Catherine Called Birdy (2022) Best Movie Quotes

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Starring: Lena Dunham, Billie Piper, Andrew Scott, Bella Ramsey, Joe Alwyn, Dean-Charles Chapman, Ralph Ineson

OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆

Story:

Amazon Prime medieval comedy written and directed by Lena Dunham. Set in the 1290’s in the village of Stonebridge, Catherine Called Birdy (2022) centers on Lady Catherine (Bella Ramsey), the youngest child of Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott) and Lady Aislinn (Billie Piper). Financially destitute and utterly greedy, Rollo sees his daughter as his path out of financial ruin by marrying her off to a wealthy man suitor. But Birdy is spirited, clever and adventurous, and ready to put off any suitor that comes calling in increasingly ingenious ways. Her imagination, defiance, and deep belief in her own right to independence put her on a collision course with her parents. When the most vile suitor of all arrives, they are presented with the ultimate test of love for their daughter.

Our Favorite Quotes:

'Knowing your own story will be your salvation.' - Edward the Monk (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Best Quotes

Morwenna: [to Birdy, who’s covered in mud] And to think I just bathed you a fortnight ago. What a waste.

Birdy: Perkin has told me how babies are made, and I’m afraid I shall perish with revulsion.
Morwenna: Well, you had to learn sooner or later. You’re fourteen.
Birdy: Morwenna, am I to move on calmly with what I know now? A man is going to take a heated iron poker, a heated one, stick it up my nose until there’s a space big enough for his whole thumb. After which, he will press seeds into my brain. And they trickle down my throat, into my gut, where they take root for nine months before popping out my bum. No!

Birdy: Perkin, my heart’s brother. Although he is just a goat boy, he is kind of heart and wise of spirit. Though he is sorely afflicted with wind in his bowels.

Birdy: I would rather be fed to a stroppy dragon than try and spin like a lady.

Birdy: I am, thank the Lord, very cunning. Most girls are, though we’re not given due credit for it.

Birdy: I have made a bargain with my mother. I may forgo spinning, my greatest agitation of all, as long as I write this account of my days for my brother, Edward the Monk. In his letters, he tells me he believes it will help me grow less childish and more learned. So what follows will be my book, the book of Catherine, called Little Bird or Birdy.

Birdy: My truest passions are avoiding my chores. Critiquing my father’s horrible swordplay. Disrupting cottage raisings. Causing mischief in the village. And listening through doors I should not listen through.

Lord Rollo: Well, how has this happened, Finneas? After all, you’re paid to prevent things like this.
Finneas the Steward: In essence, my Lord, you have ignored me. You have spent profligately and without censor.
Lord Rollo: Nonsense. I can’t have spent so much. Give me one example of an expense not strictly necessary for the survival of my family.
Finneas the Steward: Really?

'As the time approaches when we must wed, we are forced to undertake lady lessons. My two least favorite words, together in one terrible phrase.' - Birdy (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Lord Rollo: My tiger has arrived. It’s dead.
Tiger Salesman: The travel was harsh from Siberia, my Lord.
Robert: Mayhap it’s just sleeping, Father.
Birdy: It’s not breathing, you fool.
Lady Aislinn: Perhaps some water?

Finneas the Steward: There is an opportunity to relieve this accumulated debt.
Lord Rollo: For Birdy?
Finneas the Steward: Yes.
Lord Rollo: With a man?
Finneas the Steward: Yes.
Lord Rollo: No. No. No. She’s disgusting. She’s one step away from a leper.

Finneas the Steward: There are plenty of men foolish enough to trade their fortune for the prefix of “lord”. Now it’s your job to find one.
Lord Rollo: No. Surely, there must be another way, yes? She’s my only daughter.
Finneas the Steward: And this is your only manor.

Morwenna: It is your monthly tidings. The lady in red. So you will do your duty to bear your husband children.
Birdy: Then I shall run away. Far. I shall steal a suit of armor, and become a knight, and take the horse and the carriage, and I shall ride at midnight.
Morwenna: Dress as a knight, or dress as a lady, the blood will come. You are a woman now, Birdy.

