Carey Mulligan Monologues

If you never do anything, you never become anyone.

The life I want, there is no shortcut.

Studying is hard and boring. Teaching is hard and boring. So, what you're telling me is to be bored, and then bored, and finally bored again, but this time for the rest of my life? This whole stupid country is bored! There's no life in it, or color, or fun! It's probably just as well the Russians are going to drop a nuclear bomb on us any day now. So my choice is to do something hard and boring, or to marry my… Jew, and go to Paris and Rome and listen to jazz, and read, and eat good food in nice restaurants, and have fun! It's not enough to educate us anymore Ms. Walters. You've got to tell us why you're doing it.

It's funny though, isn't it? All that poetry and all those songs, about something that lasts no time at all.

One of the boys I dated, and they were boys, suggested that we go to Paris and I said I'd always wanted to see Paris. As if I'd never been!

I don't want to lose my virginity to a piece of fruit.

You're my father again now, are you? And what were you when you encouraged me to throw my life away? Silly schoolgirls are always getting seduced by glamorous older men, but what about you two?

If people die the moment that they graduate, then surely it's the things we do beforehand that count.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Mr Oak, I don't want a husband. I'd hate to be some man's property. I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding if I could be one without getting a husband!

From now on, you have a mistress, not a master. I don't yet know my talents in farming, but I shall do my best. Don't suppose, because I'm a woman, I don't know the difference between bad goings-on and good. I shall be up before you're awake. I shall be a-field before you are up. It is my intention to astonish you all. Back to work, please.

"Bathsheba Everdene." "Bathsheba." The name has always sounded strange to me. I don't like to hear it said out loud. My parents died when I was very young, so there's no one to ask where it came from. I've grown accustomed to being on my own. Some say even too accustomed. Too independent.

People always say that. Women don't jilt men. Men jilt us.

My name is Kathy H. I'm 28 years old. I've been a carer for nine years. And I'm good at my job. My patients always do better than expected, and are hardly ever classified as agitated, even if they're about to make a donation. I'm not trying to boast, but I feel a great sense of pride in what we do. Carers and donors have achieved so much. That said, we aren't machines. In the end it wears you down. I suppose that's why I now spend most of my time not looking forwards, but looking back, to The Cottages and Hailsham, and what happened to us there. Me. Tommy. And Ruth.

It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I'd known, maybe I'd have kept tighter hold of them and not let unseen tides pull us apart.

It's been two weeks since I lost him. I've been given my notice now. My first donation is in a month's time. I come here and imagine that this is the spot where everything I've lost since my childhood has washed out. I tell myself, if that were true, and I waited long enough, then a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy. He'd wave and maybe call. I don't let the fantasy go beyond that. I can't let it. I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I'm not sure about is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.