Cold Mountain (2003)

Nicole Kidman: Ada Monroe

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Ada : If you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching... Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.

• Ada : I can talk about farming in Latin. I can read French. I can lace up a corset, God knows. I can name the principal rivers in Europe, just don't ask me to name one stream in this county! I can embroider but I can't darn! I can arrange cut flowers but I can't grow them! If a thing has a function, if I might *do* something with it, then it wasn't considered suitable!

  Ruby : ...Why?

  Ada : Ruby, you can ask 'why' about pretty much everything to do with me! This fence is about the first thing that I've ever done that might produce an actual result.

• Ada : What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.

• [last lines] 

  Ada : [voiceover]  I looked once more down Sally's well, and this time there was nothin' there to haunt me. Just clouds. Clouds, and then... sun.

• Inman : If you could see my inside - now, whatever you wanna name it - my spirit? That's what I fear. I think I'm ruined. They kept tryin' to put me in the ground. But I wasn't ready,

  Ada : Inman...

  Inman : But if I had - if I had goodness, I lost it. If I had anything tender in me, I shot it dead. How could I write to you after what I done, what I seen?

• Inman : You are all that keeps me from slidin' into some dark place.

  Ada : How did I keep you? We barely knew each other. It was a few moments.

  Inman : A thousand moments! They're like a bag - of tiny diamonds. Don't matter if they're real or things I made up. The shape of your neck. That's real. The way you felt under my hands when I pulled you to me.

  Ada : You were plowing a field.

  Inman : You were carrying a tray.

  Ada : You wouldn't come in.

  Inman : No, I wouldn't go in.

  Ada : So that's why I had to carry a tray. So I could come out to see you.

  Inman : That kiss - which I kissed every day of my walking.

  Ada : Every day I was waiting, longing. Longing to see your face.

• Inman : Ada, I wanna marry you. If you'll have me.

  Ada : Isn't there some religion where you just say I marry you, three times, and then you're man and wife?

  Inman : I marry you, I marry you, I marry you.

  [Ada laughs] 

  Inman : Why is that funny?

  Ada : No, I think it's I divorce you three times and then you're not married anymore.

  [Ada laughs] 

  Inman : I can wait for ya.

  Ada : Oh, Inman, I marry you, I marry you, I marry you, I marry you, I marry you.

  [Ada and Inman kiss] 

  Ada : I have so... I have so many buttons, is that alright? Will you turn your back?

  [Inman turns his back but then he turns back around] 

  Inman : Nope. No, I will not.

• Ada : All this while I've been packing ice around my heart. How do I make it melt?

• Ruby : My daddy, he could play six tunes on a fiddle. Got hisself shot dead at Petersburg. I was like his goat, or some critter tethered to a post. He left me once. Up in them mountains, I was eight, he was gone over two and a half weeks.

  Ada : He left you?

  Ruby : Uh-huh, I was all right, My daddy, he'd walk 40 miles for liquor and not 40 inches for kindness.

• Ada : Hello, I'm Ada Monroe.

  Inman : I'm Inman.

  Ada : Inman?

  Inman : W.P. Inman.

  Ada : [repeats it]  W.P. Inman.

  Inman : Repeating a thing doesn't improve it.

• Ada : I found you this book - to take with you. William Bartram. They tell me it's good. I think he writes about these parts, the author. So...

  Inman : Thank you.

  Ada : And this.

  [hands Inman a tintype of herself] 

  Ada : I'm not smiling in it. I don't know how to do that - hold a smile.

• Ruby : We got something for you.

  Ada : For all your kindness. Coffee and pie.

  Ruby : That's real coffee. It ain't chicory and dirt.

  Sally : Thank you both. Ruby, I look forward to this. We all do. Esco and me.

  Ruby : [grinning at Ada]  She made it.

  Ada : I made it.

  Sally : Good God in Heaven.

  Ruby : I'm still livin'.

• [first lines] 

  Ada : [voiceover]  Dear Mr. Inman, I began by counting the days, then the months. I don't count on anything anymore except the hope that you will return, and the silent fear that in the years since we saw each other, this war, this awful war, will have changed us both beyond all reckoning.

• Ada : [to Inman]  But then who will be waiting for you?

