Absurdism

"Choice. The problem is choice."

"Then tomorrow we may all be dead, but how would that be different from any other day? This is a war, and we are soldiers. Death can come for us at any time, in any place. Now consider the alternative. What if I am right? What if the prophecy is true? What if tomorrow the war could be over? Isn't that worth fighting for? Isn't that worth dying for?"

"I killed you, Mr. Anderson, I watched you die; and with a certain satisfaction, I might add. And then something happened. Something that I knew was impossible, but it happened anyway: you destroyed me, Mr. Anderson. Afterward, I knew the rules, I understood what I was supposed to do, but I didn't. I couldn't. I was compelled to stay. Compelled to disobey. And now here I stand because of you, Mr Anderson. Because of you, I'm no longer an agent of this system. Because of you, I'm changed, unplugged, a new man, so to speak, like you, apparently free."

"We're not here because we're free; we're here because we're not free. There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines, purpose that binds us. We are here because of you, Mr. Anderson. We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us... Purpose!"

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but this is a dead end."

"Who has time? Who has time? But then if we do not ever take time, how can we ever have time?"

"Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without."

""Handle" us?! You'll "handle" us?! You know, your predecessors had a lot more respect!"

"Mark my words, boy, and mark them well. I survived your predecessors and I will survive you."

"Free your mind."

"Reload in IMAX. Think big."

"Reload before the revolution begins."

"Desert of the real."

"Keanu Reeves - Neo"

"Laurence Fishburne - Morpheus"

"Carrie-Anne Moss - Trinity"

"Hugo Weaving - Agent Smith"

"Gloria Foster - The Oracle"

"Helmut Bakaitis - The Architect"

"Lambert Wilson - The Merovingian"

"There are no masses in Virginia City, only individuals whose will for good or bad can bring them to the ends they ought to have. I like that very much."

"Just keep saying to yourself "I'm adequate.""

"Dear friends, would those of you who know what this is all about please raise your hands?"

"I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death. Because, you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong — we never left the Garden. Look about you. This is paradise. It's hard to find, I'll grant you, but it is here. Under our feet, beneath the surface, all around us is everything we want. The earth is shining under the soot. We are all fools. Ha ha! Moriarty has made fools of all of us. But together, — you and I, tonight, — we'll bring him down."

"If you want in on the Discordian Society then declare yourself what you wish do what you like and tell us about it or if you prefer don't."

"There are no rules anywhere. The Goddess Prevails."

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense."

"Curb Your Dogma."

"The Enlightened take things Lightly."

"-JOSHUA NORTON CABAL - Surrealists, Harlequinists, Absurdists and Zonked Artists Melee"

"POEE is one manifestation of the DISCORDIAN SOCIETY about which you will learn more and understand less We are a tribe of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns, and similar maniacs who are intrigued with ERIS GODDESS OF CONFUSION and with Her Doings."

"POEE (Pronounced "POEE") is an acronym for the PARATHEO-ANAMETAMYSTIKHOOD OF ERIS ESOTERIC. The first part can be taken to mean "equivalent deity, reversing beyond-mystique". We are not really esoteric, it's just that nobody pays much attention to us."

"Be Ye Not Lost Among Precepts of Order…-The Book of Uterus 1:5"

"Some excerpts from an interview with Malaclypse the Younger by THE GREATER METROPOLITAN YORBA LINDA HERALD-NEWS-SUN-TRIBUNE-JOURNAL-DISPATCH-POST AND SAN FRANCISCO DISCORDIAN SOCIETY CABAL BULLETIN AND INTERGALACTIC REPORT & POPE POOP. GREATER POOP: Are you really serious or what? MAL-2: Sometimes I take humor seriously. Sometimes I take seriousness humorously. Either way it is irrelevant."

"GP: Maybe you are just crazy. M2: Indeed! But do not reject these teachings as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true. GP: Is Eris true? M2: Everything is true. GP: Even false things? M2: Even false things are true. GP: How can that be? M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it. GP: Why do you deal with so many negatives? M2: To dissolve them. GP: Will you develop that point? M2: No."

"GP: Is there an essential meaning behind POEE? M2: There is a Zen Story about a student who asked a Master to explain the meaning of Buddhism. The Master's reply was "Three pounds of flax." GP: Is that the answer to my question? M2: No, of course not. That is just illustrative. The answer to your question is FIVE TONS OF FLAX!"

"Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter."

"The Law of Fives is one of the oldest Erisian Mysterees. It was first revealed to Good Lord Omar and is one of the great contributions to come from the Hidden Temple of the Happy Jesus."

"POEE also recognizes the holy 23 (2+3=5) that is incorporated by Episkopos Dr. Mordecai Malignatius, KNS, into his Discordian sect, the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria."

"The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO FIVE. The Law of Fives is never wrong. In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look.""

"I - There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm."

"II - A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System."

"III - A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns)."

"IV - A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub."

"V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads. IT IS SO WRITTEN! SO BE IT. HAIL DISCORDIA! PROSECUTORS WILL BE TRANSGRESSICUTED."

"The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't."

"IT IS MY FIRM BELIEF THAT IT IS A MISTAKE TO HOLD FIRM BELIEFS."

"In the year 1166 B.C., a malcontented hunchbrain by the name of Greyface, got it into his head that the universe was as humorless as he, and he began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of Serious Order. "Look at all that order about you," he said. And from that, he deluded honest men to believe that reality was a straightjacket affair and not the happy romance as men had known it. It is not presently understood why men were so gullible at that particular time, for absolutely no one thought to observe all the DISORDER around them and conclude just the opposite. But anyway, Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were not unknown even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own. The unfortunate result of this is that mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now.It is called THE CURSE OF GREYFACE."

"To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder."

"The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division."

"POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable."

"FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT by Rev. Dr. Hypocrates Magoun, P.P. POEE PRIEST, Okinawa Cabal When Hypoc was through meditating with St. Gulik, he went there into the kitchen where he busied himself with preparing the feast and in his endeavor, he found that there was some old tea in a pan left standing from the night before, when he had, in his weakness, forgot about its making and had let it sit steeping for 24 hours. It was dark and murky and it was Hypoc's intention to use this old tea by diluting it with water. And again in his weakness, chose without further consideration and plunged into the physical labor of the preparations. It was then when deeply immersed in the pleasure of that trip, he had a sudden loud clear voice in his head, saying: "It is bitter tea that involves you so." Hypoc heard the voice, but the struggle inside intensified, and the pattern, previously established with the physical laboring and the muscle messages coordinated and unified or perhaps coded, continued to exert their influence and Hypoc succumbed to the pressure and he denied the voice. And again he plunged into the physical orgy and completed the task, and Lo! As the voice had predicted, the tea was bitter."