Birdy: There’s a hanging today in Rutherford.
Lady Aislinn: A hanging?
Birdy: An ever so small one. I was thinking I could maybe go.
Lady Aislinn: Absolutely forbidden.
Birdy: Robert goes to all the hangings.
Lady Aislinn: Well, Robert is Robert, and you are not.

'Things girls cannot do. Go on Crusades. Cut their hair. Be horse trainers. Laugh very loud. Marry whom they will. Be monks. Drink in alehouses. Go to hangings.' - Birdy (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Birdy: Men are horribly duplicitous creatures.

Birdy: As the time approaches when we must wed, we are forced to undertake lady lessons. My two least favorite words, together in one terrible phrase.

Birdy: I will never get used to babies coming dead. And my heart will never stop aching for them to live. I continue to hide my rags so that my father will not make me a wife and a mother, and I will keep hiding them over and over, forever.

Birdy: I always imagined that Edward lived amongst God-fearing old nutters and musty old men who clutched their Bibles to their chests.
Birdy: [as she sees all the young good looking monks] Ooh-la-la! Wait! These are monks? Why hath no one told me? I am ever so confused about what is God is getting at here.

'I feel as though no part of me is my own. Would I choose to die rather than be forced to marry? I do not think either option appealing, or fair.' - Birdy (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Edward the Monk: [as Birdy has climbed onto the Jesus statue] Catherine. What are you doing here?
Birdy: I’m just visiting an old friend.
Edward the Monk: Get off Jesus! Catherine!
Birdy: Don’t look at me like that.

Birdy: How was I to know that comely young women are a spiritual danger to monks?
Edward the Monk: You are no danger to anyone but yourself.

Edward the Monk: Birdy, please do not joust with our crucified Savior.

Birdy: Everybody lets boys do everything. So boring, Edward.
Edward the Monk: Well, boredom is for the dull-witted, Bird. You’re not dull, are you?
Birdy: Of course I’m not dull.

Birdy: Why does Edward want me to read this book so full of strangers and their woes? For saints are just dinguses I will never actually meet. At the very least, I’ll become an expert on their gruesome deaths, which are so displeasing that they please me terribly.

'We learn best when we close our mouths and open our ears.' - Cornethia (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Morwenna: Any other jolly little plans for this afternoon?
Birdy: Why, yes, actually. I’m denying myself buns. I’m also going to sleep with a comb beneath my back, for I must emulate Saint Blandina, who was scourged, placed on a red-hot grate, and then thrown before a wild steer who tossed her into the air with his horns. Tragically, she was killed with a dagger.
Morwenna: You’ll meet a dagger if you don’t put your bloody shoes on.

Birdy: I cannot believe I must bear this with good humor month after month. I would prefer a monthly bath in poo, or to wrestle a lion. Oh, to wrestle a lion.

Birdy: What do you suppose about kissing?
Perkin: Suppose how?
Birdy: Might it not be as vile as we once thought?

Birdy: Sir, we know Lady Catherine, and you really shouldn’t have bothered.
Perkin: We’re just a bit confused why you would travel all this way for such a…
Birdy: She’s a creature, a vile creature. All teeth, and hair, and vomit and snot!
Perkin: Awful. Terrible. Some say she has a third ear.
Birdy: She does.
Suitor from Kent: Have you seen this third ear?
Birdy: I’ve seen it.
Suitor from Kent: Where?
Birdy: Back of her neck.
Suitor from Kent: Is it functional?
Birdy: Spare.
Perkin: Spare.

'You have wings. You must learn how to harness them, not flap them all about and crash to the floor.' - Ethelfritha Rose Splinter of Devon (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Suitor from Kent: Where is the Lady Catherine that I have heard of, who has ebony tresses that tumble like waterfalls? The Lady Catherine that has the curves of an archipelago?
Birdy: Archipelago?
Perkin: What is an archipelago?
Suitor from Kent: A small series of little islands, I believe.

Suitor from Kent: I want to thank you, actually. You’re very, very dashing.
Perkin: Thanks.
Suitor from Kent: [to Birdy] You, on the other hand, have been a little churlish, if I may say so.

