- Viktor: [reading] One must learn to live. I practice every day. My biggest obstacle is I don't know who I am. I grope blindly. If anyone loves me as I am I may dare at last to look at myself. For me, that possibility is fairly remote.
- Charlotte Andergast: Sometimes, when I lie awake at night, I wonder whether I've lived at all. Is it the same for everybody? Do some people have a greater talent for living than others or do some people never live, but just exist?
- Eva: The mother's injuries are to be handed down to the daughter. The mother's failures are to be paid for by the daughter. The mother's unhappiness is to be the daughter's unhappiness. It's as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.
- Charlotte Andergast: I feel so shut out, I'm always homesick. But when I get home. I find it's something else I'm longing for.
- Charlotte Andergast: Chopin was emotional, but not mawkish. Feeling is very far from sentimentality, The prelude tells of pain, not reverie. It hurts, but he doesn't show it.
- Eva: There's no dividing line, no insurmountable wall. I know it can't be described. It's a world of liberated feelings. Do you know what I mean? To me, man is a tremendous creation, an inconceivable thought. In man is everything, from the highest to lowest. Everything exists side by side. Realities, not only the reality we perceive with our dull senses, but a tumult of realities arching above each other inside and outside. It's just fear and priggishness to believe in limits. There are no limits, neither to thoughts nor feelings. It's anxiety that sets limits.
- Eva: You said my hair was too long and you had it cut short, it was hideous! Then you thought that I had crooked teeth, and you got me braces, I looked so grotesque! You would buy me books and I would read them and not understand them, and you would make me talk about them, and I would always be afraid that you would show up my stupidity.
- Charlotte Andergast: A sense of reality is a matter of talent. Most people lack that talent and maybe it's just as well.
- Eva: Look at me, mama. Look at Helena.
- Charlotte Andergast: You can't blame me entirely.
- Eva: You expect an exception for you. You've set up a sort of discount system with life but one day you'll see that your agreement is one-sided.
- Charlotte Andergast: I'm seized by fear and see a horrible picture of myself. I have never grown up. My face and my body have aged. I acquire memories and experiences but inside all that I haven't even been born. I can't remember any faces not even my own.
- Eva: I will never let you vanish out of my life again. I'm going to persist. I won't give up, even if it is too late. I don't think it is too late. It must not be too late.
- Eva: But one thing I did understand: not a shred of the real me could be loved or accepted. I didn't dare to be myself even when I was alone because I hated what was my own.
- Viktor: I'd like to tell her just for once that she is loved whole-heartedly but I can't say it in such a way that she'd believe me. I can't find the right words.
- Charlotte Andergast: It was all done in the name of love. Everything is possible and is done in the name of love and solicitude.
- Charlotte Andergast: Eva, you do like me, don't you?
- Eva: You're my mother.
- Charlotte Andergast: That's one way of answering.
- Eva: Do you like me?
- Charlotte Andergast: I love you.
- Eva: Do you?
- Viktor: When Erik drowned, that gray film got even grayer. For Eva, it was different.
- Charlotte Andergast: Different?
- Viktor: Her feeling lives on, uncorroded. Or so it seems anyway. If she feels that her son is alive and near her... well, perhaps that's how it is. She seldom speaks of it. I guess she's afraid it might upset me, as indeed it would. But what she says sounds true enough. I believe her.
- Charlotte Andergast: Yes, you're a minister.
- Viktor: The little faith I have lives on her terms.
- Charlotte Andergast: I'm sorry if I hurt you.
- Viktor: It doesn't matter. Unlike you and Eva, I'm confused and uncertain. It's my own fault.
- Eva: I didn't realize I hated you. I was so sure we loved each other. I couldn't hate you, so my hatred turned into an insane fear. I had nightmares. I bit my nails. I pulled out tufts of hair. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I couldn't make a sound. I tried to scream, but I could only make stifled grunts. That frightened me even more. I thought I was going out of my mind.
- Eva: I couldn't say anything. I had no words. You had taken charge of all the words in our home.
- Charlotte Andergast: You're exaggerating.
- Eva: I must finish speaking. I know I'm tipsy, but otherwise I wouldn't have said what I have. When I'm too ashamed to say any more, you can explain, and I'll listen and understand, just as I've always done.
- Eva: Look at me, Mama. Look at Helena. There are no excuses. There is only one truth and one lie. There can be no forgiveness.
- Charlotte Andergast: You can't blame me entirely.
- Eva: You expect an exception to be made for you. You've set up a sort of discount system with life... but one day you'll see that your agreement is one-sided. You'll discover you're carrying guilt, just like everyone else.
- Charlotte Andergast: What guilt?
- Charlotte Andergast: [after Eva finishes playing Chopin's Prelude 2] Eva, my dearest.
- Eva: Is that all?
- Charlotte Andergast: I was just so moved.
- Eva: Did you like it?
- Charlotte Andergast: I liked you.
- Eva: I don't understand.
- Eva: It's gotten quiet in here.
