- Mick Boyle: [as he shows his protegee the distant Alps through a telescope] You see that mountain over there? Everything seems really close. That's the future. And now...
- [as he flips the telescope around so it's in fish eye lens]
- Mick Boyle: ... everything seems really far away. That's the past.
- Pale Teenager: When your son says, 'Why weren't you a father to me?' And you say, 'I didn't think I was up to it.' At that moment, I understood some really important.
- Jimmy Tree: What?
- Pale Teenager: That no one in the world feels up to it, so there is no reason to worry.
- Jimmy Tree: I have to choose, I have to choose what is really worth telling: horror or desire? And I choose desire. You, each one of you, you open my eyes, you made me see that I should not wasting my time on the senseless fear...
- Fred Ballinger: Children, don't know their parents ordeals. Sure, they know certain details, striking elements. And they know what they need to know to be on one side or the other. They don't know that I trembled the first time I ever saw you on stage. All the orchestra behind my back were laughing at my falling in love. And my unexpected fragility. They don't know that you sold of your mother's jewellery in order to help me with my second piece. When everyone else was turning me down calling me presumptuous inelegant musician. They don't know that you too, and you were right that you thought I was a presumptuous, inelegant musician at that time. And you cried so hard. Not because you sold you mother's jewellery but because you sold your mother. They don't know that we were together. You and I. Despite all the exhaustion, and the pain, and hardship. Melanie. They must never know that you and I despite everything liked to think of ourselves as a simple song.
- Miss Universe: I appreciate the irony, but when it is drenched in poison, it is drained of its force and reveals something else.
- Jimmy Tree: What?
- Miss Universe: Frustration.
- Lena Ballinger: You know, sometimes when I'm asleep at night, he watches me... and last night he stroked my cheek for the first time in my life. Only I wasn't asleep... I was pretending to be asleep.
- Mick Boyle: Parents know when their children are pretending to be asleep.
- Fred Ballinger: I'm wondering what happens to your memory over time. I can't remember my family. I don't remember their faces or how they talked. Last night I was watching Lena while she was asleep. And I was thinking about all the thousands of little things that I done for her as her father. And I done them deliberately so that she would remember them. When she grows up. But in time. She won't remember a single thing.
- Mick Boyle: Do you see that mountain over there?
- Girl Screenwriter: Yes. It looks very close.
- Mick Boyle: Exactly. This is what you see when you're young. Everything seems really close. And that's the future. And now. And that's what you see when you're old. Everything seems really far away. That's the past.
- Queen's Emissary: Why exactly do you find the monarchy endearing?
- Fred Ballinger: Well, because it's so vulnerable. You eliminate one person. And all of a sudden. The whole world changes. Like in a marriage.
- Lena Ballinger: And what does she do?
- Fred Ballinger: The most obscene job in the world.
- Lena Ballinger: She is a prostitute?
- Lena Ballinger: Worse. She is a pop star.
- Screenwriter in Love: You've been watching too many movies, you idiot, you've forgotten what life is about.
- Mick Boyle: You know, I've come to understand something, Fred. That people are either beautiful or ugly, and the ones in between are merely cute.
- Jimmy Tree: Tell me about Stravinsky.
- Fred Ballinger: Well, he once said intellectuals had no taste. And from that moment on, I did everything I could not to become an intellectual. And I succeeded.
- Fred Ballinger: You understand everything with your hands, don't you?
- Masseuse: We can understand all sorts of things by touching. Who knows why people are so afraid of touching?
- Fred Ballinger: Maybe it's because they think it has something to do with pleasure.
- Masseuse: That's just another good reason for touching instead of talking.
- Fred Ballinger: Don't you like to talk?
- Masseuse: I never have anything to say.
- Diva: Okay, you win. I'll go to bed with you, on one condition: that you don't come. That way, Frank... that way, you'll never forget me.
- Lena Ballinger: You know, he said the reason he couldn't conduct the Simple Songs was because my mother's the only person on Earth who could sing them.
- Mick Boyle: He said that?
- Lena Ballinger: He said that to the queen's emissary.
- Mick Boyle: It took him eighty years to finally say something romantic, and he goes and says it to the queen's emissary.
- Fred Ballinger: I don't know what the problem is. But I'm not going to try and cheer you up by lying. Or talk about things I never knew about.
