Wings of Desire Quotes

Driver: [inner voice] Are there still borders? More than ever! Every street has its borderline. Between each plot, there's a strip of no-man's-land disguised as a hedge or a ditch. Whoever dares, will fall into booby traps or be hit by laser rays. The trout are really torpedoes. Every home owner, or even every tenant nails his name plate on the door, like a coat of arms and studies the morning paper as if he were a world leader. Germany has crumbled into as many small states as there are individuals. And these small states are mobile. Everyone carries his own state with him, and demands a toll when another wants to enter. A fly caught in amber, or a leather bottle. So much for the border. But one can only enter each state with a password. The German soul of today can only be conquered and governed by one who arrives at each small state with the password. Fortunately, no one is currently in a position to do this. So... everyone migrates, and waves his one-man-state flag in all earthly directions. Their children already shake their rattles and drag their filth around them in circles.

Peter Falk: Here. To smoke and have coffee - and if you do it together, it's fantastic. Or, to draw. You know, you take a pencil and you make a dark line, then you make a light line, and together it's a good line.

Nick Cave: [singing] From her to eternity! From her to eternity! From her to eternity! Tell me why? Tell me why? I wanna know why. Tell me why?

Damiel: When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? Isn't what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn't before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman. With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, bur rather sit apart. And one doesn't know anything about the other. I'm an old man with a broken voice, but the tale still rises from the depths, and the mouth, slightly opened, repeats it as clearly, as powerfully. A liturgy for which no one needs to be initiated to the meaning of words and sentences.

Marion: [inner voice] Longing. Longing for a wave of love to swell up in me. That's what makes me so clumsy: the lack of pleasure. A desire to love. The desire to love!

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] What is it about peace that its inspiration is not enduring? Why is its story so hard to tell?

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] Must I give up now? If I do give up, then mankind will lose its storyteller. And if mankind once loses its storyteller, then it will lose its childhood.

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] Where are my heroes? Where are you, my children? Where are my own, the dimwitted ones, the primordial ones? Tell me, O Muse, of that poor immortal singer, who, abandoned by his mortal audience, lost his voice. He who went from being the angel of storytelling, became a organ grinder, ignored or mocked, out on the threshold of no-man's land.

Peter Falk: [inner voice - while sketching an female extra, who is waiting on the set] What a dear face! Interesting. What a nostril. A dramatic nostril. These people are extras. Extra people. Extras are so patient. They just sit. Extras. These humans are extras. Extra humans.

Peter Falk: I can't see ya, but I know you're here. I feel it! You've been hangin' around since I got here. I wish I could see your face. Just look into your eyes and tell you how good it is to be here. Just to touch somethin'.

Peter Falk: There's so many good things.

Peter Falk: But, you're not here. I'm here. I wish you were here! I wish you could talk to me. 'Cause, I'm a friend. Compañero.

Damiel: It happened once... It happened once, and so it will be forever.

Damiel: First, I'll have a bath. Then I'll be shaved by a Turkish barber who will massage me down to the fingertips. Then I'll buy a newspaper and read it from headlines to horoscope. On the first day, I'll be waited upon... For requests, ask the neighbor. If someone stumbles over my legs, he'll have to apologize. I'll be pushed around, and I'll push back. In the crowded bar, the bartender will find me a table. A service car will stop, and the mayor will take me aboard. I'll be known to everyone, and suspect to no one. I won't say a word, and will understand every language. That will be my first day.

Marion: It must finally become serious. I've often been alone, but I've never lived alone. When I was with someone I was often happy. But the same time, it all seemed a coincidence. These people were my parents. But it could have been others. Why was this brown-eyed boy my brother and not the green-eyed boy on the opposite platform? The taxi driver's daughter was my friend. But I might as well have put my arm round a horse's neck. I was with a man in love and I might as well have left him there and gone off with the stranger I met in the street. Look at me, or don't. Give me your hand, or don't. No. Don't give me the hand, and look away. I think tonight is the new moon. No night more peaceful. No bloodshed in all the city. I've never played with anyone and yet I've never opened my eyes and thought: Now it's serious. At last it's becoming serious. So I've grown older. Was I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I'm finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I'm at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don't know if there's destiny but there's a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town - the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We're representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone's game. I am ready. Now it's your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it's you.

Peter Falk: [inner voice] Yellow star means death. Why did they pick yellow? Sunflowers. Van Gogh killed himself. This drawing stinks. So what? No one sees it. Someday you'll make a good drawing. I hope. I hope. I hope.

Peter Falk: [inner voice] I don't even understand this character. It's amazing how little I know about this part. Maybe we'll discover it during the shoot. Well, I'll get a good costume and that's half the battle.

Peter Falk: [inner voice] Berlin. Emil Jannings. Kennedy. Von Stauffenberg. Helluva guy. That wasn't in Berlin. What difference does it make. It happened.

Peter Falk: [inner voice] Tokyo, Kyoto. Paris. London. Trieste. - - Berlin.

Woman on Bicycle: [inner voice] At last mad, no longer alone. At last mad, at last redeemed. At last mad, at last at peace. At last a fool. At last an inner light.

Man in Mother's flat: [inner voice] Still smells the same, only dustier. She collected everything. Trading stamps, postcards. Even tickets. She never threw anything away. She just couldn't. Mother - - she never was my mother. My father - - my father was my father. She's dead. No tears, no grief. Maybe later. God, I feel old! My sister's coming. I have to get out of here.

