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Ruth: Ah, three hours next to the dullest man in Canada... and that's a pretty competitive category.
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Lawrence: Some of the dullest people in the world are in this room. There are gold medalists in the Boredom Olympics here. Anything you say will be more interesting than anything they've ever said.
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Lawrence: I think we get into the habit of always compromising, and therefore we are always compromised. We work and work all our lives and we don't get what we're working for. And I think if we were the men we all dreamed we'd be when we were all young, we'd be doing deals on all the other things and going home to explain our little failures to our own countrymen, but we wouldn't compromise the actual lives of people we will never meet, just because we'd never have to explain to them face-to-face why we didn't think it was worth fighting to stop them from dying.
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Lawrence: You're not fat... it's a well-established scientific fact that zips shrink in Iceland.
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Gina: I do now know four things about Reykjavik - Bjork comes from here...
Lawrence: Spassky played Fisher here...
Gina: Zips shrink here and it is possible in Reykjavik to have a night of something quite close to love.
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Lawrence: Tell me... why were you in prison?
Gina: I hurt a man.
Lawrence: Why?
Gina: Because he hurt a child, killed a child.
Lawrence: Your child?
Gina: Does it matter whose child?
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Gina: If you don't let me sleep on the couch, I'll ring hotel security and accuse you of a sex crime.
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Lawrence: Don't think because I'm not saying much that I wouldn't like to say a lot.
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Prime Minister: [making a toast on the eve of the G8 summit] Let me start with the big thing. Five years' ago the world made a series of the most magnificent promises and we have determined to use this conference seriously to indent the most extreme curses of poverty in the world today. We shall not let them out of our sights even if we may not yet have the power to fullfil them all.
Gina: [quietly] That's not true. That's not true.
Prime Minister: [chortling] I'm sorry madam, but heckling isn't really a tradition at these gatherings.
Gina: What are the traditions, then? Well crafted compromise and just sort of ignoring the poor?
Prime Minister: Perhaps we talk about this later?
Gina: I doubt it. I imagine I'll be thrown out later so it's probably got to be now. I don't know how much the rest of you ladies know about what's going on but my friend here tells me that while we are eating a hundred million children are nearly starving. There's just millions of kids who'd kill for the amount of food that fat old me left on the side of my plate, children who are then so weak they'll die if a mosquito bites them. And so they do die. One every three seconds.
[snaps fingers]
Gina: There they go.
[pauses, snap fingers again]
Gina: And another one. Anyone who has kids knows that every mother and father in Africa must love their children as much as they do, and to watch your kids die, to watch them die and then to die yourself in trying to protect them, that's not right. And tomorrow eight of the men sitting 'round this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don't, some day someone else will. And they'll look back on us lot and say - people were actually dying in their millions unnecessarily, in front of you, on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it happening and you didn't do those things. Shame on you. So that's what you have to do tomorrow. Be great instead of being ashamed. It can't be impossible. It must be possible.
[Security guard taps her on the shoulder and she rises to leave table]
Prime Minister: As I was saying before I was so cogently interrupted...
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Gina: Is all right good enough? Is all right good enough for you, Mr. Gerhardt?
Chancellor of the Exchequer: I think all right is a lot more than many expected.
Gina: So lots more mothers die the day they give birth? Lots more children die before they're five? Lots and lots more die of diseases that are just a jab and a jolt to people like you and me?
Herr Gerhardt: Young lady, I think it might be helpful for you to look at it the other way around - thousands will benefit from what we do today.
Gina: I can see that, it's just, you know... tough, for those on the wrong side of the line.
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Gina: Aren't you going to kiss me good night?
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[Lawrence and Gina are discussing shopping at Marks and Spencer]
Lawrence: I'm told it's the place for dating. I'm told people go there to shop, and they get casually talking about, you know, Spaghetti a la Carbonara and suddenly love flowers by the counter for people with under five items.
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Chancellor of the Exchequer: Ladies and gentlemen, we're handing around new proposals. And remember, even if the Prime Minister and I are alone on this, we are not alone. Behind us stand the 30,000 children who will die of extreme poverty each day and we are proud to be their representatives. I didn't give my life to politics in order to say that I was part of a generation that succeeded in cutting the tariff on the import of processed coffee to 27.3%. I want to be a member of that great generation that for the first time had in its power to wipe out poverty, and did so. Are we alone in this? Or will someone else stand beside us?
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Gina: Oh my God! I left my luggage at the airport.
Lawrence: It's in the back of the car.
Gina: Really?... cool!
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Gina: I don't feel anything that's interesting about me has anything to do with what I did before.
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Lawrence: I've been pretending to be dead since 1am. But unfortunately I'm still alive.
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Lawrence: Oh, God! It's a double bed.
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Lawrence: We have a pair of unfortunate situations here. A man who has nothing in his life except his work, that is unfortunate. And then by a stroke of bizarre chance, he finds someone who makes that not true for a day or two. But then, suddenly, it seems as though the price that has to be paid for that ray of light is some kind of... disgrace. It doesn't seem quite fair.
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Robert: She's a pretty girl.
Sunita: I don't call that pretty, I call that beautiful.
Chancellor of the Exchequer: What do we think the difference is between pretty and beautiful?
Sunita: Well, something to do with bone structure. Pretty is pretty while young, beautiful will stay beautiful forever.
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Chancellor of the Exchequer: I think we're fighting today for something as big as the abolition of slavery. So, good luck. Hold the line. Debt and aid and trade. Push for everything. But pretend you don't know it's everything.
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Lawrence: It's not what you think... I know she, as it were, walked behind me in her bra... but there's actually nothing happening between us.
George: Why would it worry you if I thought there was?
Lawrence: I don't know. I suppose I fear you'd think less of her if she were with me.
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Lawrence: Why did you do it?
Gina: On the off-chance.
Lawrence: What off-chance"?
Gina: On the off-chance it could make a difference, and because I've got nothing to lose.
Lawrence: Except me.
Gina: I'll try to take comfort from the fact that I was trying to do what you wanted me to do even though you didn't want me to do it.
Lawrence: Gina, shall I - Shall I come home with you?
Gina: No, The nice bit's over. The rest is just disappointment and my past catching up with me again.
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Gina: When I can't sleep I pretend that I'm an extra in a film and I'm being paid for pretending to be dead... and there's a close-up camera on me... so I have to relax every muscle in my face... and finally I fall asleep.
Lawrence: I'll try it out.
Gina: Good. Pretend you're dead. It's my trick in life.
The Girl in the Café Quotes
Extended Reading
