Sophie's Choice (1982)

Josef Sommer: Older Stingo - Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : I was twenty two, and a virgin, and was clasping in my arms at last the goddess of my unending fantasies. My lust was inexhaustible. Sophie's lust was both a plunge into carnal oblivion, and a flight from memory and grief. More than that, I now see it was a frantic attempt to beat back death.

• [last lines] 

  Narrator : And so ended my voyage of discovery in a place as strange as Brooklyn. I let go the rage and sorrow for Sophie and Nathan, and the many others who were but a few of the butchered and betrayed and martyred children of the earth. When I could finally see again, I saw the first rays of daylight reflected in the murky river. This was not Judgement Day, only morning. Morning, excellent and fair.

• [first lines] 

  Narrator : It was 1947, two years after the war, when I began my journey to what my father called the Sodom of the north, New York. They called me Stingo, which was the nick name I was known by in those days, if I was called anything at all.

• Narrator : [narrating]  How could I have failed to have the most helpless crush on such a generous mind and life-enlarging mentor. Nathan was utterly, fatally glamorous

• Narrator : Thus, I realized that Leslie and I would be left to frolic in this place alone. My cup ran over. Oh, my cup turned into a spillway flooding across the spotless carpet, out the door, down Pierrepont Street, across all the twilit carnal reaches of Brooklyn. Leslie. A weekend alone with Leslie.

• Narrator : Nathan, my new and dear beloved friend, introduced me to what seemed the answer to my relentless, all consuming hornyness.