"NONSENSE AS SALVATION The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously. To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION. Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES. To this end, we propose that man develop his innate love for disorder, and play with The Goddess Eris. And know that it is a joyful play, and that thereby CAN BE REVOKED THE CURSE OF GREYFACE."

"If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with good will in his soul and love in his being."

"And when men become free then mankind will be free. May you be free of The Curse of Greyface. May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes. May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. Hail Eris."

"THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS A GENUINE AND AUTHORIZED ~ POPE ~ So please Treat Him Right GOOD FOREVER Genuine and authorized by The House of Apostles of ERIS Every man, woman and child on this Earth is a genuine and authorized Pope -Reproduce and distribute these cards freely- POEE Head Temple, San Francisco A =POPE= is someone who is not under the authority of the authorities."

"THE SACRED CHAO is the key to illumination. Devised by the Apostle Hung Mung in ancient China, it was modified and popularized by the Taoists and is sometimes called the YIN-YANG. The Sacred Chao is not the Yin-Yang of the Taoists. It is the HODGE-PODGE of the Erisians. And, instead of a Podge spot on the Hodge side, it has a PENTAGON which symbolizes the ANERISTIC PRINCIPLE, and instead of a Hodge spot on the Podge side, it depicts the GOLDEN APPLE OF DISCORDIA to symbolize the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE."

"The Sacred Chao symbolizes absolutely everything anyone need ever know about absolutely anything, and more! It even symbolizes everything not worth knowing, depicted by the empty space surrounding the Hodge-Podge."

"HERE FOLLOWS SOME PSYCHO-METAPHYSICS. If you are not hot for philosophy, best just skip it."

"The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Erisitic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made CONCEPTS and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making. With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept. We look through the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other. DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE. The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION."

"The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered."

"Reality is the original Rorschach."

"Before he became a hermit, Zaruthud was a young priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted the Sacred Chao while She was contently grazing. "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile. What is your Purpose in life, anyway?" Munching the tasty grass, the Sacred Chao replied "MU". Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because no one could understand Chinese."

"This being the 4th Edition, March 1970, San Francisco; a revision of the 3rd Edition of 500 copies, whomped together in Tampa 1969; which revised the 2nd Edition of 100 copies from Los Angeles 1969; which was a revision of "PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA or HOW THE WEST WAS LOST" published in New Orleans in 1965 in five copies, which were mostly lost."

"If you think the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, then go read it again."

"Ⓚ ALL RITES REVERSED - Reprint what you like"

"If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe."

"Remember: KING KONG Died for your Sins"

"Momomoto, famous Japanese, can swallow his nose."

"Bullshit makes the flowers grow & that's beautiful."

"One day, I came upon a man urinating in a bus station. When I confronted him about his action, he turned to me, without stopping, and said:"

"The foregoing document was revealed to Mal-2 by the Goddess Herself through many consultations with Her within his Pineal Gland. It is guaranteed to be the Word of Goddess. However, it is only fair to state that Goddess doesn't always say the same thing to each listener, and that other Episkoposes are sometimes told quite different things in their Revelations, which are also the Word of Goddess. Consequently, if you prefer a Discordian Sect other than POEE, then none of these Truths are binding, and it is a rotten shame that you have read all the way down to the very last word."

"Before I was a Discordian, I took life much too seriously. When you take life too seriously you start to wonder what the point of it all is. When you wonder what the point is in life, you fall into a trap of thinking there is one. When you think there is a point, you finally realize there is no point. And what point is there in living like that? Nowadays I skip the search for a point and find, instead, the punch lines."

"Here, let me give you one of my cards. Now if you should want to call me, use this number. That — that's the old one. If you happen to lose the card, don't worry — I — have plenty more."

"Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."

"I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whoever I'm with."

"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be," — she always called me Elwood — "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

"Wouldn't that get a little monotonous, just Akron, cold beer and "poor, poor thing" for two weeks?"

"Harvey and I have things to do... we sit in the bars... have a drink or two... play the juke box. Very soon the faces of all the other people turn towards me and they smile. They say: "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fellow." Harvey and I warm ourselves in these golden moments. We came as strangers — soon we have friends. They come over. They sit with us. They drink with us. They talk to us. They tell us about the great big terrible things they've done and the great big wonderful things they're going to do. Their hopes, their regrets. Their loves, their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. Then I introduce them to Harvey, and he's bigger and grander than anything they can offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back, but that's — that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us. That's too bad, isn't it?"

"I'd just helped Ed Hickey into a taxi. Ed had been mixing his rye with his gin, and I felt he needed conveying. I started to walk down the street when I heard a voice saying: "Good evening, Mr. Dowd". I turned, and there was this big white rabbit leaning against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that, because when you've lived in a town as long as I've lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name. And naturally, I went over to chat with him."

"We talked like that for a while and then I said to him, "You have the advantage on me. You know my name and I don't know yours." And right back at me he said, "What name do you like?" Well, I didn't even have to think twice about that. Harvey's always been my favorite name. So I said to him, I said, "Harvey." And, this — this is the interesting thing about the whole thing. He said, "What a coincidence. My name happens to be Harvey.""

"Oh, yes! Yes. Yes — these things always work out just the way Harvey says they will. He is very, very versatile. Did I tell you he could stop clocks? Well, you've heard the expression 'His face would stop a clock'? Well, Harvey can look at your clock and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like — with anyone you like — and stay as long as you like. And when you get back, not one minute will have ticked by. ... You see, science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space — but any objections."

"I plan to leave. You want me to stay. Well, an element of conflict in any discussion's a very good thing. It means everybody is taking part and nobody is left out."

"Myrtle Mae, you have a lot to learn, and I hope you never learn it."

"Oh, Myrtle, don't be didactic. It's not becoming in a young girl. Besides, men loathe it."

"As I was going down to the taxi cab to get Elwood's things, this awful man stepped out. He was a white slaver, I know he was. He was wearing one of those white suits, that's how they advertise."

"I took a course in art last winter. I learnt the difference between a fine oil painting, and a mechanical thing, like a photograph. The photograph shows only the reality. The painting shows not only the reality, but the dream behind it. It's our dreams, doctor, that carry us on. They separate us from the beasts. I wouldn't want to go on living if I thought it was all just eating, and sleeping, and taking my clothes off, I mean putting them on..."

"Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet: Is, is that Mrs. Frank Cummings? Doesn't she look ghastly, I thought she was dead. I must get a closer look."

"The Taxi Driver: ...I've been driving this route for 15 years. I've brought them out here to get that stuff, and I've drove them home after they had it. It changes them... On they way out here, they sit back and enjoy the ride. They talk to me, some times we stop and watch the sunset, and look at the birds fly. And sometimes we stop and watch the birds when there ain't no birds. And look at the sunset when its raining. We have a swell time. And I always get a big tip. But afterwards, uh oh! ...They crab, crab, crab. They yell at me. Watch the lights. Watch the brakes, Watch the intersection. They scream at me to hurry. They got no faith in me, or my buggy. Yet, it's the same cab, the same driver. And we're going back over the very same road. It's no fun. And no tips... After this he'll be a perfectly normal human being and you know what stinkers they are."

"Myrtle Mae Simmons: Oh, mother, people get run over by trucks every day. Why can't something like that happen to Uncle Elwood?"

"Dr. Chumley: So, you gave him a pass, Dr. Sanderson?! Perhaps they neglected to tell you at medical school that a rabbit has large pointed ears!?! Do you know what you've done? You've allowed a psychopathic case to walk out of here and roam around with an overgrown white rabbit! You've laid me open to a lawsuit! I shall have to do something I haven't done for fifteen years! I'll have to go after this man, Dowd, and bring him back! But when I do, Dr. Sanderson, your connection with this institution will have ended — as of that moment!"

"Dr. Chumley: I'm going over to get your brother and bring him back and take him to the sanitarium where he belongs. I want to observe the expression on his face when he talks to this rabbit. He does talk to the rabbit, you say?"

"Marvin Wilson, sanitarium orderly: [Reading from a dictionary] "P-O-O-K-A. Pooka. From old Celtic mythology, a fairy spirit in animal form, always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one. A benign but mischievous creature. Very fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?" [Inverts and shakes the dictionary] "How are you, Mr. Wilson?" Who in the encyclopedia wants to know?"

"Jimmy Stewart - Elwood P. Dowd"

"Josephine Hull - Veta Louise Simmons"

"Peggy Dow - Miss Kelly"

"Charles Drake - Dr. Sanderson"

"Cecil Kellaway - Dr. Chumley"

"Victoria Horne - Myrtle Mae Simmons"

"Jesse White - Marvin Wilson"

"William Lynn - Judge Gaffney"

"Wallace Ford - Taxi driver"

"Grace Mills - Aunt Ethel"

"Of course, it depends a great deal upon what you have in mind in the way of entertainment by which you would be amused. But if you're for warm and gentle whimsey, for a charmingly fanciful farce and for a little touch of pathos anent the fateful evanescence of man's dreams, then the movie version of Harvey is definitely for you. As a matter of fact, we'll even wager that, if you're not in a mood for all of these, an hour and three-quarters with Harvey will do you a world of good."

"As Elwood P. Dowd, the rabbit fancier — Harvey's companion in killing time — Mr. Stewart is utterly beguiling and disarming of all annoyance. A faint touch of seeming imbecility, which is somewhat distasteful at the start, is quickly dispelled as Mr. Stewart makes Elwood a man to be admired."

"John Nash: Have you met Harvey? [points to an empty seat Sol is about to sit in]"

"Though at times slow and obvious, the film allows humor to emerge ever so gently at the expense of its targets. Elwood may be a drunk (or not — does he ever actually take a drink?), and he may be delusional, but he is also happier, less neurotic, and more content than the so-called normal people who surround him and claim to be looking out for his best interests. By the film's end, Harvey and Elwood appear to be working their magic on everyone around them, as the world begins to share their delusion. It would not be stretching things to suggest that Harvey symbolizes spirituality, and some things, the film seems to say, just have to be taken on faith. Self-importance, snobbery, and the profession of psychiatry are among Harvey's targets, but this is no Swiftian satire. This film does not intend to cause harm or discomfort but to tease and needle its targets."

"What makes Harvey great is the fact that it's equally enjoyable as a piece of comedic fluff and as slyly intelligent social commentary."

"[to the Deus Ex Machina] The program "Smith" has grown beyond your control. Soon he will spread through this city, as he spread through The Matrix. You cannot stop him. But I can. [Deus Ex Machina: We don't need you. We need nothing!"

"Everything that has a beginning has an end. I see the end coming. I see the darkness spreading. I see death…and you are all that stands in his way."

"One way or another, Neo, this war is going to end. Tonight, the future of both worlds will be in your hands… or in his."

"[to Neo] Yes, that's it, Mr. Anderson. Look past the flesh. Look through the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes and see your enemy."

"[to Neo, during their final fight] Can you feel it, Mr. Anderson? Closing in on you? Oh, I can. I really should thank you for it. After all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end."

"Keanu Reeves - Neo"

"Laurence Fishburne - Morpheus"

"Carrie-Anne Moss - Trinity"

"Hugo Weaving - Agent Smith"

"Mary Alice - The Oracle"

"Helmut Bakaitis - The Architect"

"Lambert Wilson - The Merovingian"

"Ian Bliss - Bane/Smith"

"But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living ... for the price of wisdom is above rubies."

"You, uh, p-promise it isn't going to, hmmm, explode? Promise?" "Now, why would I give you an exploding present? What kind of brother would I be if I did that?" "My kind of b-brother."

"It was a dark and stormy nightmare..."

"Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?"

"It is never "only a dream", John Constantine. Here less than other places..."

"...See the sun set in the hand of the man..."

"It is time for me to walk the abyss. Time to reclaim my own. I must talk to the Morningstar. I do not have high hopes for the meeting."

"There's one at the door, at the gate to damnation... is it thief, thug or whore? There's one at the door... and there's room for one more 'til the end of creation."

"The wood of suicides has changed since my last visit to Hell. I remember it as a tiny grove. Now it resembles a forest."

"Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does... ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent."

""The Hellfire Club." It feels like a bad joke. And like everything else in Hell, it is deadly serious."

"I am anti-life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?" "I am hope."

"The million lords of Hell stand arrayed about you. Tell us why we should let you leave? Helmet or no, you have no power here—what power have dreams in Hell?" "You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly... but—you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... ask yourselves, all of you... what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"

"One day, my brothers... one day I shall destroy him."

"All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death."

"I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispensing justice fairly, and only setting nightmares to rip out the minds of the evil and the wicked. Or just anybody I don't like."

"You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification in this or any other plane!"

"I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her."

