Penny Dreadful, Season 1

Vanessa Ives:
My part is my own.

Ethan Chandler:
You have made my visit truly memorable. I shall never forget you.

Woman:
Perhaps you'd like to know my name, then

Ethan Chandler:
What might I do for you?

Vanessa Ives:
I have a need for some night work.

Ethan Chandler:
Oh, honey, don't we all?

Ethan Chandler:
You have a name?

Vanessa Ives:
Yes

Vanessa Ives:
Do you believe there is a demimonde? A half world between what we know and what we fear?

Ethan Chandler:
That sounds like a warning.

Vanessa Ives:
It's an invitation.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Take it to a slaughterhouse. I'm not a medical practitioner. I'm engaged in research.

Ethan Chandler:
You're a man with a bloody knife like everyone else out there, so stop putting on airs.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
American?

Ethan Chandler:
You are clever.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Have you any experience with the principal and applications of Galvanism?

Ethan Chandler:
Oh, the usual.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
It would appear you have an Egyptian man of no particular age, who, at some point in his indeterminate lifespan, decided to sharpen his teeth, cover himself in hieroglyphics and grow an exoskeleton. Or you have something else altogether.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
You seem to be a freethinker who might imagine a world less constrained by what we think we know of as "truth."

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
You mean the supernatural?

Sir Malcolm Murray:
I mean that place where science and superstition walk hand in hand.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
I've only one other question: why me?

Sir Malcolm Murray:
Because you were unafraid to pull back the skin and look beneath.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
There is only one worthy goal for scientific exploration: piercing the tissue that separates life from death. Everything else, from the deep bottom of the sea to the top of the highest mountain on the farthest planet, is insignificant. Life and death, Sir Malcolm. The flicker that separates one from the other, fast as a bat's wing, more beautiful than any sonnet. That is my river. That is my mountain. There I will plant my flag.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
You have the soul of a poet, sir.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
And the bank account to match.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
You're moving through the tall grass, getting a glimpse of the prey, the shoulders mostly, the mane. You prepare your rifle. You're very quiet. And then there's a moment. The wind changes, the grass stops swaying. The lion turns, looks at you. The moment you realize you are no longer the hunter, you are the prey.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
When you see a river, you must follow it to its source, no matter the perils, no matter those comrades that fall along the way. You must know how things work. You must unlock.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
Join me doctor. With me, you will behold terrible wonders.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
I'll require you in an hour. We have an appointment.

Vanessa Ives:
Where are we going?

Sir Malcolm Murray:
Amongs dead things.

Ethan Chandler:
Who the f*** are you people?

Ethan Chandler:
And what do you seek to escape?

Vanessa Ives:
Perhaps the same thing you do. We all have our curses, don't we?

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
My mother taught me many things. Among the most useful is that one must always have Shakespeare at hand.

Galsworthy:
They're not for the faint hearted.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
My heart has never fainted.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
You see, you're hunting for a man. You need to start hunting for a beast

Proteus:
Victor, what am I?

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Man does not live only in the empirical. We must seek the ephemeral, or why live?

Vanessa Ives:
"If this belief from heaven be sent, if such be nature's holy plan... "

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
"Have I not reason to lament... "

Vanessa Ives and Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
"What man has made of man."

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
The ancient egyptian religions were unique in a way. They had a singular goal. Not transmutation to an afterlife, but something even more profound, eternal life.

Ethan Chandler:
Brona?

Brona Croft:
It's Gaelic.

Ethan Chandler:
What does it mean?

Brona Croft:
Sadness

Brona Croft:
Sir, you shouldn't.

Dorian Gray:
I don't know the word.

Dorian Gray:
It was more of a... random invitation.

Vanessa Ives:
Do you get many of those?

Dorian Gray:
Entirely.

Vanessa Ives:
You could say "no."

Dorian Gray:
I never say "no."

Vanessa Ives:
I wasn't skeptical about the room.

Dorian Gray:
What then? Shall I guess?

Vanessa Ives:
Have on, Mr. Gray.

Dorian Gray:
You do not belong here. Even less than I. You are not frivolous. Your eye is careful and appraising. This is not a careful room, although there is much to appraise. That can divert you for only so long. You do not like it here. You are closed to it. Yet... you're the only woman in this house not wearing gloves. Your hands want to touch, but your head wants to appraise. Your heart is torn between the two. You were skeptical because you thought... This was going to be a wasted evening, but now you're not so sure.

(under the sway of Mina's spirit)

Vanessa Ives:
Father... Cold... ♪ close the window, my true love, and gently drops the rain. I have never had but one true love... ♪ I am... weak... Can't feel my hands. There's no water. I can't swallow. You knew I was dying... didn't you, Father? Did you name a mountain after me?

Mr Lyle:
I would not tell Miss Ives this. After all, who wants to know they're hunted by the devil?

The Creature:
Your first born has returned... Father.

Young Frankenstain:
Death is not serene.

The Creature:
Is every newborn creature abandoned the moment they are born?

The Creature:
Hear how I bled.

The Creature:
Who is the child, Frankenstein? Thee or me?

