Quills (2000)

Kate Winslet: Madeleine

Photos 

Quotes 

• Madeleine : If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life.

• Madeleine : Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference.

• Madeleine : You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?

• Madeleine : How can we know who is good - and who is evil?

  Coulmier : All we can do is guard against our own corruption.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Madeleine : [reading from a page]  His greast conquest was a woman six decades his senior, and a dozen years deceased. He made love with such vigor that it dislodged her bones, and yet he afforded her the highest compliment he afforded any woman.

  [long, suspenseful pause] 

  Madame LeClerc : Well, go on!

  Madeleine : "Well worth the dig!"

• Madeleine : He's a writer, not a madman.

• Madeleine : Don't come any closer Abbe, God's watching.

• Coulmier : There are certain things... feelings... we must not voice.

  Madeleine : Why?

  Coulmier : They incite us to act on what we should not... cannot.