- Frederick: Words and phrases leave you cold. You tell your story without speaking. And you do it so well. You really astonished me. Your legs speak, your hands answer. A glance, a shrug, a step forward, back and they understand up in the Gods.
- Baptiste: They understand, though they are poor. I'm like them. I love them, I know them. Their lives are small, but their dreams are vast.
- Man in the audience: Shut up! We can't hear the pantomime!
- Anselme Debureau: A kick in the ass, if well delivered, is a sure laugh. It's true. There's an entire order, a science, a style of kicks in the ass.
- Garance: You're shaking. Are you cold?
- Baptiste: I'm shaking because I'm happy. Happy because you're here, near me. I love you. Garance, do you love me?
- Garance: You talk like a child. People love that way in books, in dreams. Not in real life.
- Baptiste: Dreams, life - they're the same. Else life's not worth living.
- Baptiste: I still love you. I always have. And you, Garance? No, don't answer. I won't ask for anything. You're here. That's all that matters. Here, alive in my arms, like the first time. No, I ask for nothing. Only - the warmth of your body against my body, this mouth of yours. These eyes of yours.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: His Lawyer says, "Above all, don't talk." The Priest: "Confession is half-remission." He confesses. The Judge: "You Killed and confessed. Perfect. Off with your head." The fellow, disappointed protests: "But confession is half-remission!" The Judge: "True but justice must be done. So we'll just cut off half your head."
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: What a splendid destiny! To love no one, to be alone. To be loved by no one. To be free.
- Garance: Still writing plays?
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: Yes, in my idle moments.
- Garance: "Misconduct" A tragedy?
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: No, a slightly ribald farce. I loathe tragedy. Such an inferior genre. Characters who kill one another, yet never get hurt. How depressing.
- Édouard, Count de Montray: Monsieur, you play the bloodthirsty brute so naturally.
- Frederick: You're too kind. I merely played him as Shakespeare wrote him, as naturally as possible.
- Édouard, Count de Montray: A peculiar fellow, this Monsieur Shakespeare. I hear he made his literary debut as a butcher's apprentice.
- Frederick: Why not?
- Édouard, Count de Montray: Which would explain the bestial nature of his plays and his popularity among dockers and carters.
- Frederick: And kings!
- Garance: I've never forgotten you. You were even in my dreams. You saved me from growing old, dull and used up. My life was so empty. I felt so alone. But I kept thinking: I've no right to be sad. I'm happy. Someone loved me.
- Director: Act! Act! You have the wrong place. We are not allowed to act here. We walk on our hands! And you know why? They bully us. If we put on plays, they'd have to close their great, noble theaters! Their public is bored to death by museum pieces, dusty tragedies and declaiming mummies who never move! But the Funambules is full of life, movement! Extravaganzas! Appearances, disappearances, like in real life! And then-boom-the kick in the pants!
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: I don't love you, but you are the only woman for whom I have no contempt.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: The mere thought of them killing each other, over a woman, because of me, comforts me.
- Carnival Barker: [First lines] Step right in! The Truth is here! Step right in and see! She will fill your thoughts, invade your dreams! See Naked Truth with your own eyes!
- Frederick: [Repeated pick-up line] You smiled! Don't deny it! You smiled! Marvelous! Life is beautiful! And you're just as beautiful!
- Jéricho: They also call me The Spark, The Stoker, The Dove-keeper, because I like to keep turtledoves together.
- Nathalie: Oh, Baptiste, if only you wanted to, we could be so happy together. But you don't love me. Oh, I know. You like me. I don't want to be liked, I want your love! Loving is so easy.
- Frederick: To your health, Baptiste. And to yours, friends. Tonight you drank with Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar or another. Charles the Bold, Attila, Henri IV, Ravaillac! Yes, I know it! It's my destiny to revive the giants of this earth. They played their parts. It's my turn now. Let me have my chance. Rise, Julius Caesar! Frederick is before you. I'll dust him off and cast his shadow across the boards. He'll live again to astonish the world once more! Thanks to me!