Marion: [inner voice] It's embarrassing to talk about myself, at times like this, like now. Time heals all, but what if time itself is the disease?

Marion: [inner voice] Sometimes it's like you have to bend to go on living. To live... one look is enough.

Marion: [inner voice] As if pain has no past. All the people I've met who'll live on in my head. It always stops just when it's starting. It was too good to be true. Out in the big city at last, to find out who I am, who I've become. Most of the time, I'm too aware to be sad. I waited an eternity for someone to say a loving word to me. Then I went abroad. Someone who'd say "I love you so much today." That would be wonderful. I look up and the world emerges before my eyes and fills my heart. As a child, I wanted to be on an island. A woman alone, gloriously alone. Yes... that's it. Empty. Incompatible. Emptiness, fear, fear, fear, fear. Like a little animal lost in the woods. Who are you? I don't know anymore. But I do know, I'll never become a trapeze artist. One of those unexpected decisions you hold on to. Don't cry! No way! Crying is out of the question. These things happen. It's just how it is. Things don't always turn out the way you'd like. So empty.

Marion: [inner voice] Don't think about anything. Just be. Berlin. I'm a foreigner here and yet it is so familiar. In any case, you can't get lost. You always end up at the Wall. I wait for my photo at a photo booth, and out comes someone else's face. That could be the beginning of a story. Faces. I'd like to see faces.

Marion: [inner voice] How should I live? Maybe that's not a question. How should I think? I know so little. Maybe because I'm too curious. Often my thoughts are all wrong, because it's like I'm talking to someone else at the same time. Behind closed eyes, close your eyes once more. Then even the stones come alive. To be close to the colors. The colors. Neon lights in the evening sky, the red-and-yellow train. I just need to be ready and every man in the world will look at me.

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] The world seems to be sinking into dusk, but I tell my tales, as in the beginning, in my sing-song voice, which sustains me.

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] No more roaming back and forth through the centuries as in the past. Now I can only think from one day to the next. My heroes are no longer warriors and kings, but things of peace, one just as good as the next. The drying onions as good as the tree trunk that grows in the marsh. But no one has thus far succeeded in singing an epic of peace.

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice - as he walks around a wasteland by the Berlin Wall] I can't find Potsdamer Platz. Here? This can't be it. Potsdamer Platz is where the Café Josti used to be. In the afternoon I'd go there to chat and have a coffee and watch the crowd after I'd had my cigar at Löhse and Wolff, a famous tobacconist, right around here. So this can't be Potsdamer Platz.

Peter Falk: [Inner voice] "If I didn't have it, I'd miss it," said the General to the whore.

Damiel: I want to transform what my timeless downward look has taught me and learn to bear a harsh sight, a brusque shout, a sour smell. I've been on the outside long enough, absent long enough. I've stood outside the world long enough. I want to enter into the History of the World or even just hold an apple in my hand. Look. See those feathers on the water? Vanished already. See those tire marks on the asphalt and now the cigarette butt rolling along. Look how the prehistoric river has dried up and only today's rain puddles quiver. Enough of the world behind the world!

Peter Falk: [inner voice] Interesting drawing problem. This man has eyes like a raccoon; but, he has a good hat.

Peter Falk: [inner voice] I have to buy gifts for my children. Maybe picture frames. Am I a better actor now than I used to be?

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] Only the Roman roads still lead into the open. Only the most ancient traces lead anywhere. Where is the top of the pass here? Even the plains, even Berlin, has its hidden passes. And it's only there that my country, the land of storytelling, begins. Why doesn't everyone see from earliest childhood the passes, portals and crevices, down on the earth and up in the sky? If everyone saw them, history would continue without killing and war.

Marion: [inner voice] I'll never make it tonight. No trapeze on full moon nights. Not the last time. I have to wake up from this dream. The circus is over. All over.

Marion: [inner voice] Once again night falls inside my head. Fear. Fear of death. Why not die? Sometimes beauty is the only thing that matters. To look in the mirror is to watch yourself think. So what are you thinking? I think I still have the right to be afraid, but not to talk about it. You haven't gone blind yet. Your heart is still beating. And now you're crying. You'd like to cry like a very sad little girl. Do you know why you're crying? For whom? Not for me. I don't know anymore. I'd like to know. I know nothing.

Marion: [inner voice while dreaming] When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions: Why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there? When did time begin and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream?

Marion: [inner voice] I couldn't say who I am. I don't have the slightest idea. I have no roots, no story, no country, and I like it that way. I'm here. I'm free. I can imagine anything. Everything's possible. I only have to lift my eyes and once again I become the world. Now, on this very spot, a feeling of happiness that I could keep forever.

Nick Cave: [singing] And the rain it hammered down, The rain it hammered down, And the rain it hammered down, And the rain it hammered down, And no-one saw the carny go, No-one saw the carny go, And no-one saw the carny go, I say it's funny how things go.

Damiel: [inner voice] Something happened. It's still going on. It binds me. It was true in the night and it's true now during the day. Even more so. Who was who? I was inside her and she was all around me. Who in the world can claim that he was ever truly together with another being? I am together. No mortal child was conceived, only an immortal shared image. I learned to be amazed last night. She came to take me home and I found a home.

Homer, the aged poet: [inner voice] Tell me of the men, women, and children who will look for me - me, their storyteller, their bard, their choirmaster - because they need me more than anything in the world.