Birdy: Things girls cannot do. Go on Crusades. Cut their hair. Be horse trainers. Laugh very loud. Marry whom they will. Be monks. Drink in alehouses. Go to hangings.

'I wish I could help every girl in the world. But for now, I am enough.' - Birdy (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Birdy: [as her Uncle George arrives] After one man brought doom on horseback, another brings divine hope.

Lady Aislinn: How was your day, my love?
Robert: It was fine.
Lord Rollo: Don’t say “fine”, Robert. It’s boring. Don’t bore your mother.

Birdy: [referring to her Uncle George] If I cannot be a hero, I will love a hero instead. He will tell my father he cannot sell me off this way, and he will fight for me.

'Things girls can do. Run in the fields. Invent original curses. Save the day. Pee standing up. Well, that one was a bit tricky. And keep fighting, no matter who may come on horseback.' - Birdy (Catherine Called Birdy) Click To Tweet

Birdy: If I were to marry, Aelis, then I should choose him. If only he were my cousin and not my uncle.

Birdy: I shall never smear myself with mud again and shove Perkin onto the ground. I shall never get to see a hanging. I shall never get to have anything like fun. And just because my birthright is to bleed.

See more Catherine Called Birdy Quotes

Birdy: Many people are afeard of Allhallows Eve, of the dead who come back to visit the earth. But the only dead I know are my tiny brothers and sisters who died before they were even born, and how could I be afeard of them? I wish they would come visit. It would ease my mother’s grieving.

Birdy: Why am I being so unkind? I am agitated. I blame the eel pie.
Birdy: [as she sees George and Aelis kissing] It is definitely not the eel pie.

Lady Aislinn: Everything has its time, its season. It is your season, my love.

Birdy: I have not a friend in the world. I have been cruel to Perkin. Morwenna has betrayed me. Uncle George, who brought gaiety and wonder into my life, loves Aelis, who is a weasel. And now my time is here. I ripen like a peach for plucking.

Birdy: I feel as though no part of me is my own. Would I choose to die rather than be forced to marry? I do not think either option appealing, or fair.

John of Normandy: Where is the girl?
Lord Rollo: I think she’s just making herself beautiful for you.
Lady Aislinn: Bathing her teeth.

Birdy: I listen to God when he speaks to me.
Godfrey of Glardenmere: A pious girl.
Birdy: Usually, he tells me to form an army, five thousand women strong. And to go around and gut all men and leave their entrails as offerings.

Birdy: Double devil. Snail’s guts. Fanny in a hat. No curse is good enough for these vile suitors. Or my viler father. Farting drumsticks!

Birdy: When I was young, Father had a golden Jesus that pi**ed wine. Now we just cut the brown parts from the carrots.

Birdy: For the first time in my life, I am choking on my words. My heart has been shaved and boiled like a parsnip. George is to be married. George is to be married. George is to be married.

Birdy: I don’t suppose you’re taking any new joiners at the convent?
Cornethia: No.
Birdy: Pity.

Birdy: Disobedience has gotten me nowhere. And who can fight an inevitable fate, anyhow?

Birdy: I resisted marriage and was dealt only pain. If I embrace it, mayhap there is even pleasure?

Lord Rollo: [referring to Birdy] I do think she’s come down with something. She’s got a little, little, little, little, a little bit of, I think there’s a little bit of pox going around in the village.
Lady Aislinn: Oh, no, not pox.
Fulk the Elder: Pox? Pox?
Lord Rollo: No. I mean it’s not around the village.
Fulk the Elder: We best depart!
Lord Rollo: No, you don’t need to go!
Robert: It’s not a big pox. It’s a small pox. It’s it’s a tiny pox.
Lady Aislinn: Not smallpox. It’s not the small pox.
Robert: It’s only a small little pox.

Lord Rollo: My father had gambled away every brick, every pane of glass, every sack of grain, everything. So I had to use every ounce of my cunning and my strength to bring this town back to prosperity.
Birdy: Your cunning and your strength?
Lord Rollo: Among other qualities, yes.
Birdy: Is that why I saw Grandfather’s tapestries going to auction? Mother’s wedding cups being packed up and shipped away, because of your cunning and your strength?

