Carrington (1995)

Emma Thompson: Dora Carrington

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Quotes 

• Dora Carrington : [voice-over, a letter]  My dearest Lytton, There is a great deal to say, and I feel very incompetent to write it today. You see, I knew there was nothing really to hope for from you, well, ever since the beginning. All these years, I have known all along that my life with you was limited. Lytton, you're the only person who I ever had an all-absorbing passion for. I shall never have another. I couldn't, now. I had one of the most self-abasing loves that a person can have. It's too much of a strain to be quite alone here, waiting to see you, or craning my nose and eyes out of the top window at 44, Gordon Square to see if you were coming down the street. Ralph said you were nervous lest I'd feel I have some sort of claim on you, and that all your friends wondered how you could have stood me so long, as I didn't understand a word of literature. That was wrong. For nobody, I think, could have loved the Ballards, Donne, and Macaulay's Essays and, best of all, Lytton's Essays, as much as I. You never knew, or never will know, the very big and devastating love I had for you. How I adored every hair, every curl of your beard. Just thinking of you now makes me cry so I can't see this paper. Once you said to me - that Wednesday afternoon in the sitting room - you loved me as a friend. Could you tell it to me again. Yours, Carrington.

  Lytton Strachey : [voice-over, his written reply]  My dearest and best, Do you know how difficult I find it to express my feelings, either in letters or talk ? Do you really want me to tell you that I love you as a friend ? But of course that is absurd. And you do know very well that I love you as something more than a friend, you angelic creature, whose goodness has made me happy for years. Your letter made me cry. I feel a poor, old, miserable creature. If there was a chance that your decision meant that I should somehow or other lose you, I don't think I could bear it. You and Ralph and our life at Tidmarsh are what I care for most in the world.

• Dora Carrington : I suppose you ought to be going soon - before it gets dark.

  Lytton Strachey : Oh, no. No, no, no. No, I adore the blackout. The most - thrilling encounters.

• Dora Carrington : Lytton, I love being with you. You're so cold - and wise. These last few months, whenever I know I'm going to see you I get so excited inside. If you want to kiss me again, I don't think I'd mind at all.

  Lytton Strachey : You know, its a strange thing, but, I'd rather like to.

• Lytton Strachey : I tend to be impulsive in these matters like the time I asked Virginia Woolf to marry me.

  Dora Carrington : She turned you down?

  Lytton Strachey : No, she accepted. It was ghastly.

• Mark Gertler : Haven't you any self-respect?

  Dora Carrington : Not much.

  Mark Gertler : But he's a disgusting pervert!

  Dora Carrington : You always have to put up with something.

• Lytton Strachey : There must be some compensation for having friends in high places.

  Dora Carrington : Don't you like Ottoline?

  Lytton Strachey : I'm devoted to Ottoline. She's like the Eiffel Tower. She's very silly, but, she affords excellent views.

• Lytton Strachey : I'm so busy nowadays. I've been learning German, as well. I must say its the most disagreeable language.

  Dora Carrington : Then why learn it?

  Lytton Strachey : Oh, my dear... suppose they win?

• Lytton Strachey : Do you really like to be called Carrington?

  Dora Carrington : Yes.

  Lytton Strachey : Why?

  Dora Carrington : My first name is Dora.

  Lytton Strachey : Oh, I see.

• Lytton Strachey : I'm obscure, decrepited, terrified, ill-favored, penniless and found of adjectives.

  Dora Carrington : Surely, its not that bad.

  Lytton Strachey : No. No, you're quite right. Looked at another way, I'm a perfectly respectable, elderly buggered of modest means.

• Dora Carrington : Will you stay? Won't you spoil me? Just this once? Tonight?

• Dora Carrington : His conversations are so dull. He's like a Norwegian dentist.

• Dora Carrington : It makes me think, you're only interested in me sexually.

• Dora Carrington : It's you I like. Not your body.

  Mark Gertler : I am my body.

• Dora Carrington : I was just thinking about that disgusting old man with the beard.

  Mark Gertler : Well, I really shouldn't brood about it, if I were you. After all, he is a bugger.

  Dora Carrington : What?

  Mark Gertler : Lytton. He's a bugger.

  Dora Carrington : I never know what that means?

  Mark Gertler : He's a homosexual.

• Dora Carrington : You must be Gerald Brenan.

  Gerald Brenan : Miss Carrington.

  Dora Carrington : Carrington.

  Gerald Brenan : Rex, that is to say, Rafe, tells me you're a Bolshevik.

  Dora Carrington : He tells me you're an idealist.

• Dora Carrington : If only I wasn't so - plural. Especially when people seem to want me so - conclusively.

• Dora Carrington : When you've been married for as long as six weeks, you have no idea how pleasant it is to get away on your own.

• Lytton Strachey : The truth is, I've always been better at living than I ever was at writing.

  Dora Carrington : What's wrong with that?

• Dora Carrington : I wish I'd been born a boy.

  Lytton Strachey : You have such lovely ears.