Joanna Leiningen Quotes in The Naked Jungle (1954)

Joanna Leiningen: If you knew anything about music, you'd know that the best piano is one that's been played.

Joanna Leiningen: Do you think this moat will stop them?

Christopher Leiningen: Ants are strictly land creatures. They can't swim. Right, Incacha?

Incacha: Monkeys not swim also. They cross rivers even so.

Christopher Leiningen: The intelligence of monkeys is more than ants, less than man.

Incacha: Is so.

[laughing]

Incacha: When ants come, monkeys run.

Joanna Leiningen: Everything I say seems to make things worse. I'm trying not to irritate you.

Christopher Leiningen: I've noticed that. I find it irritating.

Joanna Leiningen: You've given up.

Christopher Leiningen: No,I've been beaten;there's a difference!

Christopher Leiningen: Madam... you've seen my house. It took me seven years to build. To make it what it is, in the heart of the jungle. They laughed at me, up and down the river - but it's what I wanted.

Christopher Leiningen: [continues] I wanted it to be filled with beautiful things. I wanted a family I could be proud of in this house that I'm proud of in the land that I took out of the river and the jungle with my bare hands. The only condition I made about anything I brought up the river was that it be new: worth the effort! Madam, this piano you're sitting at was never played by anyone before it came here.

Joanna Leiningen: [Stands up and confronts him] if you knew more about music, you'd realize that a good piano is better when it's played. This is *not* a very good piano.

Christopher Leiningen: I made a mistake marrying someone I'd never met, but you made a mistake coming here.

Joanna Leiningen: No - I was looking for something, and I was willing to risk anything to find it. The strength and purpose that was missing in my first husband.

Christopher Leiningen: He was a weakling.

Joanna Leiningen: So are you! Your weakness is your pride.

Christopher Leiningen: Yes, I'm proud... too proud to take another man's leavings.

Christopher Leiningen: I don't need anyone.

Joanna Leiningen: Not even for children?

Christopher Leiningen: I suppose I'm to consider myself fortunate you came down here.

Joanna Leiningen: Perhaps not right now. But when you know me better you will.

Christopher Leiningen: Perhaps when you know me better, you won't care to stay.

Joanna Leiningen: [stands up and confronts him] If I had thought there'd be any doubt about it, I would never have left New Orleans.

Christopher Leiningen: We do things by schedule in the tropics. We eat early, we go to bed early. Dinner's at seven.

Joanna Leiningen: What time is bedtime?

Christopher Leiningen: Whenever you wish, madam.

Joanna Leiningen: I wouldn't want to upset your schedule.

Joanna Leiningen: [They are hearing the buzzing sound of amassed army ants in the distance] What is it?

Commissioner: Marabunta. Soldier ants. Billions and billions of them on the march. For generations they stay in their anthills. Then, for no reason, they start to move, gathering up others as they go, until they become a flood of destruction.

Joanna Leiningen: How do you stop them?

Commissioner: You don't. You just get out of their way.

Joanna Leiningen: You don't like a woman with a temper, do you?

Christopher Leiningen: I don't mind. I have a temper myself.

Joanna Leiningen: You surprise me.

Christopher Leiningen: You're very beautiful. Intelligent, accomplished... there must be something wrong with you.

Christopher Leiningen: [stands up, continues] I'm not that lucky to get a perfect woman just like that out of the grab bag. There's something wrong, somewhere...