M. Gustave: Well, what does it say? Where is it? What's it all about, damn it? Don't keep us in suspense, Serge, this has been a complete fucking nightmare! Just tell us what the fuck is going on!
M. Gustave: You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... Oh, fuck it.
M. Gustave: Keep your hands off my lobby boy!
Pinky: Me and the boys talked it over. We think you're a really straight fellow.
M. Gustave: Well, I've never been accused of that before, but I appreciate the sentiment.
M. Gustave: Rudeness is merely an expression of fear. People fear they won't get what they want. The most dreadful and unattractive person only needs to be loved, and they will open up like a flower.
M. Gustave: There's really no point in doing anything in life because it's all over in the blink of an eye, and the next thing you know, rigor mortis sets in.
Zero: Do you have an alibi?
M. Gustave: Of course, but she's married to the Duke of Westphalia. I can't allow her name to get mixed up in all this monkey business.
Zero: Monsieur Gustave, your life may be at stake.
M. Gustave: I know! The bitch legged it! She's already on board the Queen Nasstasja, halfway to Dutch Tanganyika.
Mr. Moustafa: When the destiny of a great fortune is at stake, men's greed spreads like a poison in the bloodstream. Uncles, nephews, cousins, in-laws of increasingly tenuous connection. The old woman's distant relations had come foraging out of the woodwork.
Madame D.: Come with me.
M. Gustave: To fucking Lutz?
Madame D.: Please!
M. Gustave: Give me your hand. You've nothing to fear. You're always anxious before you travel. I admit you appear to be suffering a more acute attack on this occasion, but truly and honestly... Oh dear God, what have you done to your fingernails?
Madame D.: I beg your pardon?
M. Gustave: This diabolical varnish - the color is completely wrong!
Madame D.: Oh really? Don't you like it?
M. Gustave: It's not that I don't like it...I am physically repulsed.
M. Gustave: What is a lobby boy? A lobby boy is completely invisible, but always in sight. A lobby boy remembers what people hate. A lobby boy anticipates the client's needs before the needs are needed. A lobby boy is, above all, discreet to a fault. Our guests know that their deepest secrets, some of which are frankly rather unseemly, will go with us to our graves. So keep your mouth shut, Zero.
M. Gustave: It's quite a thing, winning the loyalty of a woman like that for nineteen consecutive seasons.
Zero: Um, yes, sir.
M. Gustave: She's very fond of me, you know.
Zero: Yes, sir.
M. Gustave: I've never seen her like that before.
Zero: No, sir.
M. Gustave: She was shaking like a shitting dog.
Zero: Truly.
M. Gustave: She was dynamite in the sack, by the way.
Zero: She was 84, Monsieur Gustave.
M. Gustave: Mmm, I've had older. When you're young, it's all fillet steak, but as the years go by, you have to move on to the cheap cuts. Which is fine with me, because I like those. More flavorful, or so they say.
M. Gustave: [to corpse] You're looking so well, darling, you really are. They've done a marvelous job. I don't know what sort of cream they've put on you down at the morgue, but I want some.
M. Gustave: May I offer any of you inmates a plate of mush?
M. Gustave: Serge X, missing. Deputy Kovacs, also missing. Madame D, dead. Boy With Apple, stolen. By us. Dmitri and Jopling, ruthless, cold-blooded savages. Gustave H, at large. What else?
Zero: Zero, confused.
M. Gustave: Zero, confused, indeed. The plot thickens, as they say. Why, by the way? Is it a soup metaphor?
Zero: I don't know.
M. Gustave: You're the first of the official death squads to whom we've been formally introduced. How do you do?
Deputy Kovacs: Did he just throw my cat out of the window?