Lord Rollo: [to Birdy] I’m your father. And if I say that you shall be married, then married you shall be.

Birdy: George weds today. Some marry for love, some marry for money, some for duty, and some, like George, seem not to know why they marry.

Lord Gideon Sidebottom: [referring to Aelis and her betrothed] And she’s got a fine young man there who is going to grow up into a fine specimen.
Lady Berenice Sidebottom: She has a nine-year-old boy.

Birdy: Corpus bones. Must my world always be peppered with s**t?
Mitten Man: A mouth to shame a pirate.
Birdy: I’m endeavoring to find the best curse of them all.

Birdy: [after the Mitten Man kisses her] That was it? That was what made George and Aelis go so mad?

Birdy: Might I really count that as my first kiss? I suppose I would like to, especially if it’s the only one I’ll ever choose to have myself.

Ethelfritha Rose Splinter of Devon: I paid for these festivities myself, you know. That’s the one thing husbands are good for. Well, dead ones anyway. It’s very convenient when they die wealthier than when you wed them, although still rather sad.

Birdy: Maybe love makes me ill.
Ethelfritha Rose Splinter of Devon: Who said anything about love? Do I believe your Uncle George loves me? No, I do not. But he will protect me as only a husband can protect a wife. And I inherited his title. And I hear he’s rather good with a sword. And he, in turn, gets to have some land he can call his own. See? The perfect trade. Plus, he is rather gorgeous.

Birdy: Do you not want to love someone properly?
Ethelfritha Rose Splinter of Devon: I have other fish to fry.

Ethelfritha Rose Splinter of Devon: [to Birdy] You are so lucky, little bird. Look. You have wings. You must learn how to harness them, not flap them all about and crash to the floor.

Birdy: I wish you happiness, Aelis. And I’m so sorry that I ever said otherwise. Ever since we quarreled, I’ve done nothing but miss you. And there is so much to tell. In fact, I have only two words. Mitten man.

Lord Sungerk of Dunkerk: Hey, would you like to see my doll? He has a turnip for a head.
Birdy: And who are you?
Lord Sungerk of Dunkerk: [referring to Aelis] Why, I’m her husband, of course.

Morwenna: Do you not love a wedding with every beat of your heart?
Birdy: No, I do not. But it is strange that I should like the woman who is taking George from us.
Morwenna: Life can be quite a shock, Bird.

Lord Rollo: So, what is it you like to do?
Sir John Henry Murgaw aka Shaggy Beard: I collect rare lizard skins. And I do puzzles. One piece a night, everything in moderation. Except for the carnal.

Birdy: The man they call Shaggy Beard is my betrothed?

Birdy: He is not a man. He is a cave-dwelling troll. A murderer does not deserve such a punishment.

Birdy: What really is a virgin?
Meg: A virgin? Well, you know how a man has a sword down there? Well, women have a box. And when you don’t want to be a virgin anymore, you ask the man, if he can put his sword in your box. And it goes in and out, and in and out. And it makes a kind of smoosh sound, and then it’s done, really.
Birdy: I thought a virgin was where God made you pregnant.
Meg: Oh, no. That was only that one virgin.

Sir John Henry Murgaw aka Shaggy Beard: You’re the reason I stink of s**t.
Birdy: If the shoe fits.

Birdy: If I was of fair face like Aelis, you’d marry me.
Perkin: It’s not about being fair-faced.
Birdy: What is it about then?
Perkin: I don’t know. I just don’t want to marry you. Or Aelis, or Meg, or Morwenna, or any other woman God has or shall put on this Earth.
Birdy: Would you rather marry a man instead?

Birdy: We must run far away and never come back.
Perkin: That is always your answer to everything, Birdy. Do you not see? You would like to ride into the Crusades, but you are a lady. I would like to be a great scholar, yet I cannot even read. We do not get to choose what we do. Life does not care about us. We are given our stations until death.