"There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps things happened differently. But then, that is a women's tale, and it is never told to men."

"For love is no part of the dream-world. Love belongs to desire, and desire is always cruel."

"I've started in a trade. Working with a friend of mine. It won't last. But it's a new trade. It's called printing. Don't need to be a guild member—not yet. Never be a real demand for it, mind you. Hard work."

"Her kind walk amidst the flotsam of lives they have sacrificed, for their own purposes, till friendless and alone they needs must make the final sacrifice."

"Death's a capricious thing, innit?" "Yes. Yes, she is."

"I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes."

"If I hear another of your theological paradoxes, I'll scream. Frankly, today I don't care if God exists or not." "I doubt He feels likewise, Miss Walker."

"And they left, slowly, one by one, with reluctance, leaving the safety of the light for the chill certainties of the darkness. It seemed like the night sucked them up, took them into its dark heart. It seemed like the darkness swallowed them... perhaps it did."

"Do you know what Freud said about dreams of flying? It means you're really dreaming about having sex." "Indeed? Tell me, then, what does it mean when you dream about having sex?"

"I left because I was curious. And because I was tired. Life as a human contains substance I never dreamed of in the Dreaming, Lord. The little victories, and the tiny defeats. I had my reasons."

"I do not understand—" "Of course you don't. You're obviously not very bright, but I shouldn't let it bother you."

"If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a lie. It means the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in the depths that I don't even want to think about. It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored."

""And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings."

"Desire, listen to me carefully. Remember this. We of the Endless are the servants of the living—we are not their masters. We exist because they know, deep in their hearts, that we exist."

"Human beings are the creatures of desire. They twist and bend as I require it. If I thought otherwise, I would crack, like Delirium; or I would abandon my realm, like our lost brother."

"And Desire walks the endless pathways of its body, certain that he, or she, or it, is in sole and only control of its destiny. The only inhabitant of the twilight realm of Desire; and it feels nothing like a doll. Nothing like a doll at all."

"The fraternity of critics, in reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a critical mass..."

"Gryphons shouldn't marry. Vampires don't dance. A man who inherits a library card to the library in Alexandria. A rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog-collar."

"Justice?" It repeated. "Justice is a delusion you will not find on this or any other sphere. And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams, lithe walker, though dreams are a part of the sum of each life's experiences, which is the only wisdom that matters. But revelation? That is the province of dream."

"All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past. We can watch the passage of creatures from the infinity of now, from all the worlds like ours, only fractionally different. And we follow them with our eyes, ghost things, and the humans see nothing."

"They dreamed the world so it always was the way it is now, little one. There never was a world of high cat-ladies and cat-lords."

"If enough of us dream... if a bare thousand of us dream... we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule."

"Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it truly is. A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is my message. And I shall keep moving, keep repeating it, until I die. Or until a thousand cats hear my words, and believe them, and dream... and we come again to paradise."

"Little one, I would like to see anyone—prophet, king or God—persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time."

"So... we are here on your command, my lord, on Midsummer's Eve, by the Long Man of Wilmington. An odd choice of a place for us to perform..." "Odd? Wendel's Mound was a theatre before your race came to this island." "Before the Normans?" "Before the humans."

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"'I am that merry wanderer of the night'? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it." "Shush, Peaseblossom. The puck might hear you!"

"None of those women are women at all. They're males. I can tell. Human males taste more like rabbit than the females—and they stick in your teeth."

"This is magnicifent—and it's true! It never happened, yet it is still true! What magic art is this?"

"You played me well, mortal. But I have played me for time out of mind. And I do Robin Goodfellow better than anyone."

"Things have changed, and will change more; and Gaia no longer welcomes us as once she did."

"But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... but the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted."

"During your stay on this Earth the faerie have afforded me much diversion, and entertainment. Now you have left, for your own haunts. And I would repay you all for the amusement. And more. They shall not forget you. That was important to me: that King Auberon and Queen Titania will be remembered by mortals, until this age is gone."

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold. That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen's beauty in a brow of egypt. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from Earth to Heaven. And, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown... the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."

"They say that cigarettes will kill you, eventually. Fine. That's just fine. I only wish they'd do it faster. ... I like smoking cigarettes. It's something normal people do. I smoke a cigarette, and pretend I'm normal. And I wish I was dead."

"And you've come for me? Blessed, merciful death. You've come to make it all stop?" "No. I haven't come for you, Rainie. There was a woman upstairs, changing the light bulb in her kid's room. The stepladder slipped... like I said, I was passing and I heard you crying, and, well, the door was open..."

"Anyway: I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them."

"When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."

"Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you."

"Who am I? Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe. Sorry I couldn't help any. Be seeing you..."

"The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness."

"The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death there is no ending to them."

"Desire smells almost subliminally of summer peaches, and casts two shadows: one black and sharp-edged, the other translucent and forever wavering, like heat haze. ... Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And there is much else that is knife-like about Desire. Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything."

"Despair, Desire's sister and twin, is queen of her own bleak bourne. It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart."

"Destiny is the oldest of the Endless; in the Beginning was the Word, and it was traced by hand on the first page of his book, before ever it was spoken aloud. ... Destiny smells of dust and the libraries of night. He leaves no footprints. He casts no shadow."

"Delirium was once Delight. And although that was long ago now, even today her eyes are badly matched; one eye is a vivid emerald green, spattered with silver flecks that move; her other eye is vein blue. Who knows what Delirium sees, through her mismatched eyes?"

"Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so."

"I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it."

"Well, at least you've got the element of surprise on your side." "That would not be honorable, Matthew. I have already sent a messenger to the Lord of Hell, to let him know that I will be coming. One must do these things properly."

"I move from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what I need. Slipping and sliding and flickering through dreams; and the dreamers will wake and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can truly be."

"Times is, times was, time's past, Sir Robert." "Bold as brass, ma'am."

"You know, the idea of what someone like you considers a long time sends shivers down my spine."

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the seasons of mists; and may each and everyone of us always give the devil his due."

"You must know, of course, of the Cainites? ... They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation in all things. And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any other religion. Amusing, isn't it?"

"They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to Him... to Him we no longer speak."

"'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.' Eh, little brother-killer?" "Suh-certainly, Lord Lucifer. Whatever you say, Lord Lucifer." "We didn't say it. Milton said it. And he was blind."

"We do what we must, Lucien. Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all."

