Dogville

"I hate it for you to see me like this. I can't bear that I'm doubting you. I'm sorry. Goodnight."

"Tom: I do love you, Grace. Grace: I'm glad you love me. I love you, too. I really do."

"I think I should leave."

"I have to get some sleep. My days are gonna be much busier now."

"Grace: Don't be upset. I'm sorry if I doubted you. It won't happen again. I promise you. Chuck: I wouldn't make that promise if I was you. When you fended me off, a thought came into my mind that made me ashamed. A thought that you would hate me for."

"Grace: You can see through it all, can't you. I'll tell you, I'm gonna be asleep in two minutes. Tom: What if I don't want you to go to sleep? Grace: I don't think you have a choice tonight."

"We are proud to have you among us. And we thank you for showing us who you are. Here's to you, Grace. Stay with us as long as you damn please."

"Well, they couldn't really argue that anything had changed. But by not telling the police they felt they were committing a crime themselves."

"Tom: From a business perspective, from a business perspective, your presence in Dogville has become more costly. Because it's more dangerous for them to have you here — not that they don't want you — since they feel there should be some counterbalance, some quid pro quo. Grace: That sounds like words that the gangsters would use... Tom: There is also more of an incentive if you don't wanna stay. See, with all those wanted posters hanging around the place, I can hardly think of anywhere else you could hide."

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes. If I have to work harder, longer hours for less pay. Then I'm willing to do that, of course I am. I just wanna be sure that they wouldn't prefer that I left town."

"Everybody was really against any changes to Grace's working conditions at all when the subject occasionally came up in conversation. Oh, Ben had declared in sympathy that he wouldn't accept any more work than before, and Grace was grateful for that, even if he was a bit drunk when he said so. Busy minutes became busy hours and busy hours became busy days, and irrespective of whether they thought the idea of increasing Grace's services had any fairness and justification to it or not, it didn't seem to make anyone any happier. More to the contrary."

"Vera wants me to picking apples from trees that are barely in the ground. Things take time. That's love, seeing what they need and respecting those needs. If anyone understands that, it's you. At least I thought so."

"You've really been alone up here, haven't you? You haven't had anyone to comfort you and I should ask you for forgiveness... Still friends?"

"I was just resting. Awful lot to do here in Dogville, considering nobody needs anything done. Jason wants to sit on my lap all the time."

"Grace: Are you trying to say that you're in love with me? Tom: No I wouldn't... love is...It's not... It's a big word... yeah. Yeah. Grace: That's good, because I think that I am in love with you, too."

"This year I didn't bring any notes with me. Because I'm not gonna pretend, I can read them. Which brings me to a point. A point I wanna make. And that point is you Grace. Yes. You have made Dogville a wonderful place to live in. As a matter of fact, somebody tells me they ran into grumpy old Chuck down the street and he was actually smiling. Well, I've never seen your smile, Grace, but I will bet you I could describe it. Because it obviously has every color that's refracted from the shiniest prism in the world. You probably have a face to match that. Does she have a face to match that, Tom?"

"Grace was the same and so was the town. That the gangsters had fixed to have charges made against Grace in their efforts to neutralize her came as no surprise. But everything had changed a little yet again."

"Surely we can offer her two weeks! And if after that time so much as one man cries out Be gone! — I promise I'll happily send her packing myself."

"No more words were spoken at the town meeting in the mission house. But it had been decided, they all felt, that the fugitive would be given two weeks. And they would all be able to look at themselves in the mirror and know that they had done what they could, indeed, and perhaps more than most people would have done."

"Those awful figurines say more about the people in this town, than many words."

"If this is the town you that love, then you really have a strange way of showing it. All I see, is a beautiful little town in the midst of magnificent mountains. A place where people have hopes and dreams even under the hardest conditions. And seven figurines that are not awful at all."

"Calling Dogville beautiful was original at least. Grace was just casting one more look at the figurines she herself would have dismissed as tasteless a few days earlier, when she suddenly sensed what would best have been described as a tiny change of light over Dogville."

"This first day of spring had also been picked to be Grace's first ever day of work. The day in which she was to set off around Dogville and offer herself one hour per household per day."

"A cleanin' lady for a cleanin' lady? You be talkin' nonsense, Mister Ben!"

"Grace turned into the alley which went by the exotic name, Glunen Street to knock on the door of the blind — but only too vain — man."

