How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Quote #1
We see a girl walk up to a memorial for the Author and hang a hotel key below his bust. She looks at her pink book, titled The Grand Budapest Hotel.
The Author is remembered and celebrated, and he's remembered because of the book he wrote about the Grand Budapest (hence the hotel room keys)… which is in turn a memory of Mustafa, who tells the Author the original story.
Quote #2
The girl turns over her book and on the back we see a black and white photograph of the Author. As we zoom into the picture, the photograph comes alive and we find ourselves watching a living Author in 1985.
Just like the Author goes from dead to living, so will the past come alive thanks to the people who tell of it. The Author becomes in many ways like Mustafa who is in many ways like Gustave. Each of them leaves behind a legacy powerful enough to be remembered by those who come after.
Quote #3
THE AUTHOR: I decided to spend the month of August in the spa town of Nebelsbad below the Alpine Sudetenwaltz, and had taken up rooms in the Grand Budapest, a picturesque, elaborate, and once widely celebrated establishment. I expect some of you will know it. It was off season and, by that time, decidedly out of fashion, and it had already begun its descent into shabbiness and eventual demolition.
The Grand Budapest isn't so grand anymore. Yet, although past its prime, the Author admires it for the beauty it once held. As he speaks, the image of the hotel changes from its pastel beauty to its current old, grey state. Just as this transition occurs, the Author's narration suddenly changes, from the old self we just saw to the voice of his younger self.
Quote #4
GUSTAVE: [Examining Boy with Apple in the train car back to Nebelsbad.] I'll never part with it. It reminded her of me. It will remind me of her—always. I'll die with this picture above my bed.
To Gustave, Boy with Apple is more than a masterpiece; it's a remembrance of his late, dearly-beloved Madame D. On the other hand, maybe it's just a way to make some quick cash.
Quote #5
THE AUTHOR: [Inquiring about Mustafa's reason for keeping the Hotel.] Is it simply your last connection to that vanished world, his world, if you will? His world?
MR. MUSTAFA: No, I don't think so. You see, we shared a vocation, it wouldn't have been necessary. No, the hotel I keep for Agatha. We were happy here, for a little while.
Mustafa's connection with Gustave doesn't require any type of memento. They were brothers of the same trade. The Budapest isn't a giant, rundown memorial of the esteemed concierge. It's so that he can relive his fond memories of his wife, Agatha.
Quote #6
MR. MUSTAFA: To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it. But, I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.
Gustave wasn't just a historical figure to the Author and his contemporaries; he was practically a historical figure in his own time. With the way he talks and conducts himself it can be easy to forget we're supposed to be in the 1930s and not the 1830s. He brings with him the best of an outdated era, a kind of chivalry and propriety that you often hear your grandparents lamenting the absence of.