Sophie's Choice (1982)
Meryl Streep: Sophie Zawistowski
Photos
Quotes
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Sophie : My mother, she's very sick, you know. And I can't do anything. But I think - if only I could have got - that meat for my mother it would make her strong. So I go to the country and er... the peasants were selling ham and I buy it with the black market money and I bring it back. But it's forbidden, you know, because all the meat goes to the Germans. So I sat on the train and I hid it under my skirt, I am pretending that I am pregnant, you know? Oh I was so afraid. I was shaking. And then the German, was in front of the train and he saw me. So he come over and take under my skirt that ham and...
[pause]
Sophie : So they sent me Auschwitz.
Stingo : You were sent to Auschwitz because you stole a ham?
Sophie : No, I was sent to Auschwitz because they saw that I was afraid.
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Sophie : [after having taken a sip of the wine that Nathan has poured for her] Mmm. You know, when you... when you live a good life... like a saint... and then you die, that must be what they make you to drink in paradise.
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Sophie : Don't you see? We are dying. I longed desperately to escape, to pack my bags and flee, but I did not.
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Stingo : Sophie, I want to understand. I'd like to know the truth.
Sophie : The truth does not make it easier to understand, you know. I mean, you think that you find out the truth about me, and then you'll understand me. And then you would forgive me for all those... for all my lies.
Stingo : I promise, I'll never leave you.
Sophie : You must never promise that. No one, no one should ever promise that. Ah, the truth, ah, the truth, I don't even know what is the truth - after all these lies I have told.
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Sophie : Yeah umm it looked like something that the... the scares the birds... you know... what is that... umm scur... scrul... I had scurbutt!
Nathan Landau : [to Stingo] No, no, no she means scurvy.
Sophie : Yeah...
Nathan Landau : And typhus, and anemia and scarlet fever...
Sophie : Yeah...
Nathan Landau : Was fucking miracle that she emerged from that camp alive.
Sophie : Right.
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Sophie : So, we'll go to that farm tomorrow. But please, Stingo, don't talk about marriage and children. It's enough that we'll go down there on that farm to live... for a while.
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Sophie : I didn't know your mother died.
Stingo : When I was 12
Sophie : You loved her very much?
Stingo : Not enough.
Sophie : What do you "not enough"? What do you mean?
Stingo : I mean not enough.
Sophie : That is what is so terrible about - outliving those people that we love, I mean that's. - that guilt.
Stingo : Your father?
Sophie : My father, my mother, my husband.
Stingo : You were married?
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Stingo : Well, I love you very much, Sophie. And I want to marry you. I want you to live down there on that farm with me. When I write my books there, I want you to help me and I want you to help me raise a family because I love you very, very much. Is it too much to hope that you might love me, too?
Sophie : Listen, Stingo, I'm beyond 30 years now, you know. What are you going to do with an old Polish lady like me?
Stingo : Manage. I'll Manage. "Old woman".Don't talk that way. You're always going to be my number one.
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Nathan Landau : I need you like death! Hear me? Like death!
Sophie : No, Nathan!
Nathan Landau : Go back to Krakow, baby. Back to Krakow!
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Nathan Landau : But I'm a biologist
Sophie : [looks away confusedly] Yeah...
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Nathan Landau : We put the little sweetie here on a massive doses of ferrous sulphate and she began to bloom like a rose. A rose. A rose. A beautiful fucking rose. You're something!
Sophie : Thank you for making me to bloom like a rose.
Nathan Landau : Not "to bloom", just "bloom".
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Sophie : This is ridiculous language and there's too many words! The word for "velocity", okay, there's "fast", "quick", "rapid" and they all mean the same thing.
Nathan Landau : "Swift". "Speedy".
Stingo : "Hasty".
Nathan Landau : "Fleet".
Stingo : "Brisk".
Nathan Landau : Expeditious".
Stingo : "Accelerated".
Nathan Landau : "Winged".
Sophie : No, no! Stop it! It's ridiculous! Oh, in French it's so easy. You say: "vite". Or in Polish, "szybki" and in Russian, "bystro". It's only in the English it's so complicated!
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Sophie : When I was a little girl, I - I remember, I lay in bed and I hear my mother downstairs playing the piano and the sound of my father's typewriter. I think no child has a more wonderful father and mother. And a more beautiful life.
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Sophie : I knew that - Christ had turned his face away from me - and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could kill those people that I love, but - leave me alive - with my shame.
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Nathan Landau : Tell me. Tell me, Sophie. The same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such a worldwide renown that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along, protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule, handful of people who lived - while the millions died? Tell me. Tell me why? Explanation, please! Tell me why, old lucky number 11379, tell me, why you inhabit the land of the living? What splendid little tricks and strategems sprang from that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath the clear Polish air? While the multitudes at Auschwitz choked - slowly - on the gas?
Sophie : No!
Nathan Landau : Explain!
Sophie : Stop it!
Nathan Landau : Explain!
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Sophie : I see many, many women in your life. Many beautiful women - who adore you and that make all that love with you.
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Sophie : [in broken English] I am six months in the... in here, in U.S., and so I eat more good now than in my life.
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Stingo : I bet your father is a - very interesting man.
Sophie : Yeah, my father was - a civilized man. That's a word, yeah? "Civilized"?
Nathan Landau : A very good word.
Sophie : Yeah? My father was a civilized man living in a uncivilized time. The civilized, they was the first to die.
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Sophie : Good morning, Stingo.
Stingo : Good morning.
Sophie : We wanted to make friends and to take you out on this beautiful summer day! We want you to come up and to have breakfast with us.
Nathan Landau : And then...
Sophie : Yes?
Nathan Landau : Coney Island.
Sophie : Coney Island! Oh boy.
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Sophie : My father. How can I explain how much I loved my father? My father believed that human perfection was possibility. Every night, I pray to God, to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father. And I pray to him - to make worthy of such a great, good man. I was a grown woman. I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman when I realized that I hate my father beyond all words to tell it.
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Sophie : They had courage. Oh, God, they had courage!
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Nathan Landau : You were - you were in that concentration camp?
Sophie : Yeah, I can't - I can't talk about that, though.
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Nathan Landau : Jewish? Jewish? No, no, no. No, Sophie's Catholic.
Sophie : Yeah, well, it's okay; but, I'm not anymore Catholic, so...
Nathan Landau : Well, Catholic-ish.
