Derek Jacobi Quotes

Franklyn Madson You were inside President Roosevelt's office?

Mrs. Tupper Yes. Lots of times. My mommy was his cook. Yeah, we were like family. I used to sit on Uncle Teddy's lap. I liked that!

Franklyn Madson I'm sure Uncle Teddy did, too.

Falco Games. One hundred and fifty days of games.

Gracchus He's cleverer than I thought.

Falco Clever"! The whole of Rome would be laughing at him, if they weren't so afraid of his Praetorian.

Gracchus Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.

Falco You really think people are going to be seduced by that?

Gracchus I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Colosseum. He'll bring them death…and they will love him for it.

Francis Bacon Look, why don't you just go, George. I got to get on with this.

George Dyer I'm going, I... I'm going. Anyway, when you gave me the keys, it was meant to mean I could live here.

Francis Bacon What's past is past.

George Dyer You call yesterday the past?

Francis Bacon George, I am a painter! This is a studio! That is a painting! You are in the way!

George Dyer But it's a painting of me! Or anyone would bloody well notice.

Francis Bacon Oh, well thank you for the critique, George! I feel much better! Now I know where I stand! Now, after that enlightening discussion, will you just piss off!

Francis Bacon George has qualities. A combination of amorality and innocence. And note that I say innocence and not ignorance.

Francis Bacon And who might you be? Well, you're not much of a burglar, are you?

Francis Bacon Take your clothes off, come to bed... and you can have whatever you want.

Gracchus For you guidance, Caesar, the Senate has prepared a series of protocols, to begin addressing the many problems in the city, beginning with basic sanitation for the Greek quarter, to combat the plague which is already springing up there. So, if Caesar...

Commodus Shh. Don't you see, Gracchus? That's the very problem, isn't it? My father spent all his time at study, at books and learning and philosophy. He spent his twilight hours reading scrolls from the Senate. And all the while, the people were forgotten.

Gracchus But the Senate is the people, sire. Chosen from among the people, to speak for the people.

Commodus I doubt if any of the people eat so well as you do, Gracchus. Or have such splendid mistresses, Gaius. I think I understand my own people.

Gracchus Then perhaps Caesar will be so good as to teach us … out of his own, extensive experience.

Commodus I call it love. I am their father, the people are my children. I shall hold them to my bosom and embrace them tightly –

Gracchus Have you ever embraced someone dying of plague, sire?

Commodus No. But if you interrupt me again, I assure you that you shall.

Francis Bacon Submitting entirely to the service and pleasure of the dominant partner. This I find a catharsis, in that all responsibility is relinquished, every move is dictated. No decisions are your own, who exists solely for the service and pleasure of another man.

Francis Bacon I watch him while he's sleeping. A prisoner of dreams. Fighting the battle he's always going to lose. But I'm powerless to help him as I'm powerless to help myself. So I watch and wait.

Francis Bacon This painful inability to sustain relationships. The selfishness my work demands leaves no room for an emotional self. Can tenderness ultimately only manifest itself in the motion of a brush? Even this remains invisible. The visceral reach, running fingertips along the curved notches of a spine. The line of a femur, the curl of tendon into muscle. The smell. To violate, to desecrate, to examine a person from the inside, eroticizing the white shirt cuff glimpsed beneath a dark suit. The girth, the solids, the sack of flesh, just offal bags. Ruminating intestines. Fine wines filled and swilled with rich food, trying to create some distance between myself and some dead lover.

Francis Bacon Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.

Francis Bacon What mad misfortunes make his eyes blaze with despair? I dream of some tough lover. Big as the Universe, his body blemished by shadows. He'll crush me, naked, in gloomy bars between his golden thighs. A mundane yob transformed into an archangel. Is my lover to be my assassin? Or I his? Loneliness - my only true companion - will always rival any lover. Its greedy desire... always drive a wedge between me and any contender for my company. And I question myself; do I possess some inner destructive demon?

George Dyer You actually make money out of painting?

Francis Bacon Mmm.

George Dyer Not something I ever really thought about. I mean, there were some pictures of my mum's but they weren't really for looking at, they were just... just sort of there.

Francis Bacon Yes. That is interesting, George.

George Dyer Nothing like your's, obviously.

Francis Bacon Obviously.

Pete I've known Mike Church forever. He would never hurt her.

Franklyn Madson This is fate we're talking about, and if fate works at all, it works because people think that this time, it isn't going to happen!

Francis Bacon It's like the floor in the Japanese pot, that's what makes it so superb. There's no beauty without the wound. Lucifer was the most beautiful angel, that was his fatal flaw. Too much like their creator, darling. I just like to make one picture that would annihilate all the rest. A violent fusion or the past or the present. Concentrated into a single, raw sliced open nerve.

Isabel Rawsthorne The portraiture of you're pain.

Francis Bacon No.

Isabel Rawsthorne No. The tenderness is so visible in every brush stroke. The paintings of George are like exquisite love poems. That's the irony of the George pictures. I mean, you seem to put more into the work than into the relationship itself. And ultimately you suffer just as much.

Francis Bacon Our time together has given me a whole new energy. Not just for the work, but moment's like these. You may well become a subject for a painting.

George Dyer That would be fantastic. I always wanted a picture of me.

Francis Bacon A man being measured for a suit is not the similar to his being measured for the old wooden box.

George Dyer It feels like a bloody coffin. It's fucking hot in here, Francis.

Francis Bacon Yes it is hot, George. Mr Dyer will arrange to collect the suit and I think we're going to have some shirts and some appropriate ties.

George Dyer Hold on! Hold on! Don't go over board. I mean, I feel so...

Francis Bacon So clothed?

George Dyer You just don't care what people think, do you?

Francis Bacon Come on, I want you to meet my friends. Now, we can have a drink. God knows I need one.

George Dyer What? You're mates?

Francis Bacon The Colony is a refuge for lost souls, no longer in possession of living bodies.

George Dyer Can't we just go to the pub?

Francis Bacon No.

George Dyer What about Paris?! Am I still coming?!

Francis Bacon A man that killed the thing he loved and so he had to Dyer! Of course you're coming! You are the exhibition!

Francis Bacon Everybody, this is George. This is Muriel, Isabel, the beautiful Henrietta, and Deakin. Introduce yourselves. George is a little shy.

George Dyer Hello...

John Deakin So... who's Arthur and who's Martha?

Muriel Belcher Oh, piss off, Deakin! I'm really sick of it!

John Deakin I'll talk to you after you've had a shave...

Mr. Wheen (on the concept of his unruly children) We always told you, Mr. Brown...

Mr. Jowls It's not funerals you should be working with...

Cedric (nodding, miming along)

Both It's christenings! (uproarious laughter)

Cedric (sighs, before laughing along with them)

Daniel Farson I'm Daniel Farson. Tonight, on Hungry Eye, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Britain's greatest living painter, Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon Good evening.

Daniel Farson Francis Bacon, your work is known internationally as some of the most challenging and powerful of the post war years, you've resisted the abstract movements which have dominated those years and have championed the importance of the figure in modern art. Why is the figure so important to you?

Francis Bacon Well, its difficult to describe really. One can only talk about one's instincts and avoid the rest.

Francis Bacon I do it with a chance. Brush stroke, which locks the magic in place.