Veronica Franco:
I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience. I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips. His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, this is mine. If this had not been mine-if I had lived any other way-a child to her husband's will, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love... I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out. You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give yet cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift-ourselves, our yearning, our need to love-you call it filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.
Dr. Facilier:
[to Naveen, singing] Now you, young man, are from across the sea / come from two lines of royalty. I'm royal myself, on my mother's side... Your spirits are high, but your funds are low... / You need to marry a pretty honey whose daddy got some dough!... Mum and Dad cut you off, huh, pretty boy?
Prince Naveen:
Sad, but true!
Dr. Facilier:
Now you gotta get hitched. But hitching ties ya down. You just wanna be free, hop from place to place! But freedom takes GREEN... [turns the cards into dollars]
Dr. Facilier:
It's the green, it's the green, it's the green that you need / and in your future it's the green I see!
It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it.
Lily Leonetti:
[to Gredin, making her last plea as he works] I know it's pointless to ask you to forgive me... Ok, I'm just going to talk and then you won't have to deal with me anymore... My whole life, I've felt like a freak,. You know, back home in Michigan, I wasn't accepted because I was different. Then I come here and I'm not different enough... So, I decided to become someone else. Someone tough and infallible. Beautiful, sexy. Fearless. And it worked. For the first time in my life, I was accepted and I became intoxicated by the freedom of it all. Until it was too late... It's too late, isn’t it?... Well for what it's worth... I love you. [turns to leave]
Gredin:
[turns around, calling her] Lily... I love you. [picks her up and kisses her]