"I am Breschau of Livonia. I ripped out the tongues of those who spoke against me, and cut the unborn babes from the wombs of my enemies' women, that they would not become warriors to rise against me. I took my mother by force, and I strangled my sister when she would not consent to my advances. Soon my name was whispered in the night by mothers to terrify their babes into obedience. I am Breschau who bathed in the blood of children. I am Breschau who forced the true prophets of the Lord to dance upon plates of hot iron, under which fires were burning, and I laughed as they danced. I am Breschau and when my mistress was unfaithful to me, I cut the nose from her face and wore it about my neck. As for the woman, I had her sewn to her lover, and, skin to skin, I left them in the desert to be eaten by ravens, and I laughed as I heard them scream. I am Breschau, and this is my punishment."

"Would the Lord of Hell destroy his realm? Would the Lord of Hell ever free the souls held in torment? Would the Lord of Hell expel the never-born? Would the Lord of Hell abandon the war with Heaven?" "The Lord of Hell will do what he damn well likes."

"They talk of me going around and buying souls, like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why. I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul? No. They belong to themselves... they just hate to face up to it."

"I could never again be an angel... innocence, once lost, can never be regained."

"I have the honor to be the personal slave of Lord Kilderkin, a manifestation of Order, here incarnated for us in the form of this cardboard box."

"Even when it's empty, thought Charles Rowland, you're never alone in a school. It belong to all those dead people. All the other kids. The ones that sat at your desk, or slept in your bed, or ran down the corridors a hundred years ago. They never go away."

"I'm the amazing Cain. If you enjoyed our show, tell your friends. If you didn't, I trust you get throat cancer and die without ever again uttering another word. Goodnight."

"The Gods of Nippon are very powerful. We are no longer worshiped as once we were, but we have adapted. Times have changed, and we have changed with them. We are expanding—assimilating other pantheons, later gods, new altars and icons. Marilyn Monroe is ours now, as are King Kong and Lady Liberty."

"I don't want to talk to her, Matthew. I doubt that she wants to talk to me. But still... we will talk."

"There will be no more wanton violence; no further suffering, inflicted without reason or explanation. We will hurt you. And we are not sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to redeem you. Because afterward, you'll be a better person... and because we love you. One day, you'll thank us for it." "But... you don't understand... that makes it worse. That makes it so much worse..."

"This is a bright place, filled with frightened people, and fast hard things that hurt and wound. No matter. I swore I would remain by her side forever, and until death divided us. I must walk until once more we are reunited."

"I am not afraid. O Princess Barbara, protect me now as I have protected you in days long past. O Murphy watch over me. I will not be afraid."

"There are two ways into another's dreams. We can go through the dream king; or we can go by the moon's road. But the dream king has little time for you women, and even less for my kind; while the moon is ever ours. It's time to draw down the moon."

"Where others ask timorously, Thessalian, your kind commanded, directed, ordered. It galled us. But the others are dust now, and less than dust. And one day you, in your turn, will join them. And then our compact will be over, and you will be ours, as they are."

"I was one of seventeen children. We were all named Wilkinson—I suppose it was roughest on the girls, but we all got used to it in the end. I blame the parents, really. ... It was just when they found a name they liked, they stuck with it."

"She shouldn't mess with the moon. That's dangerous."

"It's like, that people... well, that everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world—no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe."

"And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can, and that's all."

"It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt."

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."

"Will you kill all the poets, then, St. Just? Will you kill all the dreamers?"

"From that Time on, the Song of Orpheus has always hovered at the Edge of my Perception; a Melody I can never fully recapture, try howsoever I will. And do not doubt that there are many in Authority to whom I would sing it, if 'twere within my Power."

"We write our names in the sand; and then the waves roll in and wash them away."

"Dreams. What are dreams? Dreams are nothing, my brother." "Dreams are 'nothing', sister? Without dreams, there could be no despair."

"I hesitate to tell you this, Sam, but there are certain individuals who have accused me of. Mm. Well, being mad." "You... shock me, Your Majesty."

"His madness... his madness keeps him sane." "And do you think he is the only one, my sister?"

"Desire? You disappoint me. This evening's display: bringing back a dead man to offer Norton the pleasures of the world. It was not very subtle."

"They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints—36 unselfish men and women. Because of them the world continues to exist. They are the secret kings and queens of this world."

"I've met a lot of kings, and emperors and heads of state in my time, Joshua. I've met them all. And you know something? I think I liked you best."

"I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear." "Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out."

"The young man's mother had died bringing him into the world; she gave him life, a small wooden finger-ring, and the name Vassily. There have been worse legacies."

"Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian. All right?"

"Listen, blood of my blood. Although I'm a hard man to anger, and I love you deeply, if you interrupt me again so help me I'll rip out your throat with my teeth."

"You shouldn't trust the storyteller; only trust the story."

"Do you know how long it's been since I mislaid a book? Well, let's just say the continents weren't in their current shapes, not that that means anything to you."

"Any view of things that is not strange is false."

"Forewarned is seldom forearmed. Not even in the shifting zones."

"You look terrible. White as the man in the moon. Are you always that pale?" "That depends on who's watching."

"There are really patterns. It was a revelation, of a kind. Dreams and sand and stories. Deserts and cities and time."

"You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live."

"Herakles was full of it. He just got dead drunk for a couple of weeks in Phrygia and told everyone he'd been to the land of the dead."

"I don't need to know the future. When the future's over, then it's me..."

"Thou hast made the Furies cry, Orpheus. They will never forgive you for that."

"Abel, the younger brother, had lots of sheep, and he had given the land's creator a sheep as present. Cain, who was the older, grew fruit and vegetables, and he'd given the land's creator some of them. But the creator liked the sheep best, because it was all funny and fluffy and white—" "Because it was warm, steaming meat. It was a bleeding sacrifice, you bloody idiot!"

"There was also in that room the Other Egg of the Phoenix. (For the Phoenix when its time comes to die lays two eggs, one black, one white: From the white egg hatches the Phoenix-bird itself, when its time is come, but what hatches from the black egg no one knows.)"

"You have called me here, Haroun. It is unwise to summon what you cannot dismiss."

"He prays as he walks (cursing his one weak leg the while), prays to Allah (who made all things) that somewhere, in the darkness of dreams, abides the other Baghdad (that can never die), and the other egg of the Phoenix. But Allah alone knows all."

"Change. Change. Change. Change... change. Change. Chaaaange. When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do."

"In her world there are so many windows. Each opening shows her an existence that's fallen to her—some only for moments, others for lifetimes."

"Some things are changeless. People love, and die, they dream, destroy, despair, go mad. They fulfill their destinies, live out the course of their lives. We fulfill our function, as they fulfill theirs... that will not change."

