- Maria Callas: Book me a table at a café where the waiters know who I am. I'm in the mood for adulation.
- Waiter: Madame. Perhaps we can find you a seat inside.
- Maria Callas: I'm not hungry. I come to restaurants to be adored.
- Maria Callas: Why are you kind to me?
- Waiter: Because you're kind to us with this.
- [the waiter plays 'Ebben? Ne andrò lontana' at the cafe]
- Maria Callas: [Shaking her head, her anxiety rising up] I never listen to my own records, please turn it off.
- Waiter: This is my café, Madame. And this is what I listen to when I'm alone.
- Maria Callas: You are not alone, please turn it off. I cannot listen to my own records.
- Waiter: Why not?
- Maria Callas: [her voice stern] Because it is perfect. And a song should never be perfect. It should be performed in that moment, differently to every other time.
- Mandrax: This is the part of the film where you're expected to sing, Maria. So fucking sing. La Callas is expected to sing. No excuses, no diva-imagined sickness, not like Rome, not like Covent Garden, not like New York. Fucking sing!
- Maria Callas: I will sing when I am ready to sing.
- Maria Callas: I didn't marry Aristotle Onassis because he wanted someone he could control. And I didn't have a baby because my body declined the invitation to make another self. Because my body knew I was a tiger.
- Aristotle Onassis: I was told it was a smart thing to do to associate myself with the Prima Donna Assoluta. So this party was a business strategy, but then I fell in love.
- Maria Callas: You fell in love with opera.
- Aristotle Onassis: No, I fell in love with you.
- Maria Callas: There is a very common theory that if you ask for something, it means that you want it. It is not true.
- Maria Callas: When I ask you to do something, you should occasionally tell me no.
- Ferruccio: I am careful, madam. That is why I don't dare to tell you no.
- Maria Callas: Doctors often label revelation as illness, when in fact it is a form of sanity they don't understand.
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