Quotes for
Celine (Character)
from Before Sunrise (1995)

Before Sunset (2004)

Celine: Do I look any different?
[long pause]
Celine: I do?
Jesse: I'd have to see you naked.

Jesse: In the months leading up to my wedding, I was thinking about you all the time. I mean, even on my way there; I'm in the car, a buddy of mine is driving me downtown and I'm staring out the window, and I think I see you, not far from the church, right? Folding up an umbrella and walking into a deli on the corner of 13th and Broadway. And I thought I was going crazy, but now I think it probably was you.
Celine: I lived on 11th and Broadway.
Jesse: You see?

Celine: [Celine's song] Let me sing you a waltz / Out of nowhere, out of my thoughts / Let me sing you a waltz / About this one night stand / You were, for me, that night / Everything I always dreamt of in life / But now you're gone / You are far gone / All the way to your island of rain / It was for you just a one night thing / But you were much more to me, just so you know / I don't care what they say / I know what you meant for me that day / I just want another try, I just want another night / Even if it doesn't seem quite right / You meant for me much more than anyone I've met before / One single night with you, little Jesse, is worth a thousand with anybody / I have no bitterness, my sweet / I'll never forget this one night thing / Even tomorrow in other arms, my heart will stay yours until I die / Let me sing you a waltz / Out of nowhere, out of my blues / Let me sing you a waltz / About this lovely one night stand

[last lines]
Celine: Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.
Jesse: I know.

Celine: Were you there in Vienna, in December?

Celine: Memories are wonderful things, if you don't have to deal with the past.

Jesse: Okay, I realize there are a lot of serious problems in the world.
Celine: Okay, thank you.
Jesse: Okay. I mean, I don't even have one publisher in the whole Asian market.

Celine: An imperialist country can use that kind of thinking to justify their economic greed, you know. I - human rights...
Jesse: Is there any particular imperialist country you have in mind, there, Frenchie?
Celine: Mmm, no, not really...

Celine: One night I heard some noise on my fire excape, so I called 911. And the cops came eventually...
Jesse: Yeah like three hours later.
Celine: [laughing] Yeah, after I had been raped and killed about 10 times.

Jesse: [describing how she looks different] Skinnier, I think. A little thinner.
Celine: Did you think I was fat before?
Jesse: [laughing] No!
Celine: Yeah, you thought I was a fatty. No, you thought I was a fatty! Yeah, you, you wrote a book about a fat French girl!
Jesse: No, listen...
Celine: [laughing] Oh, no...
Jesse: Seriously, all right, you look beautiful.

Celine: It's amazing what perverts we've become in the past nine years.

Jesse: At least now we don't have to pretend that each new sexual experience is a life-altering event.
Celine: I know. By now, you know, you've stuck it in so many places, it's like about to fall off.
Jesse: Yeah, you know, and I can't realistically expect that you've become anything but a total ho, at this point.
Celine: Yeah, thank you.

Jesse: So what kind of songs do you write? I didn't know you did that.
Celine: What kind?
Jesse: Yeah, sure.
Celine: I don't know, just songs.
Jesse: Like?
Celine: Like, some are about, you know, people, uh, relationships. One's about my cat.
Jesse: Sing one.
Celine: No, I can't, I don't have a guitar.
Jesse: Oh, co- come on. A cappella.
Celine: No, no, no. I'm not singing a song without a guitar. You're nuts!
Jesse: Why not? It's...
Celine: No, okay. Not now. No.
Jesse: One.
Celine: No.
Jesse: If not now, when? Wanna meet here in six months with a guitar? You know, I'll fly all the way over here, you may or may not make the metro...
Celine: [laughing] Okay, that's funny.

Jesse: Do you have kids?
Celine: Yes, two -
[gasps]
Celine: Shit!
Jesse: What?
Celine: I left them in the car! With the windows rolled up! It was six months ago! Think they're okay?
[laughs]

Celine: Tell him to pick you up at Quai Henri Quatre.
Jesse: Oh, shit. K-kay...
Celine: Henri Quatre. Quai...
Jesse: K-k-k...
Celine: Henri Quatre.
Jesse: [laughing] On...
Celine: What's wrong with you? No, do you want be to - Henri Quatre.
Jesse: Henry Four?
Celine: Yes.
Jesse: Come one, why didn't you say so.
Celine: [laughing] I'm sorry, okay?

