The Bridge of Madison County (excerpt) Francesca: No matter how much distance we put between us and this house, I bring it with me. And I’ll feel it every minute we’re together. and I’ll blame loving you for how much it hurts. And then even these four beautiful days won’t be anything more than something sordid and… a mistake. Robert: Francesca, do you think what happened to us just happens to anyone? What we feel, what we feel for each other, we’re hardly, we’re hardly two separate people now. You know some people search all their life for this and never find it; others don’t even think it exists. You are going to tell me that this is the right thing to do, to give it up. Francesca: We are the choices that we have made, Robert, and, you don’t understand. Don’t you see, nobody understands when a woman makes a choice to marry and have children, in one way our life begins and in another way it stops. You build a life of details and you just stop and stay stead so that your children can move and when they leave, they take our life, and the details with them. You’re expected to move on again but you don’t even remember what it was to have moved you, because nobody ever asked you this why, not even yourself. And you never think, you never think love like this is going to happen to you, don’t you? Robert: You have it. Francesca: Well now I want to keep it forever. I want to love you the way I do now for the rest of my life. But if we leave, we choose it and I can’t make an entire life disappear to start a new one. All I can do is try to hold on to one of us somewhere inside of me. You have to help me.