- Baptiste: You're so beautiful. But I must let you sleep.
- Garance: I'm not very sleepy.
- [Sits on her bed]
- Baptiste: Remember: You could work at the Funambules.
- Garance: But I can't do anything.
- Baptiste: I'll help you. You need work.
- Garance: Why not? I could show my legs.
- [Lifts her leg out from under her wrap]
- Garance: The audience doesn't ask for much.
- [Wiggles her toes]
- Baptiste: But I love you, Garance.
- Garance: Please don't be so solemn. It chills me. Don't be angry, but I'm not the way you dreamed. You must understand me. I'm simple, so simple. I am what I am. I want to please those I like. And when I want to say yes, I can't say no.
- [Gets up and blows out the lantern]
- Garance: I prefer moonlight, don't you?
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: [Reading a book in bed] "Yet I'll not shed her blood nor scar that whiter skin than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. Put out the light, and then - " Yes, let's put out the light. Good night, Desdemona. Good night, Othello.
- Garance: [singing in the next room] I am as I am, I'm made as you see. When I feel like laughing, I laugh heartily. I love those who love me. Am I really to blame? If a man that I love, is never the same?
- Baptiste: Baptiste? Who's this Baptiste? Since the one he loves doesn't love him, he's a zero, a will-o'-the-wisp, an automaton, a bogeyman. No more Baptiste!
- [Draws an X over his face in the mirror and points at it]
- Baptiste: Here lies Baptiste. Life gave him a red flower, a good beating, a pinewood overcoat.
- Jéricho: What's Baptiste got against me?
- Nathalie: Nothing. Only that you don't mind your own business.
- Jéricho: Is it his business what is or isn't mine? I've always lived all alone. So I take an interest in others. Always alone. That's not living. No one to love me. Nothing, zero, naught. If I were a widower, at least I'd have memories. But no woman would have me. They preferred petty fly-by-nights and libertines.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: Never look back at the past, my angel. It leaps at your throat like a mad dog.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: And the man in white? Do you think your friend, the mime, is happy? To think I had the absurd notion of killing him. Comical, no? One might as well stab at a breeze or a moonbeam.
- Mme Hermine: You're being unreasonable.
- Baptiste: True, I'm unreasonable.
- Mme Hermine: Shutting yourself up like a monk!
- Baptiste: No, monks pray. I sleep, I dream.
- Baptiste: "Othello" would make a nice pantomime. A man kills his beloved and it kills him, poor man! A sad, absurd tale, like so many others. Like mine and yours, Madame Hermine. You spend your empty days in your empty rooms with your poor empty heart.
- Baptiste: It's all so sad and absurd. Like me. Years ago, I stood here by this bed, in this very room. And she stood there, smiling, happy, so lovely in the fresh night air. And she said, "Love is so simple." And I didn't listen! I didn't take her in my arms! I set conditions: "Love me as I love you." And I shut the door, forever, between my love and me.
- Édouard, Count de Montray: How do you ply your talents these days?
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: Since you ask, I'm putting the finishing touches on something that will cause a sensation.
- Édouard, Count de Montray: A tragedy, no doubt.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: No, a comedy, a farce. Or a tragedy, if you prefer. It's all the same. There's no difference. Or very little. For example, if a king is deceived, it's a tragedy of infidelity. He's deceived not by his wife...
- Frederick: But by Fate.
- Pierre-François Lacenaire: Yes, Fate. But if it's a poor devil like you or me, Monsieur de Montray - and I use "me" as a figure of speech - it's no longer a tragedy, but mere buffoonery, a sorry tale of cuckolds.
- Jéricho: It's Jupiter. Alias Jericho, because of my horn. Alias Medusa, because of my gaze. Greetings, Lacenaire. My respects to Beauty.
- Jéricho: Here's Jericho, alias the Trumpet, alias the Flask, for my drinking, alias Woe-Is-Me, for my hard lot. Greetings, stage manager.
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