Dogville

"Please don't disappear, Tom. I need you."

"Now that Vera had received proof that it was in fact Chuck who'd forced his attentions on Grace, she was meaner than ever. Had Grace had friends in Dogville they, too, fell like the leaves."

"Everything I tried to do went wrong. I can't come up with the answer I was looking for."

"It all started with a meeting, so it will be logical to end it with one too. You'll talk and they'll listen. They can't refuse to listen."

"It is like a child who doesn't want to take his medicine. They'll be furious at first, but in the end they'll see it is for their own good. Just don't be hateful. Don't be reproving. If anybody can do it, Grace, you can."

"If forgiveness was close at hand in the mission house, they were all hiding it well. It hadn't been easy for Tom to get them there. Appealing to consciences stowed farther and farther away by their owners every day as if they were as fragile as Henson's glasses after polishing, had proved quite a task. But if one was going, the others might as well come along, too, so nobody could talk behind anybody's back."

"Grace had presented her story with clarity. She had not embellished or understated. And just as she finished the snowflakes all at once stopped tumbling down, leaving Dogville clad in the daintiest, whitest blanket of snow imaginable."

"The snow had come early, perhaps too early. A misplaced augury of conciliation. Tom looked around, worried: Vera's teeth were clenched. She was the first to speak."

"Copious lies. Just lies."

"Tom, I got to tell you. Even I have trouble defending that girl. With your help, which I prefer to think was accidental, Tom... She has managed to spread bitterness and troubles throughout this whole town. She has to go. How do we get rid of her, Tom."

"I asked you here to listen. You only came to defend yourselves... I'm sorry it's quite a blow to me to see all of my friends act this way, so uncivilized."

"No, no more plans. I promise. They asked me to chose between you and them. That's not difficult on a day like today. I love you. You may be stronger, it's true, but the ideals, the ideals we share... I've chosen, Grace. I have chosen you. Now it is the time! The time we've been waiting for. We free ourselves of Dogville."

"It'd be so easy to make love right now. They may kill us any minute... It would be the perfect romantic ending... It would be so beautiful. But from the point of view of our love, so completely wrong... We were to meet in freedom."

"You're cold now, Grace. I've just rejected everybody I've ever known in your favor. Wouldn't it be worth compromising, just one of your ideals just a little to ease my pain? Everybody in this town has had your body, but me... We're the ones supposed to be in love."

"My darling Tom. You can have me if you want me. Just do what the others do. Threaten me. Tell me that you'll turn me in to the law, to the gangsters and I promise you, you can take whatever it is you want from me. I trust you, but maybe you don't trust yourself? Perhaps you've been tempted, you've been tempted to join the others and force me. Perhaps that's why you're so upset."

"Let tomorrow bring what it's gonna bring. It's not a crime to doubt yourself, Tom, but it's wonderful that you don't."

"Of course it was all a load of nonsense. If anybody was capable of keeping track of ideals and reality, he was. After all, it was his job. Moral issues were his home ground. To think that he might doubt his own purity was really to think very little of him."

"It was all quite a blow to the young philosopher! And realistically enough, he thought that if the doubt was already present, it could grow. Perhaps so great that one day it would prove detrimental to his entire moral mission. ... Fortunately Tom was as conscientious as regards his future profession as he was practical. He allowed sincerity, and ideals plenty of room in his life, without getting "sentimental" about it, as he would put it."

"Grace opened her eyes after an almost unconscious sleep, and was confused... Judging by the light coming through the cracks in the walls, it had to be nearly midday... "The grey hour" as Jack McKay for some reason called noon in Dogville, being a man of many ideas and proclivities, quite a few of which Grace would prefer to remain ignorant of! But why had nobody roused her? Nobody had hammered furiously at her door. Not a child had thrown mud into her bed or broken her remaining windowpanes. Now she remembered. She recalled the meeting the previous day, and puzzled still more. Why had she not been confronted with the outcome of that meeting? Or even killed? It was quite unlike Dogville to restrain its indignation at any point. Perhaps things had turned out well after all?"

"We thought some time off would be good for you. That was quite a speech you made yesterday. It gave us all something to think about."

"I wouldn't say we won exactly, not exactly, but I think something very good can come out of this, something very good."

"Tom: The people of this town they surprise me again and again. I might even have to revise my theories a little bit. You know how much I hate doing that kind of thing. You know, Grace, last night when I came back and I saw you lying there asleep so sweetly, I was suddenly inspired. I wrote the first chapter of a story. A story about a small town. Guess where I got the inspiration? But I haven't come up with a name for the town yet. Grace: Why not just call it Dogville? Tom: Wouldn't work. No, it wouldn't work. It's got to be universal. Lot of writers make that mistake, you see. Hey, do you want me to read it to you? If there is any love in it, it comes from you..."

"Two people only hurt each other if they doubt the love they have for one another. You can read it some other time. You sit down some place and gaze out at the mountains. It's what the girl in my novel does."