- Jimmy Tree: I want to tell about your desire, my desire. So pure, so impossible, so immoral. But it doesn't matter because that's what makes us alive.
- Fred Ballinger: So I've grown old without understanding how I got here.
- Doctor: Do you know what awaits you outside of here?
- Fred Ballinger: No. What?
- Doctor: Youth.
- Fred Ballinger: You know what's the difference between you and me?
- Mick Boyle: What.
- Fred Ballinger: Ultimately, I never liked life well enough.
- Mick Boyle: You made me realize that not only I do not remember my parents any more, but my childhood. For example, I do not remember a thing about it. There is only one thing I still remember.
- Fred Ballinger: What?
- Mick Boyle: The precise moment when I learned how to ride a bike. And this morning, as if by magic, I remembered the moment right after.
- Fred Ballinger: When you fell off?
- Mick Boyle: How the fuck did you know?
- Fred Ballinger: Well, that happens to everybody. You learn something, you're happy and then... you forget to brake.
- [last lines]
- Fred Ballinger: [sitting in his wife's room] I waited till visiting hours to come and see you. They don't know, Melanie. The children don't know their parents ordeals. Sure, they know certain details, striking elements. And they know what they need to know to be on one side or the other. They don't know that I trembled the first time I ever saw you on stage. And that the orchestra behind my back was laughing at my falling in love. And my unexpected fragility. They don't know that you sold of your mother's jewellery in order to help me with my second piece, when everyone else was turning me down, calling me a presumptuous, inelegant musician. I think they don't know that you too, and you were right that you thought I was a presumptuous, inelegant musician at that time. And you cried so hard. Not because you sold you mother's jewellery, but because you sold your mother. They don't know that we were together, you and I, despite all the exhaustion, and the pain, and the hardship. Melanie, they must never know that you and I, despite everything, liked to think of ourselves as "A Simple Song."Look at me.
- [she staring blankly out the window in her dementia]
- Lena Ballinger: Julian's an ass because... I'm really good in bed.
- Fred Ballinger: I know.
- Lena Ballinger: What do you mean you know?
- Fred Ballinger: You're my daughter. And in all modesty, I was a wonder between the sheets.
- [Lena laughs hysterically]
- Fred Ballinger: It's true.
- Luca Moroder: It is an amazing feeling climbing, you know? A real sense of freedom.
- Lena Ballinger: All I feel is fear.
- Luca Moroder: That is an amazing feeling too, you know?
- Pale Teenager: I saw you in that film that you've played a father who never knew his son. And he meets him for the first time in a highway diner when his son is already 14 years.
- Jimmy Tree: Nobody saw that movie!
- Pale Teenager: There was that dialogue that I really liked. When your son says: "Why weren't you a father to me?"And you say: "I didn't think I was up to it."At that moment I understood something really important.
- Jimmy Tree: What?
- Pale Teenager: That no one in the world feels up to it. So there is no reason to worry. Bye...
- Fred Ballinger: Did you take a piss today?
- Mick Boyle: [nods in affirmation] Twice. Four drops. You?
- Fred Ballinger: The same. More or less.
- Mick Boyle: More? Or less?
- Fred Ballinger: Less.
- Queen's Emissary: Her majesty the queen would be *honored* to confer a knighthood upon you this coming June.
- Fred Ballinger: Good.
- Queen's Emissary: Her majesty the queen will be *de*-lighted to learn you have accepted.
- Fred Ballinger: Her majesty the queen has never been *de*-lighted at anything.
- Shy Screenwriter: I am timid and insecure. My parents never gave me any encouragement. I've never had a girlfriend. And I have some serious doubts about my sexual orientation.
- Mick Boyle: Stop it. You're not going to move me.
- Shy Screenwriter: My aunt has polio.
- [Mick laughs]
- [after much resistance, Fred tells Lena what Julian said about Paloma Faith]
- Lena Ballinger: You didn't have to tell me that.
- Luca Moroder: Hello. I am a mountaineer. And I teach climbing. I give lessons here at the hotel.
- Lena Ballinger: Oh...
- Luca Moroder: And you? What do you do?
- Lena Ballinger: I have two jobs. I'm a daughter and I also an assistant to my father.
- Brenda Morel: You're old, you're tired, you don't know how to see the world any more, Mick. All you know how to see is your own death, which is waiting right around the corner for you.