Jesse: I heard this story once about when the Germans were occupying Paris and they had to retreat back. They wired Notre Dame to blow, but they had to leave one guy in charge of hitting the switch. And the guy, the soldier, he couldn't do it. You know, he just sat there, knocked out by how beautiful the place was. And then when the allied troops came in, they found all the explosives just lying there and the switch unturned, and they found the same thing at Sacre Couer, Eiffel Tower. Couple other places I think...
Celine: Is that true?
Jesse: I don't know. I always liked the story, though.

Jesse: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?
Celine: Why?
Jesse: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, "Where the fuck were you?"
Celine: [laughing] No - you thought I'd be here today?
Jesse: I'm serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.
Celine: Okay, that's - I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say.
Jesse: I think it is true.

Jesse: What do you think were the chances of us ever meeting again?
Celine: After that December, I'd say almost zero. But we're not real anyway, right? We're just, uh, characters in that old lady's dream. She's on her deathbed, fantasizing about her youth. So of course we had to meet again.

Jesse: Oh, God, why weren't you there, in Vienna?
Celine: I told you why.
Jesse: Well, I know why, I just - I wish you would have been. Our lives might have been so much different.
Celine: You think so?
Jesse: I actually do.
Celine: Maybe not. Maybe, we would have hated each other eventually.
Jesse: Oh what, like we hate each other now?
Celine: You know, maybe we're - we're only good at brief encounters, walking around in European cities in warm climate.

Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?
Celine: Because we were young and stupid.
Jesse: Do you think we still are?
Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.
Jesse: And you can screw it up, you know, misconnect.

Celine: The past is the past. It was meant to be that way.
Jesse: What, you really believe that? That everything's fated?
Celine: Well, you know, the world might be less free than we think.
Jesse: Yeah?
Celine: Yeah, when given these exact circumstances, that's what will happen every time: two part hydrogen, one part oxygen, you get water every time.
Jesse: No, no, I - I - I mean what if your grandmother had lived a week longer, or, you know, or passed away a week earlier, days even. You know things might have been different. I believe that.
Celine: You can't think like that, it's...
Jesse: No, I mean, I know you shouldn't on most things, but - It's just, on this one it seemed like something was off, you know?

Celine: So what's it like to be married? You haven't talked much about that.
Jesse: I haven't? How weird.

Celine: So, I want to try something.
Jesse: What?
Celine: [hugs him] I want to see if you stay together or if you dissolve into molecules.
Jesse: How'm I doing?
Celine: Still here.
Jesse: Good, I like being here.

Celine: I love my kitty!
Jesse: What's his name?
Celine: Che.
Jesse: Che?
Celine: Mmm hmm.
Jesse: Uh huh...
Celine: What?
Jesse: Commie.

Celine: Do you think you would have finished your book if you were fucking someone every five minutes?
Jesse: I might have welcomed the challenge.

Celine: They enjoy the goal but not the process. But the reality of it is that the true work of improving things is in the little achievements of the day.

Celine: I see it in the people that do the real work, and what's sad in a way is that the people that are the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better, usually don't have the ego and ambition to be a leader.

Celine: The concept is absurd. The idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil! Right?

Jesse: Do you believe in, like... ghosts or spirits?
Celine: Uhm, no.
Jesse: No?
Celine: No.
Jesse: Ok, what about reincarnation?
Celine: Not at all.
Jesse: God?
Celine: No.
[Both Laugh]
Celine: That sounds... that sounds terrible. No, no, no. But, at the same time I don't wanna be one of those people that don't believe in any kind of magic, you know?
Jesse: So then, astrology.
Celine: Yes, of course!
Jesse: There we go, right!
Celine: I mean, that makes sense, right? You're a Scorpio, I'm a Sag, so we get along.

Celine: You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

Celine: I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32. And then I woke up and I was 23. So relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32.

Celine: There are so many things I want to do, but I end up doing not much.

Celine: Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

Celine: Men go out with me, we break up and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is. That I tought them to care and respect women.
Jesse: I think I'm one of those guys.
Celine: I wanna kill them! Why didn't they ask me to marry them? I would've said no, but at least they could have asked.

Celine: Even being alone it's better than sitting next to your lover and feeling lonely.

---

Before Sunrise (1995)

Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Celine: I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away.

Celine: You know what I want?
Jesse: What?
Celine: To be kissed.
Jesse: Well I can do that.

Celine: I used to think that if none of your family or friends knew you were dead, it was like not really being dead. People can invent the best and the worst for you.

Celine: No, then it's like some male fantasy. Meet a French girl on the train, fuck her, and never see her again.

Celine: Each time I wear black, or like, lose my temper, or say anything about anything, you know, they always go, "Oh it's so French. It's so cute." Ugh! I hate that!