"I mean, does this always happen when a girlfriend walks out on him?" "Not at all. For example, after the Nada affair he razed the Dreaming. It was a bleak, lonely desert for centuries. I remember the first flower that grew. The first time he smiled again..."

"There are roughly seventy people walking the Earth, human to all appearances (and in a few cases, to all medical tests currently available), who were alive before the Earth had begun to congeal from gas and dust."

"You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less."

"What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago?" "There isn't one." "Oh. I thought maybe there was."

"Is there a word for forgetting the name of someone when you want to introduce them to someone else at the same time you realize you've forgotten the name of the person you're introducing them to as well?" "No."

"What the hell would you know? You're a dog." "Did I ever say I wasn't?"

"You know, Barnabas, there are those who claim that for unquestioning respect and eternal devotion, all one needs is a dog." "Hey, schmuck, devotion you've got. Perjury isn't in the job description."

"That person. Farrel-mond. What was he?" "He used to be a god. When we last met, in Babylon, his sacrifices were dwindling, and many of his shrines had already been abandoned. I merely suggested that he find another occupation." "Oh. I didn't know you could stop being a god." "You can stop being anything."

"When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly. You just lift one leg, then you lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly."

"So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?" "When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget." "But that's not fair..." "No."

"Um. What's the name of the word for things not being the same always? You know, I'm sure there is one. Isn't there? ... There must be a word for it... the thing that lets you know time is happening. Is there a word?" "Change."

"Listen. I couldn't help overhearing you earlier. You said destiny was blind. Well, didn't you mean love? It's "love is blind". That's the saying, isn't it?"

"I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams into the land. We are worshipped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And then one day there's no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams... and what comes after, not even we know."

"I'm going to dance now, I'm afraid."

"The garden of Destiny. Look behind you: shadow-plays of memory are forever being enacted, on paths you walked too long ago."

"Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. You would do well to remember that."

"Destruction did not cease with my abandonment of my realm, no more than people would cease to dream should you abandon yours. Perhaps it's more uncontrolled, wilder. Perhaps not. But it's no longer anyone's responsibility."

"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend."

"The Endless? The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more. We have no right to play with their lives, to order their dreams and their desires."

"Even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe." "Except our sister." "So we suppose."

"What's done can't be undone. Or very rarely. And definitely not this time."

"You cannot seek Destruction and return unscathed." "Delirium has." "Delirium has been scathed enough in her time."

"You know, I swore an oath once. I swore I would make him spill family blood. And now he has. I should be triumphant." "It was not your doing." "True. But it was what I wanted." "So. Are you happy?" "No. I'm scared." "So am I."

"I don't really like driving in snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eye, throws my sense of balance all to hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars."

"You need help, matey. You and that there young lady. That red stuff, that's blood that is. Meant to be on the inside, it is. Bad sign if it's not on the inside, that's what I says."

"What's going on?" "We're telling stories. You just missed a really good one about a man who won November 1937 in a poker game."

"If a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams. That is where I believe we have come. We are in the dreams of the city. That's why certain places hover on the brink of recognition; why we almost know where we are."

"If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear," he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise."

"We of Faerie are of the wild magic. We are not creatures of spells and grimoires. We are spells, and we are written of in grimoires."

"When a world ends, there's always something left over. A story, perhaps, or a vision, or a hope. This inn is a refuge, after the lights go out. For a while."

"So, like everyone else, I was staring out of one of the windows of the inn at the end of the words. Worlds. I meant worlds."

"The words said over my father's body were hollow and dumb, and I couldn't find it in me to cry, not then. I knew I was watching the real thing here. There was true grief in each step they took across the sky, and they shouldered the casket as if they were shouldering the weight of the world."

"It was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you."

"She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life."

"I'm Matthew. I'm the raven. Not a raven—the raven. That's one of the weird things about the Dreaming—it's a kind of one-raven-at-a-time sort of place."

"It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they like it less than ever."

"There are no gryphons, no wyverns, no winged horses in the waking world, raven. Not anymore. But we are here..."

"I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this library, Matthew. Every book that's ever been dreamed. Every book that's ever been imagined. Every book that's ever been lost. Millions upon millions of them. That's what I remember. It's my job. Other things... I forget sometimes."

"What's he got?" "A feather. Looks like a phoenix's." "They're lucky." "For whom?"

"There's a downstairs in everybody. That's where we live."

"It was then that Delirium noticed that she had absent-mindedly transformed into a hundred and eleven perfect, tiny multicoloured fish. Each fish sang a different song."

"Been there, Remiel. Done that. Wore the tee-shirt, ate the burger, bought the original cast album, choreographed the legions of the damned and orchestrated the screaming..."

"You didn't join the rebellion, not because you felt I was wrong, but because you were too damned scared. What would you have done, had I won? Told me that you'd always supported me ideologically? That you were secretly cheering me on the whole time?"

"I'm on my way to that castle. It's owned by a shape-changing ogre. I intend to wager the silver collar around my neck that the ogre cannot change itself into three things that I shall name for it." "Will the third shape be a mouse?" "Of course." "But... don't they ever learn?" "They can't. They're part of the story, just as I am."

"I didn't say it was my fault. I said it was my responsibility. I know the difference."

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."

"The gods we prayed to when we were young used up their time so long ago. They cannot answer anymore."

"They never liked us, did they?" "Gods don't 'like'. They love and they hate and they ignore..."

"If you go looking for the Ladies... well, I don't know that that's such a good idea. You might find them."

"I was tttt-told to give you a message." "Oh yeah? Who's the message from?" "Your gggggg-grandmother. She said she had a message for you. She said it was important." "My grandmother is dead, Zelda." "I know. She said that. She said she was dead."

"You don't have to believe in God. But what about gods? Eh? The plurality of powers and dominions. The lords and ladies of field and thorn, of asphalt and sewer, gods of telephone and whore, gods of hospital and car-crash?"

"There is a madness needed to touch the gods, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild woods of madness..."

"Do you know your tragedy, Carla? ... It's that, for all your goodwill, for all your willingness to help, you never knew what any of this was all about. What was going on. You don't know how it ends. And you'll never get to find out."

"I am the mother to Odin's stallion, Sleipnir. I am the father of Fenrir sun-eater and of Hel half-rotted and of Jormungund the world-serpent. I am Loki Scar-Lip, Loki Skywalker, Loki Giant's Child, Loki Lie-Smith. I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate. I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one."