• Ada : When this war is over, there will be a reckoning.

• Ada : My love where are you? With no hope of reaching you I write to you... as I have always done.

• Inman : This doesn't come out right. If it were enough to stand, without the words.

  Ada : It is, it is.

  Inman : Look at the sky now. What color is it? Or the way a hawk flies. Or you wake up and your ribs are bruised thinking so hard on somebody. What do you call that?

• Ruby : I hope that Georgia boy's been seeing to the animals.

  Ada : I thought you were thinking on him!

  Ruby : I was not. I was thinking on swollen udders- and before you say same difference.

  Ada : I'm not saying nothing!

  Ruby : Miss lovey-dovey!

• Ada : I will not leave Cold Mountain. My last thread of courage is to wait... for you.

• Ada : Are you alive? I pray to God you are.

• Ruby : [yelling]  Ada? Ada? You up?

  Ada : Yes. It's still dark.

  Ruby : Tell that to the cows. It's late!

• Rev. Monroe : Do you worry when there's no word from him? From Mr, Inman?

  Ada : Yes. But, then I've tried countin' the number of words which have passed between Mr. Inman and me - not very many. But I think about him, Daddy, all the time.

  Rev. Monroe : I lost your mother after 22 months of marriage. It was enough to fill a life.

• Ada : If you saw us this Easter... you would know that every step of your journey is worth it.

• Ada : Somebody said you were enlisting. Are you?

  Inman : If there is a war, we'll all fight.

  Ada : Did you get a picture made?

  Inman : Say again?

  Ada : A tintype, with your musket and your courage on display.

  Inman : You're laughin' at me.

  Ada : I don't know you.

• Ada : I would have followed you anywhere... to Mongolia.

• Ada : Ruby, this fence may be the first thing I ever did that might produce an actual result.

• Ada : [to Inman]  Well, you have your war.

• Ada : I have to eat something.

  Ruby : Then you have to wake up earlier. What's that?

  Ada : A novel.

  Ruby : You want to carry a book, carry one you can write in.

• Ruby : I know your plight.

  Ada : My plight?

  Ruby : Am I hard to hear? 'Cause you keep repeatin' everything.

• [from trailer] 

  Ada : Come back to me. Come back to Cold Mountain.

• Ruby : What kind of name's Georgia?

  Ada : It's where he's from, it's not his name.

  Ruby : I know that's meant to be the ugliest state under the heavens.

  Ada : What do you care what his name is?

• Ada : I thought I was seeing you fall, but instead I was seeing you come back to me!

• Ada : [voice over]  What if you are killed and I'll never see you again? You said after a few years I would barely remember your name. Oh, Inman, it is more than three years, and I remember your name.

• Ada : Yesterday I saw you walking back to me.

• Ada : [to her father]  Daddy, come inside before you drown!

• Ada : [voice over]  When I came with my father to the town of Cold Mountain, I was so shy of how I looked, so out of place. But did you know how happy I was to escape from Charleston, from a world of slaves and corsets and cotton?

• Ada : [to Inman]  I'll be waiting for you.

• Ada : [voice over]  I'm still waiting, as I promised I would. But I find myself alone and at the end of my wits - too embarrassed to keep taking from those who can least afford to give.

• Ada : [voice over]  Since you've left, time has been measured out in bitter chapters. Last fall, my poor father died. Our farm at Black Cove is abandoned. Every house in these mountains touched by tragedy. Each day the dread of - learning who has fallen - who will not return from this terrible war. And no word from you. Are you alive?

• Ada : [voice over]  After so long, I know I must learn to survive on my own and accept you will not return. And yet I cannot. I cannot.

• Ruby : I expect to board and eat at the same table. I ain't a servant, if you get my meanin'.

  Ada : You're not a servant.

  Ruby : People's gonna have to empty their own night jars is my point.

• Ada : [voice over]  Yesterday, I saw you walkin' back to me - or thought I did. I found myself crouching over Sally Swanger's well, like a madwoman staring into its secrets. Was it you I saw walking home to me or was it your ghost?

• Ada : Wars make some things pointless.

• Inman : You're always carrying a tray,

  Ada : I was going to take some root beer over to the negroes.