- Cesare Borgia: Have you ever known the immodest sensuality of a secret affair?
- Astore Manfredi: I have slept with courtesans.
- Cesare Borgia: No, this is different. Money cannot be exchanged for this pleasure. You and a woman are both bound by law to others, yet drawn by lust. That which is forbidden binds you deeper and deeper, neither wanting the sweet rapture to ever end, but both knowing full well one day it will - suddenly and without satisfaction.
- Giulia Farnese: [spurning him] No! Our dalliance is over. I love you father more than I love you.
- Cesare Borgia: [grabbing her arm] You are a liar. You hate him, perhaps even more than you hate me.
- [trying to kiss her]
- Giulia Farnese: I will scream, and then let us see who is the better liar.
- [pushes him away and leaves]
- Gacet: We have been friends forever. Did I ever once betray you?
- Rodrigo Borgia: How would we know?
- Gacet: Would you be the Pope if I had?
- Rodrigo Borgia: [walking away] Do not act as if we own our life to you. And do not act as if you do *not* owe your life to us!
- Gacet: I do. And you do. Our lives are entwined, the two of us. Either I am zero and you are zero, or together we are the universe!
- Rodrigo Borgia: [turning back] No, I am the heart, and you are the head. If emotion can now sway you, then we do not work. You claim that what I saw mattered not, but how can I be certain? How can I know which past decisions, guided by you, must be re-examined? Would you yourself not advise me that this is the end?
- Gacet: I will be gone tomorrow. Some problems are unsolvable, some questions unanswerable. No matter what we do, we will never be free of mortality, partiality, or error.
- [hands him his gloves]
- [last lines]
- Alfonso d'Este: For all I know, my father himself had the pamphlet written to justify stopping the betrothal. He has sent copies to King Louis.
- Rodrigo Borgia: Whose faith in you is already wavering.
- Alfonso d'Este: [to Lucrezia] We are lost sweet one. We are lost.