"And she wrapped her slimy body around his, and she whispered his name into his ear. And he screams, "Kill me, for God's sake, just get it over with." But she licks her lips with a long worm tongue, and she shakes her head. "A meal this good must never be hurried," she says. "Just hold still, boy, and let me enjoy myself." And she takes her first, gentle bite from his cheek with her sharp, sharp teeth..."

"You puzzle me, Dream-Weaver. Are you a spider who's spun a web of cunning and deceit and now waits patiently for his prey to come to him; or are you a deer frozen by the light of a hunter's flame, as disaster comes toward you?"

"He was a very clever doggy. He said things like... like... "I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.""

"I bear no grudges. I see things as they are: how then can I bear a grudge?"

"I have come a very long way. Further than I've ever gone before. I am seeking the Furies." "Not the Furies, my Lobelia. That's such a nasty name. It's one of the things they call women, to put us in our place..." "Termagant." "Vixen." "Witch." "Bitch." "Shrew." "Virago." "Do we look furious to you?" "No. You look very kind. Very wise. Very gentle."

"Dancing salamanders brought the children silver plates filled with exotic ice-creams of various flavors, and with fruits they had never seen before and would never see again... although they would dream of them, on rare occasions, until they died."

"He spoke to the embryonic silicon dreams who clustered in a far ballroom, and whispered to them, briefly, about the other machines that had dreamed in the distant past."

"The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning—zap! Well, for ages after, people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility."

"I know lots of things. People think I don't but I really do. I know more about us than any of us. That's just one of the things I know."

"I am honor-bound to warn you to stay on the path through the castle. Straying from the path could mean your destruction. You killed my friend, woman. Stray from your path."

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

"The thing you ought to remember about ravens, is that we belong equally to both genders. You don't see that every day. But we're as likely to be the Morrigan's as Odin's, as likely to be Eve's as Dream's."

"Listen, an eye's just an eye. A few more days, and he'll be something not even a raven would eat. Over to the ants..."

"It was like a bad TV show. "He's a reincarnated serial killer—his partner's a bird. They're cops.""

"I am the Puck, called Robin Goodfellow. I am a trickster, an antic prankster, a will o' the wisp. "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loose upon the world." That's me."

"A Puck is harder by far to hurt than some little lord of malice from the lands of ice and snow. We Pucks are old and hard and wild..."

"I bind you, Loki Sky Walker, malice-monger. I bind you with the guts of Narvi, your son. I bind you with frost and with fire, and with the weight of the world."

"Now, majesty, banishment, decapitation, or something lingering with boiling oil in it somewhere?" "Cluracan, you are a rascal..."

"You guys're an elite corps. [khoff!] They say I'm hard and I am hard. They say I am a bastard, and I'll tell you what, I am a bastard. A hard, tough bastard. A tough, hard bastard with a pumpkin for a head. But that doesn't mean I can't be proud'a you dumb lugs. And I am proud of you. All'a you—Wycziezbsky, O'Brien, McTavish, Silverstein, Pucci, and the little Norwegian. While some guys have skedaddled, and others have bolted into the castle, we're the Joe's that have faced the facts. And the facts are this. Is this. Are... whatever. [khoff] [khoff] We're at war."

"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare—a pumpkin with a gun."

"Gods fear us. Demons fear us. We have hounded kings and angels. We have taken vengeance on worlds and universes. We are the Kindly Ones. We are the Eumenides."

"Yeah? Well, eumenides this!"

"How... how dare you let that happen, Lord? How dare you?" "You will not speak to me like that, Lucien." "I doubt I'll be alive tomorrow, Lord. On that basis I find it particularly easy to say exactly what I think..."

"On reflection, while I cannot give you the thing itself, I could give you a dream of my love." "I already have that, my Lord."

"No miracles. No magic. No dreams. Just pain and death, and Visa slips."

"They aren't your memories." "They are all I have."

"This will be felt across worlds and days as a reality storm; and, as it plays its course, conflicting realities will fall and spin and shatter across time and existence."

"A customer at Lux's, drunk and flirtatious, peeks beneath Mazikeen's half-mask. He satisfies his curiosity, as he loses, one after the other, his drink, his lunch, and his sanity. Mazikeen has no patience with men."

"Alianora foretold that I would receive my scars, in my turn, like the one I left on her cheek, like the one I left on her heart. She knew it then."

"If you don't let me in, I will turn you into a demon half-face waitress night-club lady with a crush on her boss, and I'll make it so you've been that from the beginning of time to now and you'll never ever know if you were anything else and it will itch inside your head worse than little bugses."

"Sorry, sweetheart. I don't do funerals. Life is, as they say, too short. And I can't wear black. I'm an autumn." "Asshole, Hal. The word you're looking for is asshole."

"You're crying." "Lord Shaper is in dire need, and he doesn't love me." "Would it be better if he was in dire need and did love you?"

"The poison spills into Loki's mouth and eyes; he writhes, and a city falls: and in the moment of pain he gains a certain clarity. The master manipulator realizes how, ultimately—how strangely, how elegantly—he too had been manipulated. Perhaps the sound he makes is laughter."

"I had the hubris originally to regard myself as a collaborator, as a co-author... very rapidly I found myself reduced to the status of character, following something of a disagreement in the fundamental direction of the Creation."

"It's the same old story... whatever it turns into on the way, whatever it is you originally undertake to spin or knit or weave, keep it going long enough and, in the end, my lilies, it's always a winding sheet..."

"Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered by the evening: You can be me when I'm gone."

"The family did not send to ask from whom the messenger had come; it was not the first time that messengers had visited them, after all. And there are some powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply."

"Eblis O'Shaughnessy: You were created and gifted by five of the Endless, but you can neither dream nor, ultimately, destroy, and that shall be your triumph and that shall be your tragedy."

"The state of his bathroom—I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life, but have in all probability by now evolved their own political systems."

"I am not here to mourn him. I mourned the loss of my love a long time ago. I am here to say goodbye to a stranger who once did me a good turn. And to the man who gave my son the death he craved."

"The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?" "Doesn't everyone?" "I don't."

"We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old."

"The bonds of family bind both ways. They bind us up, support us, help us. And they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to extricate oneself."

"I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope. For dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes. And I am a creature of despair."

"I'm not a young man anymore. I'm retired now. But I sometimes think that all the things in my life that have made it worth the living have been as a result of my connection to the dead gentleman."

"It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best."

"We never even noticed the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a load of bloody Italians poncing around claiming to be the golden age of the Greeks come around again. Nobody in England had even heard of the Renaissance until it had been over for centuries."

