Favorite Quotes from The Bridges of Madison County

The Bridges of Madison County is a very touching love story between a traveling National Geographic photographer, Robert Kincaid, played by Clint Eastwood, and an Iowa housewife, Francesca, played by Meryl Streep.

Francesca is at home alone while her husband and children are off for a few days at the state fair. Robert Kincaid stops to ask directions, and an immediate attraction between the two brings Francesca to experience passion she has never known before. At first she holds back on her feelings, but soon she finds herself unable to push away the desire inside.

Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep are wonderful in this movie! Eastwood also directed it. It is a movie that really makes you think and can make you feel uncomfortable at first if you believe in monogamy, but the characters end up making you feel that sometimes things happen for a reason that bring us to places inside ourselves that we never knew existed.

Some of my favorite quotes and what they mean to me are:

Francesca: "And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before."

Francesca is questioning who she thought she really was. She has been devoted to her family her whole life and living the simple good life she thought she was meant to live, until everything she believed in was turned upside down. This makes me feel that most of us go along in life just accepting our life as it is, until one day, something changes us deep down inside.

Robert: "This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime."

I like this line, because life is full of uncertainty, but sometimes you just know with all your heart that something is meant to be, no question about it.

Francesca: "I was just going to have some iced tea and split the atom."

I see Francesca feeling as if she has nothing to offer the world; she is just a farm wife after all. I think we all can feel that way from time to time.

Francesca: "When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother; a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected move again only you don't remember what moves you because no one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that love like this can happen to you."

I am sure women all over the world have felt these feelings millions of times. The phrase we use today is called, the empty nest syndrome. There is so much energy put into raising a family, that there is little time left for us. But the children always move on, and then you ask yourself, now what?

Robert: "The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but glad I had them."

This is probably my favorite out of all the quotes. Everyone has dreams, ones that work out and ones that don't, but the most important part is that we had them. Without dreams we are left with boring and predictable lives with no meaning at all. Dreams make us happy to think that all things are possible if you try.

Robert: "I dont want to need you, 'cause I can't have you."

I know everyone like myself, have had the feeling of wanting something we know we could never have, and it's better to just not want it at all, it hurts less that way.

Robert: "Don't kid yourself, Francesca: you are anything but a simple woman."

Simple on the outside, doesn't always mean simple on the inside. Which, I feel this means, don't judge a book by it's cover. We are complicated beings and whom we are deep inside is always complex. That is why we need to get to know someone, and even get to know ourselves before we make a judgment.

Caroline: "Who knew that, in between bake sales, my mother was Anaïs Nin?"

I didn't know what this quote meant when I first watched the movie. I had to look it up and found that Anais Nin was a french-born novelist, passionate eroticist and short story writer, who gained international fame with her journals.

Caroline was finding out by reading her mothers journal that she was more than just a wife and mother. It makes you think about what you really don't know about the people you are closes to in life.

Robert: "When I think of why I make pictures, the reason that I can come up with just seems that I've been making my way here. It seems right now that all I've ever done in my life is making my way here to you."

This to me is just another way of saying "Things happen for a reason". We don't know what force is leading us into directions we never thought we would go. Why do things happen, good or bad, which end up changing our whole life?

Robert: "Things change. They always do, it's one of the things of nature. Most people are afraid of change, but if you look at it as something you can always count on, then it can be a comfort."

Change is hard for most of us. It does feel comfortable having things normal and routine. Change usually throws us out of rhythm and makes us feel stressed. But if we learn to expect the unexpected, then that can be a comfort also.

The Bridges of Madison County is one of my favorite movies.