Rembrandt: [about the painting "The Night Watch"] So you don't like the painting?
Leutnant Ruytenburgh: You want to make fun of us?
Banning Cocq: Rembrandt, explain to us: How could this happen?
Rembrandt: Explain? I am not an explainer. I am a painter.
Leutnant Ruytenburgh: But a miserable one.
Schütze: [to Ruytenburgh] You, be quiet!
Banning Cocq: No, Rembrandt, it is differently. We don't understand what you have painted.
Rembrandt: So you don't understand but you judge. Who gives you the right to judge if you don't understand?
Leutnant Ruytenburgh: Our money.
Rembrandt: Your money, your money. I was expecting this. Your money. So you sit on your money sacks and think that you can pay anything in life with it and you don't even know how poor you are how regretable you are.
Leutnant Ruytenburgh: You let him talk like this?
Rembrandt: Yes, you have to let me talk like this. You complain that you don't recognize yourself on the picture. You gave me the job to paint the Shooting Company of Amsterdam for future generations. That happened. I didn't care about the single one, I cared about the whole thing. But when they will stand in front of this picture in 100 years nobody will know anyone of you and no one will know how you looked like. But they will say "Those were men whom Amsterdam can be proud of". Be happy that you don't recognize yourself. Believe me, I could have painted you so close that you would be afraid of yourself. Look at youself in the mirror. See your fat bellies, your double-chin, your noses. No, no. I couldn't paint you the way you are in real life. In eternal times they will laugh at you. You forgot taht it supposed to be something special. I owned it to my conscience to paint the picture like that so it can be testimony ablegen for me as an artist. Not for your Bigotry. Do whatever you want with the picture. You Moneybags.
