Queen of the Desert (2015)

Nicole Kidman: Gertrude Bell

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Gertrude Bell : Nightingale with drops in heart bleed. A fed red rose. Then came the wind. And catching her, jealous branches. I have coiled heart with a hundred thorns

• Gertrude Bell : Paradise has no time, age or sanctuary. Awaits us.

• Gertrude Bell : I operate for no one.

  Sir Mark Sykes : What is it then that attracts you to the Bedouin out there?

  Gertrude Bell : Something that you and your world you can not ever understand. It's their freedom. It's their dignity. It's their poetry of life.

• Gertrude Bell : England needs to get out of its colonies sooner rather than later.

  Col. T.E. Lawrence : I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

• Hugh Bell : You were only 5 years, and you were already reading voraciously. And someone stupidly showed you Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbook.

  Gertrude Bell : I remember the one with the parachute!

  Florance Bell : Who ever would need a parachute?

  Gertrude Bell : Everyone. Everyone needs a parachute.

• Gertrude Bell : Eternal love that keeps arms satisfied. Earth, air, deep. Light nights and harvest my heart. You are mine at last in everlasting remembrance. Oh, how easy it was to leave! He left height of the pilgrimage. Oh, I can not begin the journey, for God help me lift the weights. And Mila be my traveling companion. Girl's my impression of dust, nights I'm wet. The dust and tears, turquoise vault. I must bricks for the house joys. Yet I never harbored, and the time was gone. What am I playing? Checkered floor on the night and day. Death won the game.

• Henry Cadogan : It was important that I solved the particular mystery.

  Gertrude Bell : What mystery?

  Henry Cadogan : Well you see, I love your smile. But many a man in love with a woman's smile, has made the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

  Gertrude Bell : [laying back]  Here's the whole girl.

• Gertrude Bell : Even if you do not hear from me for several months, pay no attention and send no one.

  Charles Doughty-Wylie : The Druzes will take you for a spy.

  Gertrude Bell : Yes, well maybe I am. Maybe I am a spy. But I am a spy for no one. No one but myself.

• Charles Doughty-Wylie : Will you write to me?

  Gertrude Bell : Yes, I'll write to you from every post office in the desert.

• Florance Bell : You will not scare the young men with intelligence.

  Gertrude Bell : How do I do that? I can't play dumb.

  Florance Bell : Just listen to what they have to say, and smile.

  Gertrude Bell : That will be hard.

  Florance Bell : Gertrude...

• Gertrude Bell : [writing in her diary]  Already I have dropped back into the desert as if it were my own place. Silence and solitude all around me like an impenetrable veil. Sleep more profound that civilization contrives. And then, the roadless desert, again.