Veronica Franco

— My cage seems bigger than yours, but it's still a cage. If you want sympathy, you won't get it. I don't want your sympathy.
— Do you know what my daughter's nurse told her this morning? That in a girl's voice lies temptation. A known fact. Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of the body. She doesn't believe her yet, but she will. She'll grow up just like her mother. She'll marry, bear children and honor her family... spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the day she was born a girl. And when she dies... she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of God and country... because no biblical hell could ever be worse... than this state of perpetual inconsequence.

— You yearn for my tears?
— I don't think so. Then what do I yearn for?
— Why don't we find out?

— Must be interesting, being in a room full of men, most of whom you've seen with their pants down.
— Puts it all in some kind of perspective.

— Your parents, marry your sister off to that piece of decaying flesh.
— That piece of decaying flesh is a cousin of the doge... confidant of the pope. The Roman court adores him.
— The Roman court doesn't have to sleep with him.

— It's said his collection of paintings... is surpassed only by his collection of women.
— Heh. So many?
— Biblical.