The Abdication (1974)

Peter Finch: Cardinal Azzolino

Quotes 

• Cardinal Azzolino : She made you hate women?

  Queen Kristina : Hate women? Surely you know the worst thing I'm accused of - isn't hating women.

• Queen Kristina : I am Queen.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Ex-Queen - if you'll forgive the distinction.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Where are your maid servants?

  Queen Kristina : I prefer the company of men.

• Cardinal Azzolino : It took you a year to make the journey from Stockholm to Rome.

  Queen Kristina : The roads were muddy.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Where should a lady go who has given up a Protestant throne to become a Catholic? Who has arrived to spend the rest of her life in Rome and the Pope refuses to let her in. Who would care to entertain a lady who has neither God nor Country?

• Queen Kristina : What do you want from me?

  Cardinal Azzolino : Seriousness and obedience.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Why did you give up the crown?

  Queen Kristina : It was too heavy!

  Cardinal Azzolino : Why did you never marry?

  Queen Kristina : I'm allergic to gold rings.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Why did you become a Catholic?

  Queen Kristina : To come to a better climate.

• Cardinal Azzolino : What's the matter? Can't you sleep?

  Queen Kristina : Sleep is the refuge of idiots.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Why do you sleep in 20 beds?

  Queen Kristina : It's more restful.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Are you afraid of the dark?

  Queen Kristina : That was long ago.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Why did you become a Catholic?

  Queen Kristina : To cure me of insomnia.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Why do you keep a dwarf? For luck?

  Queen Kristina : No.

  Cardinal Azzolino : Why then?

  Queen Kristina : To remind me of my inner self.

• Cardinal Azzolino : So, the accusations of unnatural love are true.

• Queen Kristina : Love. I was describing love. I loved that woman more than I ever loved a man. Did you never find a man you could love as I loved Ebba?

  Cardinal Azzolino : My sins are mine, Kristina. We're discussing yours.

• Cardinal Azzolino : I lost my father, too, when I was very young.

  Queen Kristina : Strange. I never thought of Cardinals having fathers.

  Cardinal Azzolino : We do. And brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts.

  Queen Kristina : But, no sons.

  Cardinal Azzolino : No sons.

  Queen Kristina : What a shame. And holiness could be inherited.

• Queen Kristina : I came here to forget.

  Cardinal Azzolino : I thought you came here to understand.

• Cardinal Azzolino : This woman has spent her entire life on display to the public. Now, for a few hours, she's alone with herself. And she's no longer a Queen or a freak or a heathen or a candidate for canonization. She's a human being.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Do you think young priests put on a cassock one day and all their earthly longings vanish in the air?

  Queen Kristina : And how do they bear it?

  Cardinal Azzolino : They devote themselves to good works and cold baths.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Charles was no match for you.

  Queen Kristina : Who on God's earth would be a match for me?

• Queen Kristina : Bring the goblet to my apartment tonight.

  Cardinal Azzolino : What are you doing, Kristina?

  Queen Kristina : Courting you.

• Cardinal Azzolino : Is there no possible association between a man and a woman except the sexual? Despite centuries of learning, does it all come down to that one animal fact? How dare they say that we are that much or that little to each other. God save me from the common mind.

• Cardinal Azzolino : God save me from myself.

• Cardinal Azzolino : I do love. I do want. I do desire.