Hoffman (1970)

Peter Sellers: Mr. Benjamin Hoffman

Photos 

Quotes 

• Benjamin Hoffman : I remember the day my father introduced me to snails. "Hello, snails," I said, "How are you?" "Tres bien, merci," they said. "We who are about to be eaten salute you."

• Benjamin Hoffman : Miss Smith, you are here to be two arms, two legs, a face, and what fits in the middle.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Oh naked strange pale girl found in my bed one summer morning.

• Benjamin Hoffman : I'll be in bed should you be searching for me, Ms Smith.

• [Miss Smith is in the bathroom next to the bedroom where Mr Hoffman lays in bed] 

  Benjamin Hoffman : Ms Smith. Take a letter.

  Miss Janet Smith : What?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Take a letter Ms Smith.

  Miss Janet Smith : [comes out of the bathroom]  Now?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Yes, now! To Miss Janet Smith, care of this address. Dear Miss Smith, go to bed. Your sincerely. Mr Benjamin Hoffman.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Please make yourself look as if you want to be fertilized.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Aspirin.

  Miss Janet Smith : Where?

  Benjamin Hoffman : In the tea.

  Miss Janet Smith : Well, I don't want them in the tea.

  Benjamin Hoffman : Ah. Um, they fell in.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Full use. Any man suffering massive sexual frustration would be out of his mind if, getting the girl of his dreams, he didn't put her to... full use.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Love is merely a substitute for liking people.

• Benjamin Hoffman : I smell your hair in my bathroom. I smell your female skin smell in my bathroom. You can't buy that in a bottle.

• Benjamin Hoffman : All over the world, simple pleasures of the flesh are being ruined by women screaming to be understood.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Girls all over the world are afraid of men with my expression.

  Miss Janet Smith : What expression?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Plain, sad-faced men.

• Miss Janet Smith : Tom's mother says that only French railway workers eat garlic.

  Benjamin Hoffman : You're very witty, Miss Smith.

  Miss Janet Smith : Really?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Witty and informative. You tell me volumes about Tom's mother in one simple sentence.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Now, Miss Smith, what do you like before going to bed? Cocoa? Acupuncture?

• Miss Janet Smith : How will I ever look Tom in the face again?

  Benjamin Hoffman : With guilt, apprehension, remembering the unspeakable - me.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Miss Smith. It's not only homosexuals who don't like women. Hardy anybody likes them.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Many a good man has been destroyed by pity, Miss Smith.

• Miss Janet Smith : What you're doing to me is atrocious. It's the filthiest thing I've ever heard of.

  Benjamin Hoffman : Yes, I am filthy, yes, but there's no escaping one's fate.

• Benjamin Hoffman : There are two people in all of us - the child in the snapshot and the monster the child grows into.

• Miss Janet Smith : What's wrong with the old place?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Oh, well, you know - treacheries, miseries, failure, despair.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Put on lots of perfume, Ms Smith, everywhere. I like it!

• Benjamin Hoffman : Night thoughts, Saturday, October the 3rd. Every girl is a flower garden with a compost heap at the bottom. And many a noble man has had to drown his dwarf wife in a zinc bath or strangle an idiot girl on a muddy common in order to draw attention to himself. Reality betrays us all.

  Benjamin Hoffman : Reality betrays us, Ms Smith!

• Benjamin Hoffman : Miss Smith?... Please make yourself look as though you want to be fertilized.

  [she is stunned] 

  Benjamin Hoffman : What a charming silence you make, Miss Smith.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Come in, Miss Smith.

  [she hesitates at the doorway] 

  Benjamin Hoffman : Don't weaken, Miss Smith.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Come along, Miss Smith! Blow your lonely nose and come out of there.

• Benjamin Hoffman : The living room is just here... where one lives.

• Miss Janet Smith : Is - is this the only -

  Benjamin Hoffman : - Only bed in use, yes.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Only the innocent can lie with conviction, Miss Smith.

• Benjamin Hoffman : I want to eat you. I want to consume you. I want to lick your knees.

• Benjamin Hoffman : That's a charming schoolgirl frown you have there, Miss Smith.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Are you setting up house in the bathroom, Miss Smith?

• Benjamin Hoffman : Can you scramble eggs?

  Miss Janet Smith : Yes.

  Benjamin Hoffman : Your accomplishments never cease to amaze me, Miss Smith.

• Benjamin Hoffman : [Hoffman and Miss Smith are at the piano]  And I'll play down here, you play up there - that'll be a duet, or instant cacophony.

• Miss Janet Smith : There's something I want to ask you.

  Benjamin Hoffman : What is it you want to ask me?

  Miss Janet Smith : Can I give up going to work?

  Benjamin Hoffman : ...Yes.

  Miss Janet Smith : And can I have piano lessons?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Yes.

  Miss Janet Smith : From a real teacher?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Yes.

  Miss Janet Smith : And can I choose the things for the new kitchen?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Yes.

  Miss Janet Smith : And... and can I -

  Benjamin Hoffman : - Yes, anything!

• Miss Janet Smith : Are you hungry?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Women are always hungry for something. Fallopian tubes with teeth.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Girls with vain faces and pert airs and graces, would have you suppose that under their clothes, there was more than a tube and some lumps.

• Benjamin Hoffman : Once I knew a pretty girl, I loved her as my wife, but I put my hands about her neck, and relieved her... of her life.

  Miss Janet Smith : Why don't you want me to like you?

  Benjamin Hoffman : Why don't you stop staring me in the face with your doomed youth?