- Charlotte Andergast: What can I say?
- Eva: Defend yourself.
- Charlotte Andergast: Is it worth the effort?
- Eva: How would I know?
- Charlotte Andergast: I broke off my career to stay at home with you and Papa.
- Eva: Your back prevented you from practicing six hours a day. Your playing got worse and so did your reviews. Have you forgotten that?
- Charlotte Andergast: No, but Eva...
- Eva: I don't know which I hated more, when you were at home or when you were on tour.
- Eva: Wait, Mama. Just feel how nice it is in here. Erik drowned the day before his fourth birthday. But you know that. It was too much for Viktor. I grieved a lot, outwardly. Deep inside, I felt like he was still alive, that we were living close to each other. All I have to do is concentrate, and he's there. Sometimes, as I'm falling asleep I can feel him breathing on my face and touching me with his hand. He's living another life, but we can reach one another.
- Charlotte Andergast: Eva, darling. Won't you forgive me for all the wrong I've done? I'll try to mend my ways. You've got to teach me. We'll talk to each other. But help me. I can't go on. Your hatred is so terrible. I never realized. I've been selfish and childish. Can't you put your arms around me? Touch me, at least. Help me.
- Charlotte Andergast: Play something else.
- Eva: What was wrong with it?
- Charlotte Andergast: Nothing.
- Eva: You didn't like my interpretation.
- Charlotte Andergast: We each have our own.
- Eva: Exactly. I want to know yours.
- Charlotte Andergast: You're annoyed.
- Eva: No, I'm upset. You won't tell me your interpretation of this prelude.
- Eva: When you play the slow movement of the Hammerklavier sonata, you must feel like you're living in a world without limitations, in a movement you can never see through or explore.
- Eva: For you, I was just a doll you played with when you had time. If I was sick or naughty, you handed me over to the nanny. You shut yourself in and worked, and no one was allowed to disturb you. I used to stand outside, listening. When you stopped for coffee, I'd go in to see if you really existed. You were always kind, but your mind was elsewhere. If I spoke, you barely answered.
- Eva: I loved you, Mama. As a matter of life and death. But I distrusted your words. They didn't match the expression in your eyes. You have a beautiful voice. When I was little, I could feel it all over my body. But I knew instinctively you didn't mean what you said. I couldn't understand your words. The most horrible thing was, you'd smile when you were mad. When you hated Papa, you'd call him, "my dearest." When you were tired of me, you'd say, "darling little girl."
- Eva: A writer whose name I've forgotten said, "It's like a ghost falling on top of you when you open the door to the nursery having long since forgotten it is the nursery." Do you think I'm an adult?
- Viktor: I guess being an adult is being able to handle your dreams and hopes, not longing for things.
- Eva: Do you think so?
- Viktor: Maybe you stop being surprised.
- Eva: You look so sensible with your old pipe. You're very adult.
- Viktor: I don't know. I'm surprised every day.
- Eva: At what?
- Viktor: At you.
- Charlotte Andergast: I think Eva is terribly unhappy. I'm appalled when I hear her rambling on. It's so neurotic.
- Viktor: Just a moment, Charlotte, and I'll try to explain how I see my wife. When I asked Eva to marry me, she said she didn't love me.
- Charlotte Andergast: What do you mean?
- Viktor: I asked if she loved someone else. She said she had never loved anyone, that she was incapable of loving. Eva and I lived here for several years. Then Erik was born. We'd given up hope of a child of our own and had talked about adopting one. With her pregnancy, Eva underwent a complete change. She became cheerful, gentle and outgoing. She got lazy. She lost interest in her parish work and her piano playing. She would sit by that window, gazing at the play of light over the mountains and fjords. We were suddenly very happy. I'm much older than Eva. I felt as if a gray film were settling over life. I felt as if I could look back and say, "Well, well, so that was my life. That's how it all turned out." But suddenly things were different.
- Charlotte Andergast: [to Eva, while Charlotte plays Chopin's Prelude 2] Your technique wasn't bad at all, though you might have taken more interest in Cortot's fingering, but let's just talk about the conception. Chopin was emotional, but not sentimental. Feeling is very far from sentimentality. The prelude tells of pain, not reverie. You have to be calm, clear, and harsh. Take the first bars now. It hurts, but he doesn't show it. Then a short relief. But it evaporates immediately, and the pain is the same. Total restraint the whole time. Chopin was proud, passionate, tormented and very manly. He wasn't a sentimental old woman. This prelude must sound almost ugly. It is never ingratiating. It should sound wrong. You have to battle your way through it and emerge triumphant. Like this.
- Eva: I've often wondered why she sleeps badly. Now I know. If that woman slept normally, her vitality would crush everyone. Her insomnia is nature's way of using up the surplus energy.
- Eva: It'll be dark soon, and it's getting cold. I have to go home and make dinner for Viktor and Helena. I can't die now. I'm afraid to commit suicide... and one day maybe God will have a use for me. Then he'll set me free from my prison.