Ninotchka quotes

View Quote Hotel manager: [to Kopalski, Iranoff, and Buljanoff] The apartment may suit your convenience but I doubt that it will fit your convictions.

View Quote Title card: This picture takes place in Paris in those wonderful days when a siren was a brunette and not an alarm --- and if a Frenchman turned out the light, it was not on account of an air raid!

View Quote Anna: [about Ninotchka's underwear] Some said it's what we all ought to wear. Others said it's like hanging foreign ideas on our clothesline. It undermines our whole cause... You know how it is today. All you have to do is wear a pair of silk stockings and they suspect you of counter-revolution.
Ninotchka: I should hate to see our country endangered by my underwear.

View Quote Anna: Aren't you living a little above your ration?
Ninotchka: I've saved two eggs and each of my friends is bringing his own. We'll manage.
Anna: It just goes to prove the theory of our State. If you stand alone it means a boiled egg, but if you're true to the collective spirit and stick together, you've got an omelet.

View Quote Buljanoff: [in a hotel in Constantinople] Imagine, we don't have to whisper any more.
Iranoff: No, we can say whatever we want. We can shout...we can complain...Look. [He opens the door and speaks loudly into the corridor] The service in this hotel is terrible! [He shuts the door] See! Nobody comes...nobody pays any attention. That's freedom.
Buljanoff: That's bad management.

View Quote Leon: [atop the Eiffel Tower] I'm glad I saw it before becoming extinct.
Ninotchka: Now don't misunderstand me. I do not hold your frivolity against you. As basic material, you may not be bad. But you are the unfortunate product of a doomed culture. I feel very sorry for you.
Leon: Ah, but you must admit that this doomed old civilization sparkles. Look at it. It glitters!

View Quote Leon: [pointing out his apartment] It's such a pleasant little place. It has all the comforts. Easy to reach - near the subway, bus, and streetcar.
Ninotchka: Does it mean you want me to go there?
Leon: Oh, now please, please, don't misunderstand me.
Ninotchka: Then you don't want me to go there?
Leon: No, no, no, no! No, no, I didn't say that either. Naturally, nothing would please me more.
Ninotchka: Then why don't we go? You might be an interesting subject of study.
Leon: I'll do my best.

View Quote Leon: [trying to make Ninotchka laugh] Maybe the trouble isn't with the joke, maybe it's with you. I'll give you one more chance. When I first heard this joke, I laughed myself sick! Here goes. A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, 'Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.' Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?'
[no reaction from Ninotchka]
Leon: Oh you have no sense of humor! None whatsoever. Not a grain of humor in you. There's not a laugh in you. Everybody laughs at it but not you!
[Leon leans backward on the shaky table behind him and accidentally topples over in his chair, causing everything to crash to the floor, causing Ninotchka to finally laugh]
Leon: What's so funny about this? [he starts laughing]

View Quote Leon: All right, if you don't stay with me, then I'll have to continue my fight. I'll travel wherever there are Russian commissions. I'll turn them all into Iranoffs, Buljanoffs, and Kopalskis. The world will be crowded with Russian restaurants. I'll depopulate Russia. Comrade, once you saved your country by going back. This time, you can only save it by staying here.
Ninotchka: Well, if it's a choice between my personal interest and the good of my country, how can I waver? No one shall say Ninotchka was a bad Russian.
Leon: Darling. [they kiss]

View Quote Leon: I have things to tell you about which I can't shout. Darling...I...oh... [He takes her in his arms and kisses her] You see, I couldn't shout that.
Ninotchka: Oh Leon, Leon, you know the jokes you told me a few days ago? I wake up in the middle of the night and laugh at them. You know that's wrong. They aren't funny, they're silly, they're stupid. And still, I laugh at them...and when I look at Buljanoff and Iranoff and Kopalski I know they are scoundrels and I should hate them - then I realize who made them like that, and instead of sending my report to Moscow I go down and buy a ridiculous hat, and if this keeps on - am I too talkative?
Leon: No, no...go on.
Ninotchka: Leon, I want to tell you something which I thought I would never say, which I thought nobody ever should say, because I didn't think it existed...and, Leon...I can't say it...[They kiss again and then embrace]
Leon: What a gesture for a Sergeant.

View Quote Leon: I'm thirty-five years old, just over six feet tall, and weigh 182 pounds stripped.
Ninotchka: What is your profession?
Leon: My profession? Mmmm, keeping my body fit, keeping my mind alert, and keeping the landlord appeased. That's a full time job.
Ninotchka: And what do you do for mankind?
Leon: For mankind? Yes, uh, not so much for mankind. But for womankind, my record isn't quite so bleak.

View Quote Leon: What kind of a girl are you anyway?
Ninotchka: Just what you see. A tiny cog in the great wheel of evolution.
Leon: You're the most adorable cog I've ever seen. Ninotchka, let me confess something. Never did I dream I could feel like this toward a sergeant.

View Quote Leon: When we first went to my apartment, did I have the slightest idea that you were connected with this deal?
Ninotchka: You know now. And I know now that you are a man who employs business methods which in Russia would be punished by death.
Leon: Ohhh, death, death! Always so glum! What about life, Ninotchka? Do Russians never think about life? Of the moment in which we are living? The only moment we ever really have? Oh, Ninotchka, don't take things so seriously. Nothing is worth it, really. Please...relax...I beg you, Sergeant, smile!
Ninotchka: What?
Leon: Will you smile?
Ninotchka: Why?
Leon: Well, just smile.
Ninotchka: At what?
Leon: At anything. At the whole ridiculous spectacle of life. At people being so serious, taking themselves pompously, exaggerating their own importance. If you can't think of anything else to laugh at, you can laugh at you and me.
Ninotchka: Why?
Leon: Because we are an odd couple.
Ninotchka: Then you should go back to your table.
Leon: No. No, I can't leave you. I won't. Not yet. Not until I've made you laugh...at least once.

View Quote Mercier: [examining the jewels] Very good, superb, excellent, it would be foolish to belittle the quality of the merchandise but your terms are impossible. My counter offer is the absolute maximum...We're undertaking this deal only because of the prestige involved. And frankly, we're expected to take a loss.
Iranoff: [scoffing] Capitalistic methods.
Buljanoff: They ac****ulate millions by taking loss after loss.

View Quote Ninotchka: [in a cafe] Raw beets and carrots.
Mathieu: Madame, this is a restaurant, not a meadow.