Lady Aislinn: I was once willful too, and my father showed me how he felt about that with the iron. So when you try to bend the ways of the world, I cheer for you, Birdy, but I fear for you. To see you hurt, I couldn’t sustain that. I would rather see you settled than seared.

Birdy: Well, I guess I don’t know everything. I think by sneaking, spying, and ensorcelling, I can avoid surprises, but they come anyway. Sometimes in the form of unexpected love.

Birdy: Imagine life with a peasant. So simple. So passionate. So toothless.

Golden Tiger: There do seem to be a lot of raised voices. I always say, “Talk like butter, not knives.”

Birdy: You men are not God. You don’t get to decide who we are, where we go, or how much we cost like we’re just things. We’re not things! We’re people! And we can think! And we can hear! And we can feel!

Birdy: Uncle George is a hero, and mayhap he can tell me how to be one myself. Not just in fantasies, but in real life.

Uncle George: [to Birdy] You like to go anywhere your father isn’t.

Birdy: You’ve traveled the world. You’ve seen the ocean. You must know stories.
Uncle George: Ah, but I did not keep a little book like you do, Bird. So all the stories have slipped through my fingers like snow when I try to take them home.

Birdy: If you’re a hero, then why did you not try and save me?
Uncle George: Save you?
Birdy: From Shaggy Beard. From my future.
Uncle George: But, you see, Bird, I’m not a hero. Can you forgive me, my sweet girl?

Birdy: Heroes are only in storybooks. Even the saints only escape by dying.
Uncle George: That doesn’t sound like much fun, either, does it?
Birdy: Maybe.

Birdy: Morwenna, do not weep. Do not weep. When you do, you puff up and resemble a roast beef.

Birdy: Mama, I promise I’ll always be the person you want me to be.

Lady Aislinn: [as she’s having difficulty giving birth] Rollo, if this is meant to be, then it’s meant to be, and if it is not, I ask you one thing. Can you make sure our children find their place in this world? And not just any place, their place.

Lord Rollo: [to Aislinn] All that I am is us. All that I could be, you already are. You’re so strong. You’re so wise. You’re so powerful. You’re so grumpy in the mornings. You’re so close to God without even having to utter his name. I want to make you laugh and make you safe. And I’m not going to live in a world where our children’s children don’t get to make you laugh when they tumble in the grass in front of us when we’re old.

Birdy: I feel something changed inside of me. And just because I cannot be happy does not mean that I do not wish happiness for others. Joy is infectious, I am learning.

Birdy: One more night in my own bed. Then Shaggy Beard.

Meg: [to Birdy, referring to Shaggy Beard] Don’t let that smelly old man do what we talked about.

Lady Aislinn: [to Rollo, as they’re watching Birdy leave with Shaggy beard] Sometimes, as the man of the house, you have to make very hard decisions.

Lord Rollo: My mind has been changed. The girl stays with us. For the time being. Frankly, sir, I would burn in hell for allowing my daughter to spend her life with a man as rank and uniformly uncompelling as yourself. She would die of boredom, and furthermore, you resemble a bear who has attempted union with our local locksmith. It cannot be.

Birdy: Am I to believe that my father plans to fight this man, swordplay being a skill he does not possess, in order to keep me, his greatest pest from having to marry?

Birdy: If I’ve inherited a bit of my father’s heart, I suppose I shall leave it here in my chest.

Birdy: I will never fully fathom what my father did for me. What any father should do for any daughter, but rarely does. Better late than never.

Birdy: I wish I could help every girl in the world. But for now, I am enough.

Birdy: And I know he has not granted me a pardon, only a reprieve from the most ungodly beast of marriage. But my father will find that my gratitude does not mean I have lost my fight.

Birdy: Someday this journal will belong to my sisters. The two of you can see what I made of becoming a woman. It was not much, but it was my own. For right now, it’s up to you to decide, Edward. Has writing in this diary made me more learned or simply cheekier?

Birdy: Things girls can do. Run in the fields. Invent original curses. Save the day. Pee standing up. Well, that one was a bit tricky. And keep fighting, no matter who may come on horseback.

Sir John Henry Murgaw aka Shaggy Beard: [post-credits lines] Let’s party like it’s 1299! Yay!

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