The Sea Gull (1968)

James Mason: Trigorin, a Writer

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Quotes 

• Trigorin : [speaking to Nina]  Things have turned out so unexpectedly that I believe we're leaving today. I doubt whether we shall ever meet again, you and I. It's a pity. I seldom meet young and interesting girls. I can no longer imagine what it's like to be 18 or 19. That's why the young girls in my stories and novels don't usually ring true. I should've liked, you see, to be inside you just for one hour, to know what you think and feel and... what sort of a mysterious creature you are.

• Trigorin : [sees something in the tall grass]  What's that?

  Nina : It's a sea gull. Konstantin killed it.

  [picks up the dead bird and tosses it away] 

  Trigorin : It's a beautiful bird.

  [takes out his pocket notepad and begins to jot down some notes] 

  Trigorin : Oh, I don't want to go away. Can't you persuade her to stay?

  Nina : What are you writing?

  Trigorin : [chuckles]  I'm just jotting down an idea for a subject - subject for a short story. Young woman lives all her life beside a lake. A girl like you. Like a sea gull, she loves the lake. She's free, and happy, like a sea gull. A man passes that way by chance, and, having nothing better to do, he destroys her - like that sea gull.

  Nina : No.

• Nina : It is a strange play, isn't it?

  Trigorin : I-I didn't understand it at all. I enjoyed watching it, though. Your acting was so - sincere. And the setting is wonderful. There must be a lot of fish in that lake.

• Trigorin : I'm very fond of fishing. There's nothing I like to do in the evening more than to sit on the bank, watching the float.

  Nina : But, I thought for someone who's experienced the joys of creativity, no other joys could exist.

• Nina : What a wonderful world. If you only knew how much I envy you. People's destinies are so different. Some just drag out their dull, colorless, little lives. One much like the next and all of them miserable. And others, like you, for instance, you're one in a million! You've been given such a rich life, with such meaning to it. You're blessed.

  Trigorin : I? You talk of fame, happiness, rich-life, so full of meaning. For me, all these fine words, forgive me, are much the same as marmalade - which I never eat. You're very young and very kind.

  Nina : But, your life is beautiful.

  Trigorin : What's so beautiful about it? I must go now and do some work. Forgive me, I have not time for myself.

• Trigorin : Let's talk. Let's talk about my "full, rich life." Well, where shall we start? Some ideas are obsessive. Such as when a man thinks day and night about the moon, for example. I too have my own kind of moon. Day and night I'm haunted by one single compulsion: I must write. I must write. I must! I've hardly finished one story; but, for some reason I have to start on the next and on a third then on a fourth. I write without interruption, in relays, I couldn't work any other way. What is there so rich and beautiful about that, may I ask? What a barbarous life it is, in fact. Here I am, with you, I'm excited by your presence. But, I don't forget for one moment that I have an unfinished story waiting for me.

• Trigorin : I see a cloud that looks like a grand piano. I think, at once, I must put in a story that a cloud swam by looking like a grand piano.

• Trigorin : And so it goes on. I can never get away from myself and I feel that I'm eating up my life. And that to make this honey to hand down to posterity, I destroy the pollen of my best flowers. I tear the flowers up by the roots. It's a form of madness, isn't it?

• Trigorin : Am I then, Agamemnon?

• Nina : I would like you to think of me, now and then.

  Trigorin : I shall. I shall remember you the way you were on that blissful day - do you remember? About a week ago? You were wearing a light colored dress, we were talking, there was a white sea gull dead on the ground.

  Nina : Yes. A sea gull.

• Trigorin : You're capable of sacrifice. Let me go.

  Irina Arkadina : You're really that much in love?

  Trigorin : I'm drawn towards it quite irresistibly.

• Trigorin : People are sometimes asleep in their most waking moments. That's the way I feel now, talking to you. I feel as though I were asleep and I saw her in a dream. I'm - I'm lost in the most sweet, marvelous fantasies.

• Trigorin : What happiness! To think we'll meet again soon. To think I'll see these beautiful eyes again, this unbelievably beautiful tender smile, this delicate features, this look of - angelic purity. Oh, my dearest.

• Trigorin : To catch a chub or a perch - what more can you want?

• Shamraev : You know we're still keeping that thing of yours.

  Trigorin : What thing?

  Shamraev : Konstantin killed a sea gull one day. You asked me to have it stuffed for you.

  Trigorin : I don't remember? No, I'm afraid I don't.