- Papillon: We're really something, aren't we? The only animals that shove things up their ass for survival.
- Camp Commandant: Make the best of what we offer you, and you will suffer less than you deserve.
- Maturette: I'll do what you ask, on one condition: You keep your money and you take me with you.
- Papillon: No.
- Maturette: I'm the only one who can get you out of here.
- Papillon: You're...
- Maturette: I know. I'm a queer, a fairy, a poof, huh? But there's one thing you forgot. You may have been framed, as you say you were... but I wasn't. Between the two of us... I'm the one who's killed a man, not you.
- Papillon: Okay.
- Prisoner: I know you, you're Dega. You're a very intelligent man!
- Dega: Thank you. I seem to be known in all the wrong places.
- Warden Barrot: Put all hope out of your mind. And masturbate as little as possible, it drains the strength!
- Woman: [to Papillon as he is marched aboard ship bound for penal colony] Papillon! Papi! You'll be back, Papillon. Don't worry, you'll be back.
- Julot: No, you won't.
- Warden Barrot: [to Papillon upon his release from solitary confinement after five years following his second escape attempt] Your five years in solitary confinement are at an end. You've paid part of your debt to France.
- Warden Barrot: [last lines - voice over] Papillon made it to freedom. And for the remaining years of his life, he lived a free man. This, the infamous penal system in French Guiana, did not survive him.
- Dega: Well, it now seems quite possible that until we get to a decent jail with bribeable guards, I may stand in some need of... rather close physical protection.
- Papillon: That depends on how long you want to live.
- Dega: For a long time.
- Papillon: Then you got a problem.
- Dega: Well, I presume that you have some, uh, goals, some particular need that outrates all the others. I mean, if so... may I aslk what it is?
- Papillon: Money!
- Dega: For what?
- Papillon: Escape.
- Dega: Very good. You keep me alive until we land in Guiana, and I'll underwrite any escape you care to arrange.
- Papillon: Escape for me, not for us!
- Dega: Oh, of course. I, I, I...
- [laughs]
- Dega: . I have no intention, uh, of even attempting to escape - ever!
- Papillon: Done!
- Dega: Did you hear about my wife? She married my attorney. Or, else, he married her. Although, actually, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it all works out to the same thing. Don't you think?
- Papillon: It was the wrong wave. They come in a series of seven. The seventh wave is big enough to take us both out beyond the point of return.
- Warden Barrot: [to Papillon upon his release from solitary confinement after two years following his first escape attempt] Your term is completed.