The Motorcycle Diaries Quotes

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: I want to be useful, somehow.

Silvia (Peru): You're wasting your time.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Why?

Silvia (Peru): Life is pain.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Yeah, it's pretty screwed up. You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

Miner's Wife: Are you two looking for work?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No, we aren't looking for work.

Miner's Wife: No?... Then why are you traveling?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: We travel just to travel.

Miner's Wife: Bless you... Blessed be your travels.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Mother.

Mother Sister Alberto: Yes?

Alberto Granado: We want to eat.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: We deserve to eat like everyone else.

Mother Sister Alberto: Yes, but you didn't go to mass.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No.

Mother Sister Alberto: Then, how do you expect to feed the body if you didn't feed the soul first?

Alberto Granado: Er, denying food is not very Christian-like.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Yes, I doubt Jesus would act like this.

Mother Sister Alberto: In this house, we have a set of rules that have to be followed.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: [to Alberto now, as she turns away] I haven't read any rule book.

Alberto Granado: Neither did I. I think that if I find it I would eat it.

Alberto Granado: We land on the Guajira Peninsula. The tip of a great continent. Bellies full of wine and two tropical beauties, hopefully sisters.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: That's good beer, huh?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: All you want is to get laid in every country in South America.

Alberto Granado: In every town too, if we're lucky. Adds a little spice.

Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Argentina): Son, tough times are ahead. To tell the truth, I've always dreamt of doing something like this. I confess that if I were a few years younger, I'd climb on that motorcycle with you.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Imagine I'm doing it for both of us.

Alberto Granado: So, when's the revolution coming?

Argentine: Here? In about a century.

Alberto Granado: We gotta learn from the Russians.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Don't your parents realize that the deeper you bury the diamonds, the more determined the pirate is to take them?

Chichina Ferreyra: Believe me, this diamond wouldn't mind being taken.

Chichina Ferreyra: I'd like for you to stay like this: silent. I want to look at you; I won't see you for a long time. I will wait for you, but don't take forever.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Define "forever".

Chichina Ferreyra: Thin ice, mister!

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: "On the boat I heard the moist slap of bare feet and foresaw faces dark with hunger. My heart was a pendulum between her and the street. I don't know what strength broke me free from her eyes, loose from her arms. She remained clouded by tears, her anguish hidden by the rain."

Alberto Granado: Is that Lorca?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No.

Alberto Granado: Neruda?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No.

Alberto Granado: Who?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: I don't remember.

Alberto Granado: It is rumored that Chilean girls are the most daring on the continent.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Rumors have no scientific value, Dr. Granado. Time to do some research.

Jazmin, Chilean Sister: Are you two Argentinian?

Alberto Granado: How'd you know?

Jazmin, Chilean Sister: Well, because of your accent, because Argentinians always say "che".

Alberto Granado: Had you noticed, Che?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Not at all, Che.

Alberto Granado: Fuser, you still haven't asked about the research I did on our Chilean sisters.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: You can't imagine how depressed I am that you're the sexual ambassador of Argentina!

Alberto Granado: It's true.

Truck Driver (Chile): There she is, Valparaíso.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: "I love Valparaíso, all you encompass, all you radiate, lover of the ocean, far from - "

Alberto Granado: Federico García Lorca.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No.

Truck Driver (Chile): Neruda!

Miner (Chile): We didn't have much, just some tough, dry land.

Miner's Wife: It belonged to his grandpa.

Miner (Chile): It was ours. Until a land speculator forced us off.

Miner's Wife: That's what they call progress.

Miner (Chile): So we had to leave our son with family and hit the road, looking for work, trying to escape from the police who wanted to put us in jail.

Alberto Granado: Why?

Miner's Wife: Because we are communists.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Sir, I wonder, which of these walls is Incan?

Don Néstor, Cuzco Guide: This one here is Incan and that one is Spanish. As a joke we say this wall was made by the Inca and that wall was made by the Inca-pables. That's what we call the Spanish.

Alberto Granado: Fuser, here's my idea; I'll marry an Inca descendant. We'll start an indigenous party under these conditions: we'd encourage the people to vote, reactivate Tupac Amaru's revolution, the Indo-American revolution, Fuser. How's that sound?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: A revolution without guns? It would never work.

Luz (Peru): You know a little while ago there was a bufeo out there.

Alberto Granado: Bufeo?

Luz (Peru): They're river dolphins but we call them bufeos. Have you ever seen one?

Alberto Granado: Never. I've heard of them, but I've never seen one.

Luz (Peru): I'm going to tell you a secret.

Alberto Granado: Okay.

Luz (Peru): The bufeo's sex organs are like that of a woman's and the Indians use them to - comfort themselves. But there's a little problem. As soon as they're done, they have to kill the animal because they suffer contractions that won't let them loose.

[laughs]

Alberto Granado: Ernesto, This is Luz...

Luz (Peru): Hola!

Alberto Granado: Which means "light". "Electrifying light that dazzles my dreams. Get ready, you've no clue what's coming to you."

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Neruda?

Alberto Granado: Granado!

Alberto Granado: I think there's a young lady interested in dancing with you.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: I should ask her, right?

Alberto Granado: The bird of youth flies away and doesn't come back, man. Fly, man, fly!

Alberto Granado: Che.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: What?

Alberto Granado: It's not too late to come work with me in Cabo Blanco. You could come back after you graduate. I'll wait for you.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: I don't know. I just don't know. You know, Mial, all this time we spent on the road, something happened. Something I'll have to think about for a long time. So much injustice.

Silvia (Peru): What is wrong with you?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: I was born with bad lungs.

Silvia (Peru): What a shame!

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: No, is not that bad. Thanks to that i skipped the military service, I didn't have to shine anyone boots.

Silvia (Peru): Is that why you became a doctor? Because you are sick?

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Is possible.The first word i learned was injection. I want to be useful in some way.

Silvia (Peru): You are wasting your time.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Why?

Silvia (Peru): This life is hell.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna: Yes, it's really fucked up, but we have to fight for every breath and tell Death to fuck off.