Lisztomania (1975)

Sara Kestelman: Princess Carolyn

Quotes 

• Princess Carolyn : You and the Tsar are just different sides of the same coin: false gods worshiped in different ways. Dress the Tsar as a peasant and you have a peasant.

  [searches for Liszt] 

  Princess Carolyn : Stop skulking behind that screen!

  [continues] 

  Princess Carolyn : Dress Liszt in a crinoline and what do you have? The same thing: a sham. Rather than walk naked through the world, he chooses to play the imposter. What do you say?

  Liszt : Bollocks!

  Princess Carolyn : "Bollocks"? I don't speak Hungarian.

• Liszt : Her Majesty gets a lot of satisfaction out of a good smoke?

  Princess Carolyn : It's the perfect form of pleasure. It's exquisite and leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one ask?

• Princess Carolyn : Fresh air sickens me. My visitors invariably stink of it; hence, the fumigation.

• Liszt : I must admit, my professor had to tell me the meanings of the sixth and ninth commandments.

  Princess Carolyn : Let us practice the 69th - together.

• Princess Carolyn : I rule in a state of 30,000 barbaric peasants - alone. My subjects think me a divine matriarch. But, underneath, I am - a woman.

• Princess Carolyn : Come. We must pray.

  Liszt : Pray?

  Princess Carolyn : No longer must you prostitute your art. Music, like sex, should be approached in a religious spirit. As one of the holiest things in life.

• Princess Carolyn : Some little guttersnipe has written an obscene book about you and the Tsar, for one, is outraged.

  [hands Liszt the book] 

  Liszt : "Lisztomania" Marie? Oh, God. It can't be. Why should she?

• Princess Carolyn : Europe is ripe with revolution. You will become the leader of the only one that matters: the revolution in music! The whole world will sing your songs of brotherhood. *Art* is so much greater than politics!

• Princess Carolyn : Then, you can become a saint.

  Liszt : Saint Franz Liszt!

  Princess Carolyn : You must become a Franziscan!

• Princess Carolyn : We'll say a few Holy Marys and drink a few Bloody Marys, together.

• Cosima : Beautiful. I recognize the theme that Wagner borrowed - stole.

  Liszt : He was welcome to it. I had plenty more. I didn't mind him taking it. It was what he did with it was horrible.

  Princess Carolyn : Let's face it. We were all pretty horrible - and selfish.

  Marie d'Agoult : The bad is dead and buried. The best of us lives on, enshrined in his music. And that's for everyone to share.

  Lola Montez : Forever.

  Cosima : Forever