The Sea Inside (I) (2004)

Javier Bardem: Ramón Sampedro

Photos 

Quotes 

• Ramón Sampedro : When you can't escape, and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know?

• Padre Francisco : Freedom without a life is not freedom.

  Ramón Sampedro : A life without freedom is not a life.

• Ramón Sampedro : The person who really loves me will be the one who helps me die. That's love, Rosa. That's love.

• [last lines] 

  Ramón Sampedro : Out to sea. Out to sea, and in the weightlessness of the deep where dreams come true, two souls unite to fulfill a single wish. Your gaze and mine, over and over like an echo, repeating silently: "Deeper, and deeper," beyond everything that is flesh and blood. But I always awaken and I always wish for death, my lips forever entangled in your hair.

• Ramón Sampedro : [in monologue]  Only time and the evolution of consciences will decide one day if my request was reasonable or not.

• Julia : Why choose death?

  Ramón Sampedro : Well, I want to die because I feel that a life for me, in this state has no dignity. I understand that other quadriplegics may take offense to my saying there's no dignity in this, but I'm not trying to judge anyone. Who am I to judge those who choose life? So don't judge me or anyone who wants to help me die.

  Julia : You think someone will help?

  Ramón Sampedro : Well, that depends on the powers that be. They'll have to overcome their fear. But hey, it's really no big deal. Death has always been with us and always will be. It catches up with all of us. Everyone. It's part of us. So why are they shocked because I choose to die, as if it were contagious?

  Julia : If this goes to court, they'll ask why you haven't explored all alternatives. Why refuse a wheelchair?

  Ramón Sampedro : Accepting a wheelchair would be like accepting the scraps of the freedom I lost. Think about this: You're sitting there, three feet away. What's three feet? An insignificant distance for any human being. But for me, those three feet that keep me from reaching you, from touching you, are an impossible journey. Just an illusion. A fantasy. That's why I want to die.

• Ramón Sampedro : Judges, political and religious authorities. What does dignity mean to you? Whatever the answer of your conscience, know that for me, this is not a worthy life. I would have liked to at least die with dignity. Today, tired of the institutional laziness, I see myself forced to do it in hiding, like a criminal. You should know that the processes conducting to my death has been carefully divided in small actions that do not constitute a crime by themselves and have been executed by several friendly hands. If even then, the state insists in punishing my helpers, I would suggest that you cut their hands, because that is all that they contributed. The head, I mean the conscience, was provided by me. As you can see, to my side I have a glass of water that contains a dose of potassium cyanide, when I drink it I will cease to exist, relinquishing my most precious property: my body. I believe that living is a right not an obligation, as it has been in my case, forced to accept this sad situation during 28 years, 4 months and some days. After all this time, I make a balance of the road traveled and I can't account for the happiness, only the time that passed against my will, during most of my life. Time will be my ally from now on. Only time and the evolution of consciences will decide one day if my request was reasonable or not.

• Julia : Too bad there's no view of the sea.

  Ramón Sampedro : Just as well. This way I see it when I choose.

  Julia : What do you mean?

  Ramón Sampedro : When I'm in the mood, I concentrate and walk I out to the sea. I fly there.

• Padre Francisco : A freedom that eliminates life is not freedom.

  Ramón Sampedro : And a life that eliminates freedom is not life either.

• Ramón Sampedro : Dear Julia... when Gené told me that a lawyer wanted my case, there was something that influenced my decision and it was the fact that the lawyer suffered a degenerative disease. I thought that only someone in that condition could really understand mine... and shared my hell. Now I know that living in that hell is sometimes worth it, if one gets to meet people like you. Is worth it to have shared a cigarette with them or, like right now, caressing them even if its just by writing some foolishness like this.

• Ramón Sampedro : [to this brother]  What if you have an accident tomorrow and you die? Have you thought about it? What would happen to me? I would have to take care of the family, right? Of your wife, your son, dad... with that miserable pension of mine.

• Ramón Sampedro : Why does the Church keep with such passion that posture of terror of death? Because it knows that it would lose a great amount of its customers if people lose their fear to the Great Beyond.

• Ramón Sampedro : The person that really loves me is the one that will help me die. That is love, Rosa.

• Ramón Sampedro : [to Rosa]  Yes, run. You that can.