The Grand Budapest Hotel

& Monsieur Gustave: Why do you want to be a Lobby Boy?
    Zero: Well, who wouldn’t, at the Grand Budapest, sir? It’s an institution.
    Monsieur Gustave: Very good.

& Monsieur Gustave: What is a Lobby Boy? A Lobby Boy’s completely invisible, yet always in sight. A Lobby Boy remembers what people hate. A Lobby Boy anticipates the client’s needs before the needs are needed. A Lobby Boy is, above all, discreet to a fault. Our guests know their deepest secrets, some of which are, frankly, rather unseemly, will go with us to our graves. So keep your mouth shut, Zero.
    Zero: Yes, sir.
    Monsieur Gustave: That’s all for now.

& Monsieur Gustave: There’s really no point in doing anything in life, because it’s all over in the blink of an eye... And, the next thing you know, rigor mortis sets in. Oh, how the good die young.

& Monsieur Gustave: She was dynamite in the sack, by the way.
    Zero: She was 84, Monsieur Gustave.
    Monsieur Gustave: I’ve had older. When you’re young, it’s all fillet steak, but as the years go by, you have to move on to the cheaper cuts, which is fine with me, because I like those. More flavorful, or so they say.

& Monsieur Gustave: Ow! That hurts! You filthy, goddamn, pock-marked, fascist assholes! Take your hands off my Lobby Boy!

& Monsieur Gustave: You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed, that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... Oh, fuck it.

---

& Zero: What happened?
    Monsieur Gustave: What happened, my dear Zero, is I beat the living shit out of a sniveling little runt called Pinky Bandinski who had the gall to question my virility, because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Penny Dreadfuls, it’s that, when you find yourself in a place like this, you must never be a candy-ass. You’ve got to prove yourself from Day One. You’ve got to win their respect. You should take a long look at his ugly mug this morning... He’s, actually, become a dear friend.

& Ludwig: Checkpoint 19 ain’t no two-bit hoosegow. You got broad-gauge iron bars on every door, vent and window. You got 72 guards on the floor and 16 more in the towers. You got a 325-foot drop into a moat full of crocodiles. But, like the best of them, it’s got a soft spot, which in this case happens to take the form of a storm-drain sewer system dating from the time of the original rock fortification way back in the Middle Ages. Now, nobody’s saying it’s a stroll down a tree-lined promenade with a fine lady and a white poodle, but it’s got what you’d call “vulnerability,” and that’s our bread and butter. Take a look.

& Monsieur Gustave: I suppose this is to be expected back in Aq Salim al-Jabat where one’s prized possessions are a stack of filthy carpets and a starving goat, and one sleeps behind a tent flap and survives on wild dates and scarabs. But it’s not how I trained you. What on God’s earth possessed you to leave the homeland where you obviously belong and travel unspeakable distances to become a penniless immigrant in a refined, highly-cultivated society that, quite frankly, could’ve gotten along very well without you?
    Zero: The war.
    Monsieur Gustave: Say again?

& Zero: ... I left because of the war.
    Monsieur Gustave: I see. So you’re, actually, really more of a refugee, in that sense?
    Zero: Truly.
    Monsieur Gustave: Well, I suppose I’d better take back everything I just said. What a bloody idiot I am. Pathetic fool. Goddamn, selfish bastard. This is disgraceful, and it’s beneath the standards of the Grand Budapest. I apologize on behalf of the hotel.

& Monsieur Gustave: The beginning of the end of the end of the beginning has begun. A sad finale played off-key on a broken-down saloon piano in the outskirts of a forgotten ghost town. I’d rather not bear witness to such blasphemy.
    Zero: Me neither.

& Henckels: Nobody move. Everybody’s under arrest.

& Zero: Don’t flirt with her!

& Monsieur Gustave: ’There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.’ You filthy, goddamn, pock-marked, fascist assholes!
    Mr. Moustafa: He was one of them. What more is there to say?

& Mr. Moustafa: To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it. But, I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.

--
+ quotes on the IMDb

Σ Such a beautiful prose.