Celine: You know, I have this awful paranoid thought that feminism was mostly invented by men so that they could like, fool around a little more. You know, women, free your minds, free your bodies, sleep with me. We're all happy and free as long as I can fuck as much as I want.

Celine: I had worked for this old man and once he told me that he had spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work. And he was fifty-two and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that.

Jesse: There's these breeds of monkeys, right, and all they do is have sex, all the time, you know? And they turn out to be the least violent, the most peaceful, the most happy, you know? So maybe fooling around isn't so bad.
Celine: Are you talking about monkeys?
Jesse: Yes I'm talking about monkeys.
Celine: Ah, I thought so...

Celine: Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

Celine: But then the morning comes, and we turn back into pumpkins, right?

Jesse: Do you believe in reincarnation?
Celine: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
Jesse: Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul, right?

Celine: Yeah.
Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking... I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?
Celine: I don't know. Wait a minute, I'm not sure... I don't...
Jesse: Yeah, hang on, hang on. It's a, it's a totally scattered thought. It... which is kind of why it makes sense.

Celine: Maybe we should meet here in five years or something.
Jesse: All right, all right, five year- Five years! That's a long time!
Celine: It's awful! It's like a sociological experiment!

Jesse: Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life
Celine: What?
Jesse: Um... I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right?
Celine: Yeah, me too.
Jesse: Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the capital.
Celine: What?
Jesse: Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.
Celine: What would we do?
Jesse: Umm, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train.
Jesse: Alright, alright. Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.
Celine: Let me get my bag.

Celine: Did your parents divorce?
Jesse: Yeah. Finally. They should have done it a lot sooner, but they stuck together for a while for the "well-being of my sister and I", thank you very much.

Celine: You know, I've been wondering lately. Do you know anyone who's in a happy relationship?
Jesse: Uh, yeah, sure. I know happy couples. But I think they lie to each other.
Celine: Hmf. Yeah. People can lead their life as a lie. My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad.
Jesse: I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually.
Celine: How do you know? You don't know them.
Jesse: Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality.

Celine: Even though I reject most of the religious things I can't help but feeling for all those people that come here lost or in pain, guilt, looking for some kind of answers. It fascinates me how a single place can join so much pain and happiness for so many generations.

Jesse: Yeah. So, uh, were we having our first fight back there?
Celine: v
Jesse: Yeah, I think so, I think we were.
Celine: Well, even if we were a little bit, y'know. Why does everyone think conflict is so bad. There's a lot of good things coming out of conflict.

Celine: I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

Jesse: I feel like this is, uh, some dream world we're in, y'know.
Celine: Yeah, it's so weird. It's like our time together is just ours. It's our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.
Jesse: And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.
Celine: Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly.

Jesse: This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath... all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn't get it out of his head. And I think that's so true, I mean, all - everything is so finite. But don't you think that that's what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?
Celine: Yeah, I know. It's the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see each other again, right?
Celine: We, maybe we should try something different. I mean, it's no so bad if tonight is our only night, right? People always exchange phone numbers, addresses, they end up writing once, calling each other once or twice...
Jesse: Right. Fizzles out. Yeah, I mean, I don't want that. I hate that.
Celine: I hate that too, y'know.
Jesse: Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway?
Celine: Yeah, why. It's stupid.

Jesse: Listen, if somebody gave me the choice right now, of to never see you again or to marry you, alright, I would marry you, alright. And maybe that's a lot of romantic bullshit, but people have gotten married for a lot less.
Celine: Actually, I think I had decided I wanted to sleep with you when we got off the train. But now that we've talked so much, I don't know anymore.
Celine: Why do I make everything so complicated?

Jesse: [stops Celine and positions her in front of him at arm's length]
Celine: What?
Jesse: Uh... I'm gonna take your picture. So I never forget you or, uh, or all this.
Celine: Okay. Me too.

Jesse: Would you be in Paris by now, if you hadn't gotten off the train with me?
Celine: No not yet. What would you be doing?
Jesse: I'd probably be hanging around the airport, reading old magazines, crying in my coffee cause you didn't come with me.
Celine: Aww... Actually, I think I'd probably have gotten off the train in Salzburg with someone else.
Jesse: Oh, yeah? Oh, I see. So, I'm just that dumb American momentarily decorating your blank canvas.
Celine: I'm having a great time.
Jesse: Really?
Celine: Yeah.
Jesse: Me too.

Celine: When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms-I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone-the way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

---

Waking Life (2001)

Celine: I've been thinking also about something you said.
Jesse: What's that?
Celine: Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come through over time. Everybody says they have been the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander The Great. I always want to tell them they were probably some dumb fuck like everybody else.

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