"Grace's interview with Jack McKay proved sadly symptomatic of the attitude in Dogville. Reserved but friendly, not without curiosity. Only Jack had expressed his "no" concisely and precisely: Martha needed a monologue almost an hour long to arrive at the same conclusion."

"Grace had ended up next to Ma Ginger's gooseberry bushes, in a mood that was not particularly good."

"Nobody want's me to work for them. I would really like to offer something in return. You're all running a terrible risk having me here. I mean, I am willing to learn."

"I went to Mr. McKay. I went to Martha and to Chuck and Vera's, and nobody seems to need any help. They all think everyone else needs something, and not themselves."

"Perhaps there's something you don't need done?"

"Something...something that you would like done, but that you don't think is necessary."

"I'll happily mind Achilles if Vera will let me. But if he doesn't like me he doesn't like me."

"They are good kids. And I love them. Please don’t say such nice things about the kids. I cry too easily. Both in sorrow and in joy."

"Oh, don’t be ashamed, Ben. We all have the right to make the most of our lives. I’m sure that those ladies in those houses they bring a lot of joy to a lot of men."

"If you want my Ma to like you, and let you stay. You'll just have to be nice to me."

"I wasn't trying to fool anyone."

"This town is rotten from the inside out and I wouldn't miss it, if it fell into the gorge tomorrow. I see no charm here, but you seem to. Admit it you've fallen for Dogville. The trees, the mountains, the simple folk. And if all that ain't got you fooled yet, I bet the cinnamon has. That damned cinnamon in those gooseberry pies. Dogville has everything that you ever dreamed of in the big city."

"I found out that people are the same all over. Greedy as animals. In a small town they're just a bit less successful. Feed 'em enough they'll eat till their bellies burst."

"That's why you wanted to get rid of me...because you can't stand that I remind you of what it was you came here to find."

"There is not much to see around here. Wretched town."

"You're no fool, Miss Grace. No fool. You probably see that those curtains are hard to open... and obviously concluded that it's because they're not used very often. But the view's good — entrancing even. So, ask me, why a man who loves the light hang these heavy curtains? Yes, I'm blind. Not weak sighted, not myopic: Blind. So please go and let me be that on my own... In Switzerland they call it the Alpenglünen. That's the light that reflects from the highest peaks after the sun goes down behind the mountains. But now it's gone."

"Grace was standing beside Tom, watching them convene, and knew inside herself that this might well be the last time she would see these now so familiar faces. She had at least two of them against her, and even one would have been too many."

"Nobody should be prevented from speaking their mind out of politeness. I'll wait at the mine. And if the vote says that I should leave, then I'll take the path across the mountains, while it's still light."

"Grace had friends in Dogville. That was for sure. Whether they were few or many did not matter a jot. Grace had bared her throat to the town and it had responded with a great gift: with friends. No gangster could deprive her of this meeting with the township no matter how many guns in the world. And should the strokes of the bell not reach 15, she knew now that she meant something to the town and that her stay had been of significance. Not much, perhaps, but nevertheless, a trace she had left. And the first in her young life in which she took pride."

"I think they like you here."

"And now, since the town had agreed that everyone was to give according to his abilities she received wages, not much, but enough to save up for the first of the tiny china figurines from the row of seven that had stood for so long gathering dust in the window of the store. And she dreamed that in time she would be able to acquire them all. Slowly those alabaster hands turned into a pair of hands that could have belonged to anyone in any little rural community."

"It was such a relief when you turned up and you were the one all the men had eyes for. You know, Tom and them. I've had to put up with it for so long... Frankly, I just didn't have the energy for it anymore."

"Today was a day for celebration. Nobody was to worry about the hard times. And Grace could stop at Ma Gingers window quite content: to ascertain that only two of the little china figurines remained, and were thus the only two she had not yet been able to save up enough to purchase."

"I think I've done a pretty good analysis of the folks in this town and I think I understand them in a meaningful way. But when I come to decipher you, I get absolutely nowhere. You know Liz. Liz is easy to read. And there was some attraction between us, but as I can see right through her, intellectually I mean, I can see right through her, my desire is purely of a physical nature. But with you, it's more... it's more complicated."

"We have our whole lives ahead of us. The thing that I love about you is that you don't demand anything of me. That we can just be together."