The Devil's Arithmetic (1999 TV Movie)

Kirsten Dunst: Hannah Stern

Photos 

Quotes 

• Hannah Stern : What I still don't understand is how so many people could be punished, men, women, and babies who didn't even have a chance to think about God.

  Aunt Eva : Once I would have said you have to ask the Nazis. But now I know better, and I say you have to ask God. There is no one else. Do you know how to talk to God?

  Hannah Stern : So quietly that only God can hear me.

• Hannah Stern : Do you know what a stupid girl I used to be? I almost got one of these put on!

  [shows the number tattooed on her arm] 

  Hannah Stern : Can you believe that? I wanted to get tattooed!

  Rivkah : Don't talk foolishness!

  Hannah Stern : It is foolishness, isn't it? My whole life has been foolishness. I'm being punished, that's it, God is punishing me.

  Rivkah : I forbid you to say that. Is God punishing me? Is He punishing the children? I won't believe that.

  Hannah Stern : Then why? Why?

  Rivkah : Ask them why. Ask the Nazis, not me, don't ask me.

• Hannah Stern : [laboring in the camp]  How are you doing?

  Leah : I'm on my honeymoon.

• Rivkah : They're burning our synagogue!

  Hannah Stern : I know! I know! Rivkah, what's worse? Knowing, or not knowing?

  Rivkah : I don't know.

• Hannah Stern : [the Nazis approach the wedding ceremony]  What year is it?

  Rivkah : 5703.

  Hannah Stern : 5000? That's impossible, this isn't the future.

  Rivkah : Ah, you mean the Christian calendar. 1941, October 1941.

  Hannah Stern : They're Nazis! No! They will kill... it's 6 million Jews. Don't ask me how I know, I just do.

• Mina : Hannah, hold her leg tighter!

  Hannah Stern : I'm trying!

  Mina : Don't try, DO it! You're not a little girl anymore.

• Hannah Stern : I was thinking about how much help I could be to all of us.

  Rivkah : What do you mean?

  Hannah Stern : I had a history teacher who spent a whole semester talking about the Jews during the war, you know what I was doing? I was writing notes to my friends. I have no idea what my teacher said. The only thing I remember is that no one paid any attention to all of this.

  Rivkah : You have a very vivid imagination, and it is causing you much needless pain.

  Hannah Stern : I wish that was true.