Coulmier: Listen to me Abbe and listen well. I've stared into the face of evil and I've lived to tell the tale and now, I beg you, for your sake, let me write it down.
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Royer-Collard: You prefer a book to your husband's company? Well no wonder, I'm only flesh and blood - that's no match for the printed page!
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Marquis de Sade: I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. We're all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade... the rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet... I've been to hell young man, you've only read about it.
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Marquis de Sade: I didn't create this world of ours. I merely recorded it.
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Renee Pelagie: Desperation has driven me past etiquette, all the way to frenzy.
Dr. Royer-Collard: My schedule is not subject to the whim of lunatics.
Renee Pelagie: I beg to differ, you work in a madhouse. Your every waking moment is governed by the insane.
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Coulmier: An innocent child is dead.
Marquis de Sade: So many authors are denied the gratification of a concrete response to their work. I am blessed.
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Marquis de Sade: What you need, darling, is a long, slow screw
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Dr. Royer-Collard: I won't sully my hands with him.
Marquis de Sade: Nor should you. That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The man who orders the execution never drops the blade.
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Madeleine: Don't come any closer Abbe, God's watching.
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Madeleine: If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life.
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Renee Pelagie: If you cure him, I mean really cure him, harness the beast that rages in his soul.
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Coulmier: It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. One man killed his wife after reading them.
Marquis de Sade: It's a fiction, not a moral treatise.
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Madeleine: Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference.
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Coulmier: But why must you indulge in his pornography?
Madeleine: It's a hard days' wages slaving away for madmen, what I've seen in life - it takes a lot to hold my interest.
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Dr. Royer-Collard: You know how I define idealism, Monsieur Delbenet? Youth's final luxury.
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Prouix, the Architect: Madame, how could you... have you actually read this volume?
Simone: I've memorized it. Would you like me to recite?
Prouix, the Architect: There comes a time in a young lady's life when she has to cast book's aside, and learn from experience.
Simone: That, Monsieur, requires a teacher.
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Marquis de Sade: In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.
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Dr. Royer-Collard: We produce books for the discriminating collector. The compulsive inmates set the type, the listless ones do the binding and prepare the ink.
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Simone: Sign it quickly, then you can ravish me again on the linens for which he so dearly paid.
Prouix, the Architect: And then, I beg you, on the bearskin rug in his study. And finally, as a crowning gesture, we'll leave puddles of love on the Peruvian marble.
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Coulmier: I love you Madeleine... as a child of God.
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Marquis de Sade: Welcome to our humble madhouse, Doctor. I trust you'll find yourself at home.
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Marquis de Sade: Suppose one of your precious inmates attempted to walk on water and drowned, would you condemn the bible? I think not.
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Abbe du Coulmier: I am not the first man God has asked to shed blood in his name. And I am not of the last.
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Royer-Collard: If you're going to martyr yourself Abbe, do it for God, not the chambermaid.
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Royer-Collard: Take this beast back to his cage!
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Madeleine: It's a sin against God for me to refuse your kindness. But my heart's held fast here...
Coulmier: By whom? The Marquis?
Madeleine: Mother's not half so blind as you.
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Marquis de Sade: Prepare yourself for the most impure tale ever to spring from the mind of man.
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Madeleine: You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?
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Marquis de Sade: You've already stolen my heart... as well as another more prominent organ, south of the Equator.
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Madeleine: How can we know who is good - and who is evil?
Coulmier: All we can do is guard against our own corruption.
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Renee Pelagie: Can I impart to you his cruellest trick.
Dr. Royer-Collard: Of course.
Renee Pelagie: Once, long ago in the folly of youth, he made me love him.
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Coulmier: It's not even a proper novel. It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions. Frankly, it even fails as an exercise in craft. The characters are wooden, the diologue is inane. Not to mention the repetition of words like "nipple" and "pikestaff".
Marquis de Sade: There I was taxed; it's true.
Coulmier: And such puny scope. Nothing but the worst in man's nature.
Marquis de Sade: I write of the great, eternal truths that bind together all mankind. The whole world over, we eat, we shit, we fuck, we kill and we die.
Coulmier: But we also fall in love, we build cities, we compose symphonies, and we endure. Why not put that in your books as well.
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Marquis de Sade: It's an entire religion based on an oxymoron.
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Marquis de Sade: If someone would try to walk on water and drowned, would you blame the Bible?
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Royer-Collard: Will you sleep soundly tonight?
Coulmier: No. Put frankly, I never expect to sleep again.
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Coulmier: Your terrible secret revealed, you're a man after all.
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Dr. Royer-Collard: Some men are beyond redemption.
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Marquis de Sade: Are your convictions so fragile they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your god so flimsey, so weak! For shame.
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Simone: Tell him that if he discovers our whereabouts, you'll slit your wrists with a razor, and I'll drive a hatpin through my heart.
Prouix, the Architect: You'd do that, rather than forsake our love?
Simone: No. But tell him I would anyway.
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Marquis de Sade: Why should I love God? He strung up his only son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he'd do to me.
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Marquis de Sade: [voiceover, as Coulmier writes] Beloved reader, I leave you now with a tale penned by the Abbe du Coulmier, a man who found freedom, in the most unlikeliest of places: at the bottom of an inkwell, on the tip of a quill. However, be forewarned, it's plot is blood-soaked, it's characters depraved, and it's themes... unwholesome at best. But in order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the full measure of man. So come... I Dare you... Turn the page...
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Coulmier: There are certain things... feelings... we must not voice.
Madeleine: Why?
Coulmier: They incite us to act on what we should not... cannot.
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Madeleine: He's a writer, not a madman.
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Madeleine: Your publisher says I'm not to leave without another manuscript.
Marquis de Sade: I've just the story. It's the unhappy tale... of a virginal laundry lass. The darling of the lower wards where they entomb the criminally insane.
Madeleine: Is it awfully violent?
Marquis de Sade: Most assuredly.
Madeleine: Is it terribly erotic?
Marquis de Sade: Fiendishly so. But it comes with a price. A kiss for each page.
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The Marquis de Sade: My glorious prose filtered through the minds of the insane. Who knows, they might improve it.
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Abbe du Coulmier: You are not to entertain visitors in your quarters.
Marquis de Sade: I'm entertaining you now, aren't I?
Abbe du Coulmier: Yes, but I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption.
Marquis de Sade: Don't be so sure.
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Marquis de Sade: Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
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Marquis de Sade: It's only a play.
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Simone: Tell him I'm no fool, a prison's still a prison, even with Chinese silks and chandeliers.
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Coulmier: You're not the anti-Christ. You're only a malcontent who knows how to spell.
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Marquis de Sade: Ah, you've come to read my trousers.
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