Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Katharine Hepburn: Mrs. Venable

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mrs. Venable : My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer.

• Mrs. Venable : Most people's lives, what are they but trails of debris - each day more debris, more debris... long, long trails of debris, with nothing to clean it all up but death.

• Dr. Cukrowicz : May I sit here?

  Mrs. Venable : Sebastian's seat.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Oh! Well...

  Mrs. Venable : Oh, no no please, please. It's a court jester's chair, a rare one, five-hundred years old. Please, sit on it. Say something funny; make me stop wanting to cry.

• Mrs. Venable : I've buried a husband and a son. I'm a widow and a... Funny, there's no word. Lose your parents, you're an orphan. Lose your only son and you are... Nothing.

• Mrs. Venable : Sebastian said, 'Truth is the bottom of a bottomless well.'

• Dr. Cukrowicz : Mrs. Venable, loving your neice as you do, you must know there's great risk in this operation. Whenever you enter the brain with a foreign object...

  Mrs. Venable : Yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Even a needle thin knife.

  Mrs. Venable : Yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : In the hands of the most skilled surgeon...

  Mrs. Venable : Yes, yes.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : There is a great deal of risk.

  Mrs. Venable : But it does pacify them, I've read that, it quiets them down. It suddenly makes them peaceful.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Yes that that it does do, but...

  Mrs. Venable : But what?

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Well it will be years before we know if the immediate benefits of the operation are lasting or maybe just passing or perhaps... there's a strong possibility that the patient will always be limited. Relieved of acute anxiety yes, but limited.

  Mrs. Venable : But what a blessing Dr. to be just peaceful. To be just suddenly peaceful. After all that horror. After those nightmares. Just to be able to lift up their eyes to a sky not black with savage devouring birds.

• Mrs. Venable : Sebastian always said, 'Mother when you descend it's like the Goddess from the Machine. You look just like angel coming to earth' as I float, float into view. Sebastian, my son Sebastian was very interested in the Byzantine. Are you interested in the Byzantine Doctor...?

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Cukrowicz. I don't know very much about the Byzantine.

  Mrs. Venable : It seems that the Emperor of Byzantium - when he received people in audience - had a throne which, during the conversation, would rise mysteriously into the air to the consternation of his visitors. But as we are living in a democracy, I reverse the procedure. I don't rise, I come down.

• Catherine Holly : Cut the truth out of my brain... is that what you want Aunt Vi ? Well you can't. Not even God can change the truth that we were nothing but a pair of-"

  Mrs. Venable : Doctor!

  Catherine Holly : It's the truth!

  Mrs. Venable : See how she destroys us with her tongue for a hatchet? You've got to cut this hideous story out of her brain.

  Catherine Holly : How much are you willing to pay for that Aunt Vi?

• Mrs. Venable : Oh, Sebastian, what a lovely summer it's been. Just the two of us. Sebastian and Violet. Violet and Sebastian. Just the way it's always going to be. Oh, we are lucky, my darling, to have one another and need no one else ever.

• Mrs. Venable : Strictly speaking, his life was his occupation. Yes, yes, Sebastian was a poet. That's what I meant when I said his life was his work because the work of a poet is th elife of a poet, and vice versa, the life of a poet is the work of a poet. I mean, you can't separate them. I mean, a poet's life is his work, and his work is his life in a special sense.

• Mrs. Venable : Doctor, you must cut that lie out of her brain.

  Catherine Holly : How MUCH are you willing to pay for that, Aunt Vi?

• Mrs. Venable : She suffers from something called dementia praecox.

  Dr. Cukrowicz : Dementia praecox?

  Mrs. Venable : Which is say, she's mad as a hatter, poor child.

• Mrs. Venable : Sebastian saw the face of God.