17 quotes
"Is he happy? By most measurements, yes, he believes he is. However, he has not forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is dead."
Disgrace (1999)
Scandal. A pity that must be his theme, but he is in no state to improvise.
Disgrace (1999)
The company of women made of him a lover of women and, to a certain extent, a womanizer."
Disgrace (1999)
"Why? Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it."
Disgrace (1999)
You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through.
Disgrace (1999)
Note that we are not asked to condemn this being with the mad heart, this being with whom there is some thing constitutionally wrong.
Disgrace (1999)
He knows too much about himself to subject her to a morning after, when he will be cold, surly, impatient to be alone.
Disgrace (1999)
Spoken without irony, the words stay with him and will not go away.
Disgrace (1999)
Confessions, apologies: why this thirst for abasement? A hush falls. They circle around him like hunters who have cornered a strange beast and do not know how to finish it off.
Disgrace (1999)
It reminds me too much of Mao’s China. Recantation, self-criticism, public apology.
Disgrace (1999)
Talking to Petrus is like punching a bag of sand.
'Are you giving him up?'
'Yes, I am giving him up.'
Disgrace (1999)
I’m dubious, Lucy. It sounds suspiciously like community service. It sounds like someone trying to make reparation for past misdeeds.’
Disgrace (1999)
"Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away."
Disgrace (1999)
Isaacs has a cheap Bic pen in his hand. He runs his fingers down the shaft, inverts it, runs his fingers down the shaft, over and over, in a motion that is mechanical rather than impatient.
Disgrace (1999)
... the whole thing is disgraceful from beginning to end. Disgraceful and vulgar.
Disgrace (1999)
As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away.
Disgrace (1999)
Because he takes pleasure in her, because his pleasure is unfailing, an affection has grown up in him for her. To some degree, he believes, this affection is reciprocated. Affection may not be love, but it is at least its cousin.
Disgrace (1999)