In 20th-century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.

[last lines]
Karen Blixen: The mail has come today, and a friend writes this to me.
[Quoting from the letter: ]
Karen Blixen: "The Masai have reported to the district commissioner at Ngong, that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch-Hatton's grave. A lion and a lioness have come there, and stood or lain on the grave for a long time. After you went away, the ground around the grave was leveled out into a sort of terrace. I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions. From there, they have a view over the plain, and the cattle and the game on it."... Denys will like that. I must remember to tell him.
Karen Blixen: Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.
Denys: You've ruined it for me, you know.
Karen Blixen: Ruined what?
Denys: Being alone.
Karen Blixen: It's an odd feeling, farewell. There is such envy in it. Men go off to be tested, for courage. And if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.
Karen Blixen: When you go away... you don't always go on safari, do you? Just want to be away.
Denys: It's not meant to hurt you.
Karen Blixen: It does.
Denys: I'm with you because I choose to be with you. I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life.
Baron Bror Blixen: You could have asked, Denys.
Denys: I did. She said yes.
Baron Bror Blixen: That's a fine kiss goodbye.
Karen Blixen: I'm better at hello.
Karen Blixen: If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?
Berkeley Cole: He likes giving gifts... but not at Christmas.
[about to leave Africa, Karen Blixen gives Denys' compass to Farah]
Karen Blixen: This is very dear to me. It has helped me to find my way.
Farah: Thank you, Msabu.
[She goes to board the train. Looks back at him]
Karen Blixen: I want to hear you say my name.
Farah: You are Karin, Msabu.
Denys: I won't be closer to you and I won't love you *more* because of a piece of paper.
Baron Bror Blixen: You're not going to fall in love are you?
Karen Blixen: Not with someone who's always leaving.
Karen Blixen: [Voiceover] I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.
Karen Blixen: What's wrong with marriage anyway?
Denys: Have you ever seen one you admire?
Karen Blixen: Yes, I have, many. Belfield's, for one.
Denys: He sent her home for the rains in 1910. Didn't tell her they were over until 1913.
Karen Blixen: If you say anything now... I'll believe it.
[to Denys, immediately after they kiss in her tent]
Denys: I'll mate for life. One day at a time.
Denys: Don't move.
Karen Blixen: But I want to move.
Denys: Don't move.
Karen Blixen: I had a farm in Africa.
[after placing a gramophone in a field near wild baboons]
Denys: Think of it: never a man-made sound... and then Mozart!
Karen Blixen: Forget it. This water lives in Mombassa anyway.
Kamante: I think that you had better get up. I think that God is coming.
Karen Blixen: He even took the gramophone on safari. Three rifles, supplies for a month, and Mozart.
Karen Blixen: Oh! get away from there! Shoo Shoo!
Denys: Shoo?
Karen Blixen: Oh! That's all my crystal, my Limoges.
Denys: They didn't know it was Limoges.
Karen Blixen: Is there a prince in there?
Farah: Msabu's bleeding. She does not have this ox. This lion is hungry. He does not have this ox. This wagon is heavy. It doesn't have this ox. God is happy, msabu. He plays with us.