu Tayi: No.

T.E. Lawrence: ...for Feisal...

Auda abu Tayi: No!

T.E. Lawrence: ...nor to drive away the Turks. He will come... because it is his pleasure.

Auda abu Tayi: Thy mother mated with a scorpion.

T.E. Lawrence: We do not work this thing for Feisal.

Auda abu Tayi: No? For the English, then?

T.E. Lawrence: For the Arabs.

Auda abu Tayi: The Arabs? The Howitat, Ajili, Rala, Beni Saha; these I know, I have even heard of the Harith, but the Arabs? What tribe is that?

Auda abu Tayi: It is Auda of the Howitat who speaks.

Sherif Ali: It is Ali of the Harith who answers.

Auda abu Tayi: Harith! Ali... does your father still steal?

Sherif Ali: No. Does Auda take me for one of his own bastards?

Auda abu Tayi: No, there is no resemblance. Alas, you resemble your father.

Sherif Ali: Auda flatters me.

Auda abu Tayi: You're easily flattered. I knew your father well.

Sherif Ali: (pause) (To Auda) Did you know your own?

Auda Abu Tayi: I am Auda Abu Tayi! Does Auda serve? (Tribesmen in tent shout no, turns to ask those gathered outside) DOES AUDA SERVE?!? (Crowd yells angrily no)... I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people! (Audas tribesmen cheer)

Auda Abu Tayi: (To Lawrence) Dine with Auda, English. Dine with him. (To Harith Envoy) It is my pleasure, that you should dine with me... in WADI RUM!

Nick Acropolis: Rose! Rose, I am trying again. Will you please accept these flowers?

Rose: I don't want them. And I don't date Greeks.

Nick Acropolis: You know, you and I could make each other so happy. Greek men are great lovers.

Rose: And Greek men never bathe.

Nick Acropolis: I bathe twice a day! Three times! When I do my sit-ups. Feel that stomach. Hard like an eighteen-year-old's. Come on, feel it!

Rose: I'm not feeling anything of yours.