The Creature:
I learned to stay in the shadows. To protect such a heart as this you gave me.

The Creature:
You have not known Horror until I show it to you.

Vincent Brand:
There is a place where the malformed find grace, where the hideous can be beautiful, where strangeness is not shunned but celebrated. This place is the theater.

Mina Harker:
They are all about me. The beasts that feed at night. And they are hungry.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
When you transform a life, you're making it anew. Whatever happens to that creature downstairs, we are responsible for it. It is our burden now. Every action builds another link that binds us to it. That chain is everlasting.

Vanessa Ives:
We here have been brutalized with loss. It has made us brutal in return. There is no going back from this moment.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Killing redskins more your line?

Ethan Chandler:
You know nothing about it.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Whole Indian nations pacified into nonexistence, what don't I know?

Ethan Chandler:
How do you know I was in the Indian wars?

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
I didn't.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
I cannot unmake the past!

The Creature:
I'm not concerned with the past, only the future.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
You seek to threaten me with death? If you seek to threaten me, threaten me with life.

The Creature:
You made me strong and tireless.If only you had made me handsome.

Dorian Gray:
What does it say to you?

Vanessa Ives:
Touch me with your finger, softly.

Vanessa Ives:
Is it poisonous?

Dorian Gray:
Like all beautiful things, I hope so.

The Creature:
My bride must be beautiful.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
To match her mate?

Sir Malcolm Murray:
How will we be able to tell?

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Well, he won't want to eat everyone, to start.

Dorian Gray:
I suppose we all play parts.

Ethan Chandler:
What's yours?

Dorian Gray:
Human.

Vanessa Ives:
Leave the mad larks to the boys, Sir Malcolm.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Oh, not me, just him. I'm bloodless.

Vanessa Ives:
The essence of your appeal, Doctor.

Vanessa Ives:
You don't miss your home?

Ethan Chandler:
Landscape's nice. Legal system less so.

Dorian Gray:
Once you get used to something, why bother? It's just repetition.

Dorian Gray:
Different aromas make you feel differently.

Vanessa Ives:
Things are so rarely what they seem.

Ethan Chandler:
You ever wish you could be someone else? Just run away from your life?

Dorian Gray:
All the time.

Dorian Gray:
You want to be someone else? Come with me.

Ethan Chandler:
Does it involve a drink?

Dorian Gray:
Many.

Ethan Chandler:
We've all done things to survive. There are such sins at my back it would kill me to turn around.

The Creature:
You are so fragile, you mortals, such things of skin and air. Such things of the past. The future belongs to the strong, to the immortal races, to me and my kind.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
We'll carry on with this fight. We can lose every battle, except the last.

Vanessa Ives:
You have to give them names or they'll never come to life.

Vanessa Ives:
Perhaps it has always been there, this thing, this demon inside me. Or behind my back, waiting for me to turn around.

Vanessa Ives:
I tried to pray that night and God didn't answer me, but another did.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
There was a time I would have gladly killed you and there may come a time when I gladly shall.

Vanessa Ives:
God, how I envied you. Perhaps I even hated you.

Vanessa Ives:
His name is Ariel. The most challenging bit is the eyes. They're glass, of course, so by nature are dead and dull. But that wouldn't do for my great predator. So I put mirrors behind the glass eyes, so they would spark. You see?

Captain Branson:
It's like they're alive.

Vanessa Ives:
They are. I would put mirrors behind the entire world if I could.

Vanessa Ives:
An unforgivable transgression that has marked me for life. You think you've suffered. You think you know blood. You think you've walked on corpses. Spread them from here to the horizon and I have walked further! You weak, foul, lustful, vainglorious man. How dare you presume to speak to me of death?

Vanessa Ives:
I write in hope that one day you will answer me and that everything can again be like it was... Though I know that can never be.

Vanessa Ives:
I don't remember clouds when we were young. Were there any, my dearest Mina? Just beyond the horizon, perhaps? Or was it all seashore and sandcastles? Such a thought is naive, I know. But aren't memories always that?

Vanessa Ives:
Your father loves you very much and would do anything to save you. But I love you in a different way. I love you enough to kill you.

Professor Van Helsing:
Of what I am about to tell you, we cannot enlighten him.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Why not?

Professor Van Helsing:
Because the truth is unendurable.

Professor Van Helsing:
She did not succumb to a disease precisely.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein:
Of what did she succumb?

Professor Van Helsing:
I drove a stake through her heart and cut off her head.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
Do you hold out hope for her?

Ethan Chandler:
I hold out for dignity.

Sir Malcolm Murray:
She will cease to be who she is.

Ethan Chandler:
Then I will love who she becomes.

Vanessa Ives:
I have a complicated history with the Almighty.

The Creature:
Do not weep. I've learned that skill. It brings no solace.

Professor Van Helsing:
For the dead travel fast.

Dorian Gray:
Photographs are so ironically impermanent. They capture one moment in time to perfection. A painting can capture eternity.

Priest:
If you have been touched by a demon, it is like being touched by the back hand of God, makes you unique in a way doesn't it? The hand of glory, the glory of suffering perhaps. Now here is my question to you. Do you really want to be normal?