The Wild Duck: Important Textual Quotations
 

[LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Werle: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]Some people in this world only need to get a couple of slugs in them and they go plunging right down to the depths, and they never come up again.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gina:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] Is Gregers still as awful as ever.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Hjalmar:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] She’s the only one, yes. She’s our greatest joy in life, and … she’s also our deepest sorrow, Gregers.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Ekdal:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] Felling, eh? …….. That’s a dangerous business, that. That brings trouble. The forests avenge themselves.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Ekdal:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] She did that. Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom … as deep as they can get, my dear sir … hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff … all other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gregers:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] So time stands still in there … besides the wild duck.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Hedvig:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] But she’s completely cut off from her friends. And then everything about the wild duck is so mysterious. Nobody really knows her; and nobody knows where she’s from either.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Hjalmar:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] Good Lord, you mustn’t ask me about details like dates. An invention is something you can never be completely master of. It’s largely a matter of inspiration ... of intuition … and it’s pretty nearly impossible to predict when that will come.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Relling: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]Personality? Him! If he ever showed any signs of anything as abnormal as a personality, it was all thoroughly cleared out of him, root and branch, when he was still a lad – that I can assure you.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Relling: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]I’m afraid not; I don’t give secret like that away to quacks. … But it’s a tried and tested method; I have used it on Molvik as well. I have made him a ‘demonic’. That’s the particular cure I had to apply to him.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Relling: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]While I remember, Mr. Werle junior – don’t use this fancy word ‘ideals’; we’ve got a plain word that’s good enough: ‘lies’.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gregers: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]Dr. Relling, I shall not rest until I have rescued Hjalmar Ekdal from your clutches![/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Relling: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]So much the worse for him. Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gregers: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]Ah, if only you’d had your eyes opened to what really makes life worth while! If you had the genuine, joyous, courageous spirit of self-sacrifice, then you would see how quickly he would come back to you. But I still have faith in you, Hedvig.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gregers: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]If you are right and I am wrong, life will no longer be worth living.[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Gregers: [/B][/FONT][FONT=Verdana]Hedvig has not died in vain. Didn’t you see how grief brought out what was noblest in him?[/FONT][/LIST][LIST][*][FONT=Verdana][B]Relling:[/B][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana] Oh, life wouldn’t be too bad if only these blessed people who come canvassing their ideals round everybody’s door would leave us poor souls in peace.[/FONT][/LIST]