Hiroshima Mon Amour Quotes

Elle: You destroy me. You are good for me.

Elle: I loved the taste of blood since I tasted yours.

Elle: Sometimes we have to avoid thinking about the problems life presents. Otherwise we'd suffocate.

Elle: All these years I've been looking for an impossible love.

Elle: They make advertisements for soap. Why not for peace?

Elle: The illusion, quite simply, is so perfect, that tourists weep. It's easy to be cynical. But what else can a tourist possibly do, but weep?

Lui: You were bored in a way that makes a man want to know a woman

Elle: Four times at the museum in Hiroshima. I saw people walking around. People walking, thoughtful, past the photographs and reconstructions, for lack of anything else. Photographs, photographs and reconstructions, for lack of anything else. Explanations, for lack of anything else. Four times at the museum in Hiroshima. I looked at the people. I myself looked, thoughtfully, at the iron. Iron, burned and twisted. Iron made vulnerable as flesh. I saw the bouquet of bottle tops. Who could imagine such a thing? Human skin, floating, surviving, still in the bloom of agony. And stones. Burned stones, shattered stones. Anonymous locks of hair, that Hiroshima's women, when they awoke, discovered had fallen out.

Elle: I felt the heat on Peace Square. Ten thousand degrees, on Peace Square. That I know. The temperature of the sun, on Peace Square. How could one ignore it? The grass, quite simply...

Elle: Just as in love, there is this illusion, this illusion that you will never be able to forget, the way I had the illusion, faced with Hiroshima, that I would never forget. Just as in love.

Elle: Like you, I have fought with all my might not to forget. Like you, I have forgotten.

Elle: Like you, I wanted an inconsolable memory. A memory of shadow and stone. Each day I fought, all alone, with all my might, against the terror of no longer knowing the reason to remember. Like you have forgotten.

Elle: Why deny the obvious necessity for memory?

Elle: Listen to me. I know this, too. It will happen again. 200,000 dead, 80,000 wounded in nine seconds. Those are official figures. It will happen again. It will be 10,000 degrees on the earth. "Ten thousand suns," they will say. The asphalt will burn. A deep chaos will prevail. A whole city will be raised and once more crumble into ashes.

Elle: I meet you. I remember you. Who are you?

Elle: How could I have known this city was big enough for love? How could I have known you were a perfect fit for my body?

Elle: I have time. I beg you. Devour me. Deform me, make me ugly. Why not you? Why not you, in this city and on this night, so indistinguishable from any other? I beg you.

Elle: I don't mind being like a thousand women to you.

Lui: Perhaps I was dreaming, without realizing it.

Elle: I was so young once!

Lui: And then one day, my love, does eternity come to an end?

Elle: I'm beginning to forget you. Forgetting so much love is terrifying.

Lui: Some years from now, when I have forgotten you and other romances like this one have recurred through sheer habit, I will remember you as a symbol of love's forgetfulness. This affair will remind me how horrible forgetting is.

Elle: Sometimes it's important to ignore the difficulties this world presents. Otherwise, it would become unbearable.

Elle: One thinks one knows. But, no. Never.

Elle: Time will pass. Only time. And time will come. A time will come, when we can no longer name what it is that unites us. The name will gradually fade from our memory. Then it will disappear entirely.

Elle: Sad little romance.