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Dowager Empress: We are most of us lonely, and it is mostly of our own making, but no masquerade can fill the emptiness.
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Dowager Empress: But oh please, if it should not be you, don't ever tell me.
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Anastasia: The poor have only one advantage; they know when they are loved for themselves.
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[last lines]
Boris Adreivich Chernov: Your Majesty, I beg you. They're all waiting down there. What shall we say to them? What can we say to them?
Dowager Empress: [emphatically] Nothing. Paul, your arm. I will speak to them.
Boris Adreivich Chernov: Oh, thank you, your Majesty.
Boris Adreivich Chernov: [calling everyone to attention by clapping] Everybody, please.
Prince Paul von Haraldberg: [the Prince escorting the Dowager Empress down the hallway toward the ballroom full of guests] Forgive me Marie, but what will you say?
Dowager Empress: Say? Oh, I will say, 'The play is over. Go home.'
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General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: [to Petrovin] Would you recognize the smile of a girl you knew ten years ago?
Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin: I didn't think of that!
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: You're both fools! You're examining her as if she was the real Anastasia. There is no Anastasta! She was shot to death ten years ago by a firing squad. We're not looking for her, gentlemen. We're seeking only a reasonable facsimile.
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Boris Adreivich Chernov: ...and that woman is too too something! Too crazy, too clever, too tricky!
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: I don't care what she is! The important thing is that she fits!
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Dowager Empress: So, Bounine is still attractive.
Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: Yes, Your Majesty.
Dowager Empress: *Madly* attractive.
Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: *Yes*, Your Majesty.
Dowager Empress: Lievenbaum, your voluptuous fancies are disgusting! To a woman of your age, sex should mean nothing but gender.
Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: Yes, Your Majesty.
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Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: A village. This is positively a village. I am all of Chekov's three sisters rolled into one!
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Dowager Empress: I am the past. I like it. It's sweet and familiar. And the present is cold and foreign. And the future? Fortunately, I don't need to concern myself with that.
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Anastasia: How dare you smoke in my presence without my permission!
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Boris Adreivich Chernov: I thought you couldn't remember.
Anastasia: I can't always. Things come and go - like waves of mist.
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Anastasia: So I've heard before. All of it. Say this. Remember that. You are. You are not. I know you. I don't know you. Oh, I've heard it many times.
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: Where?
Anastasia: Bucharest, Berlin...
Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin: Berlin?
Anastasia: China! I don't remember!
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General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: And now, may I present your staff - Boris Andreivich Chernov, formerly of St Petersburg, banker. Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin, former student of the theological seminary. Sergei Pavlovich Bounine, General of the Tcherkess Regiment, former aide-de-camp attached to the person of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II, Tsar of all Russia.
Anastasia: And I am - I am Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
[hysterical laughter]
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Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin: I think she's very tired.
Anastasia: Now, I've had my coffee. Besides, it all helps to bring my memory back. And maybe one memory will convince someone. Even if it's only me.
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Boris Adreivich Chernov: You think she's ready?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: No. Of course, she thinks she is.
Boris Adreivich Chernov: Now, listen, she thinks she's Anastasia! And the great Stanislavsky once said, "When an actor believes he is the character he's playing, fire him."
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Anastasia: Are you angry because you're beginning to wonder who I am, or because you want me to do nothing except what you tell me?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: I know who you are not. Just that I know that unless you do as I tell you, I'll have a new cigarette girl at my club.
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Anastasia: I can't any more! I don't know who I am any more! I don't know what I remember or what I've been told I remember! What is real? Am I?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: Anna.
Anastasia: Anna. Am I Anna? Why not Tamara? Why not Liza? Why not Taziana? Yes, why not Taziana? Oh, I can't any more. I don't want this. I want to be me, whoever I am. I want to be me! I want someone to tell me, someone to accept me.
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General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: Stop it! Go to bed at once!
Anastasia: My father was very strict. I did not like to obey, but he was ringmaster in a circus. General Bounine?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: Yes?
Anastasia: Who am I?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: I don't know.
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General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: Never trust anyone who functions with noble motives; because, they're never sure. And in the end, they'll let you down.
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Chamberlain: I have a miserable attack of gout, no doubt punishment for being intemperate, and I'm eager to return to my tub of hot water.
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Chamberlain: I've already noticed the resemblance. As to the manner, I've been watching, and you've given me pleasure. You've taken me back to my seat in the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg, second row on the aisle every Tuesday night. For the purpose of acting is not only to imitate reality, but to create illusion. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that you are an excellent actress, Madame.
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Chamberlain: Madame, my foot is troubling me.
Anastasia: My *life* is troubling me and it has yet to be lived.
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Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: You are a monster. Well, I survived a revolution, I suppose I can survive this.
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Dowager Empress: Your Majesty, forgive me.
Dowager Empress: I did once, when I heard you'd been shot.
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: I was sentenced twice.
Dowager Empress: By whom? The whites or the reds?
General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: As I recall, by both.
Dowager Empress: Good for them, but you are still here.
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Dowager Empress: I have lost everything I have loved: my husband, my family, my position, my country. I have nothing but memories. I want to be left alone with them.
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Dowager Empress: There are not enough years left for me to see every madwoman with a royal obsession. If she must see me, show her my photographs again.
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Anastasia: I really don't like champagne. I only like what it does to me.
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Dowager Empress: I have received too many appeals from resurrected Romanovs. The firing squads were such poor shots it's amazing the Revolution succeeded.
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Dowager Empress: The world moves on, and we must move on with it or be left to moulder with the past.
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Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: The times aren't suited for elegance, but you have brought it back ce soir.
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Dowager Empress: Truth serves only a world that lives by it.
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General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine: What is difficult for others is simple for me. But what has always been simplest for others is impossible for me.
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Dowager Empress: You are less of a knave than I thought, but very much more of a fool.
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Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: Your Majesty, I cannot wait for you to look down into the ballroom. You'll weep absolute tears. Everyone's there. And the gowns and the uniforms. It's incredibly like it used to be.
Dowager Empress: Yes, I can smell the mothballs.
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Boris Adreivich Chernov: Excuse me. If Your Majesty will permit me to explain the ceremony and......
Dowager Empress: Livenbaum.
Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: We discussed the ceremony this morning.
Boris Adreivich Chernov: Yes, but...
Baroness Elena von Livenbaum: The *but* we'll discuss later.
Anastasia Quotes
Extended Reading