"Sensibly, Grace chose to hope for the best rather than fear the worst, and planned to spend the day calmly washing her clothes and herself, which for some reason or another she was sure none of the characters from Tom's fictitious township would dream of doing."

"After two days off Grace had been put back to work, but the quietness remained... Indeed it intensified ... until on the fifth day it swelled into a strange mood that, all of a sudden, brought all the citizens to the street to listen. They asked each other if the phone was really still down, or if they'd heard about Ben having had to turn his truck around on his way to Georgetown that very morning on account of a large tree blocking the road. They were not worried ... worried was not the right word... and then Tom spotted the cars."

"Grace had just started on the bed, which June had soiled yet again, when an irritating feeling of wasting her time forced itself upon her. And it was without thinking she then said the words: "Nobody gonna sleep here." She didn't say them out loud, but even so she was startled by the utterance that had urged itself upon her. Where had these ominous words come from?"

"You couldn't bring yourself to throw it away, could you? The number he gave you that night. You couldn't throw it away. I told you how dangerous that man was. That was stupid."

"Stupid or not, Tom was soon a passionate spokesman for locking Grace in her shed that night. If the vehicles were indeed a sign that the call Tom had placed five days earlier on behalf of the community to the number indicated on the card from his bureau drawer had at last led to action, and Grace was now to be eliminated from their lives, it would surely look good if the town had also locked her up. Grace was lying on the bed when Jason was sent up with the key. Grace heard it turn in the lock, but she was deeply absorbed by arguments and thoughts on matters she had otherwise avoided for the best part of a year now."

"From the moment when they'd finally heard the sound of vehicles starting one after the other from the direction of the edge of the woods, things had moved rapidly. Tom had arranged a delegation to provide a proper reception. Dogville might be off the beaten track, but it was hospitable, nevertheless."

"Tell me, has the crime rate really gone up in this country, as we are lead to believe? Maybe people just regard things as criminal, because they envy their success? What's your opinion on the subject? Maybe you have none. I'll get the door...sorry."

"What the hell is this?"

"Grace was no expert in exclusive automobiles, yet she recognized with no difficulty the sound of the vehicle that was rounding the corner from Canyon Road at that very moment. Alas, in Grace's memory the legendary purr of the Cadillac series 355 C was inextricably linked with another, rather less sophisticated sound: that of gunfire directed against her person."

"Shooting at you certainly didn't help matters. Of course not. You're, far, far too stubborn."

"Our last conversation, the one in which you told me what it was you didn't like about me, never really concluded — as you ran away. I should be allowed to tell you what I don't like about you. That I believe would be a rule of polite conversation."

"To plunder, as it were, a God given right. I'd call that arrogant..."

"You do not pass judgement, because you sympathize with them. A deprived childhood and a homicide really isn't necessarily a homicide, right? The only thing you can blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be the victims, according to you. But I, I call them dogs, and if they're lapping up their own vomit the only way to stop them is with the lash... Dogs can be taught many useful things, but not if we forgive them every time they obey their own nature."

"Grace: So I'm arrogant. I'm arrogant because I forgive people? The Big Man: My God. Can't you see how condescending you are when you say that? You have this preconceived notion that nobody, listen, that nobody can't possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them. I can not think of anything more arrogant than that. You, my child, my dear child, you forgive others with excuses that you would never in the world permit for yourself."

"You should be merciful, when there is time to be merciful. But you must maintain your own standard. You owe them that. You owe them that. The penalty you deserve for your transgressions, they deserve for their transgressions."

"Does every human being need to be accountable for their action. Of course they do. But you don't even give them that chance. And that is extremely arrogant. I love you. I love you. I love you to death. But you are the most arrogant person I've ever met. And you call me arrogant! I have no more to say."

"Grace: The people who live here are doing their best under very hard circumstances. The Big Man: If you say so, Grace. But is their best really good enough? Do they love you?"

"The difference between the people she knew back home and the people she'd met in Dogville had proven somewhat slighter than she'd expected."

"Grace looked around at the frightened faces behind the windowpanes that were following her every step, and felt ashamed of being part of inflicting that fear. How could she ever hate them for what was at bottom merely their weakness? ."

"Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light. It was if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer. Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now. The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings... and in... the people! And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all to well: If she had acted like them, she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough. ."

"We can start by shooting a dog and nailing it to a wall. Over there beneath that lamp, for example. Well, it might help. It sometimes does."

"It would only make the town more frightened, but hardly make it a better place. And it could happen again. Somebody happening by, revealing their frailty."

"A man can't really be blamed for being scared now, can he?"

"Although using people is not very charming, I think you have to agree that this specific illustration has surpassed all expectations. It says so much about being human. It's been painful, but I think you also have to agree it has been edifying. Wouldn't you say?"

"If there is any town this world would be better without, this is it."

"Tell her you will stop if she can hold back her tears. I owe her that. I'm afraid she cries a little too easily."

"We've better get you out of here. I'm afraid, you've learned far too much already."