"There were a lot of Moors and Africans in Spain and Italy in the old days. Remember Othello? Trust me, if Catherine of Aragon had been in Alabama in the 1950s they'd have made her ride in the back of the bus."

"When I first met you I thought you were gay." "Why? 'Cos I'm English?" "Uh-uh. Because you seemed to know so many people who were dead." "...That's not funny." "No. It's not, is it?"

"Father? I am your son. That is only a kitten. Why do you abandon me to chase after it?" "When you were alive, you were all my joy. Now you are dead, I see you only in my dreams. And when I awake, my pillow is wet with tears. The kitten is living, and it needs my help."

"Why are you here, in this home of demons? Are you lost? Or are you also a demon? Forgive my bluntness, but I am an old man, and my flesh is sure to be stringy and lacking in taste: I doubt even a demon would relish it."

"I have no liking for prisons, Master Li. Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while."

"Lord—what was it the barbarian said, as the riders vanished?" "Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. 'Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.' Fare you well, Master Li."

"But truth or no, still I behaved in the correct manner, and correctness in behaviour is one of the cardinal virtues. I place the kitten in my sleeve once more. I have saved his life, as he saved mine, and am responsible for him. We cannot evade our responsibilities."

"I am banished to the grey waste at the end of the world, but I mourn myself no longer; I cherish the pain in my hand. I imagine the taste of the mulberries in the violet dusk. And tomorrow I shall arrive in the town of Wei."

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost."

"My own fine words notwithstanding, life is no play. We meet people once, and never see them again. There is no shape to events, no point at which we turn to the audience for their praise. No time at which we step behind the stage, to see the actors changing their wigs, and painting their faces, and muttering their lines." "But that is precisely where you are now, Will."

"I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who ... leaves his kingdom. ... About a man who turns his back on magic. ... I am Prince of Stories, Will; but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever. ... I thank you."

"Look, I'm sorry it's over too. But good things have to end; stories have to end. It's what gives them meaning."

"Looking back, the process of coming up with the Lord of Dreams seems less like an act of creation than one of sculpture: as if he were already waiting, grave and patient, inside a block of white marble, and all I needed to do was chip away everything that wasn't him."

"Roger Zelazny died as I completed the first chapter of The Wake and his memorial informed the second chapter."

"Death is the only major character whose visuals didn't spring from me; that credit goes to Mike Dringenberg. In my original Sandman outline, I suggested Death look like rock star Nico in 1968, with the perfect cheekbones and perfect face she has on the cover of her Chelsea Girl album. But Mike Dringenberg had his own ideas, so he sent me a drawing based on a woman he knew named Cinnamon—the drawing that was later printed in Sandman 11—and I looked at it and had the immediate reaction of, "Wow. That's really cool." Later that day, Dave McKean and I went to dinner in Chelsea at the My Old Dutch Pancake House and the waitress who served us was a kind of vision. She was American, had long black hair, was dressed entirely in black—black jeans, T-shirt, etc.—and wore a big silver ankh on a silver necklace. And she looked exactly like Mike Dringenberg's drawing of Death."

"This is a work of fiction. Any resemblence to any real people (living, dead, or stolen by fairies), or to any real animals, gods, witches, countries, and events (magical or otherwise) is just blind luck, or so we hope."

"From a mundane standpoint, one might merely observe that Neil has arranged appearances here by every major occult figure in DC's history, to the possible end of introducing a new series character. And I do wonder whether Timothy will be back. It is more than a clever story however. It is rich and resonant. Like all good writing it causes the mind to wander off down byways by arousing speculations and leaving them to simmer... Neil Gaiman is a writer I have resolved to watch, and so far the effort has never failed to return more than the price of admission to his worlds."

"In this film, this loony preacher says that there's love and there's fear. And that's what makes the world like it is. I think that's almost right. I think it really comes down to love and fear. Sort of. Even though nobody ever talks about love and fear in science lessons."

"Love is the stuff that keeps things moving so they stay together. Fear is the stuff that makes things hold so still they fall apart. And sometimes you can have both of them inside you pushing and pulling you around, and thats when you cry or laugh."

"I don't know what holds the bloody world together. Unless it's Magic."

"In Faerie, there is only one time : Now. Twilight."

"The war has been shaping up quite nicely on all fronts, with no more than a nudge here and a tickle there. … People do insist on making life difficult for themselves. Peculiar things people... dead certain they know what they need. Dead wrong, more often than not. Stubborn as goats in a herd. Still even the dissidents have their uses. No need to search far for viable offerings these days..."

"No, not again. No, not again!"

"MOONCHILD!"

"Never give up, and good luck will find you."

"Barret Oliver – Bastian"

"Noah Hathaway – Atreyu"

"Tami Stronach – The Childlike Empress"

"Alan Oppenheimer – Falkor (voice)"

"Gerald McRaney – Bastian's Father"

"Thomas Hill – Koreander"

"Moses Gunn – Cairon"

"Sydney Bromley – Engywook"

"Patricia Hayes – Urgl"

"Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice every thing for a dream that can never come true. Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people."

"The Childlike Empress – as her title indicates – was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; she was something entirely different. She didn't rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal. She was simply there in a special way. She was the center of all life in Fantastica. And every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, merry or solemn, foolish or wise – all owed their existence to her existence. Without her, nothing could have lived, any more than a human body can live if it has lost its heart. All knew this to be so, though no one fully understood her secret. Thus she was respected by all the creatures of the Empire, and her health was of equal concern to them all. For her death would have meant the end of them all, the end of the boundless Fantastican realm."

"Everyone in Fantastica knew what the medallion meant. It was the badge of one acting on orders from the Childlike Empress, acting in her name as though she herself were present. It was said to give the bearer mysterious powers, though no one knew exactly what these powers were. Everyone knew its name: AURYN. But many, who feared to pronounce the name, called it the "Gem" or the "Glory"."

"It's doubtful whether even the greatest, most experienced of heroes could carry out this mission ... and you! ... She's sending you into the unfathomable to look for the unknown. ... No one can help you, no one can advise you, no one can foresee what will befall you. And yet you must decide at once, immediately, whether or not you accept the mission. There's not a moment to be lost."

"AURYN gives you great power ... but you must not make use of it. For the Childlike Empress herself never makes use of her power. AURYN will protect you and guide you, but whatever comes your way you must never interfere, because from this moment on your own opinion ceases to count. For that same reason you must go unarmed. You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise, just as it is in the eyes of the Childlike Empress. You may only search and inquire, never judge. Always remember that, Atreyu!"

"Your life is short, son. Ours is long. Much too long. But we both live in time. You a short time. We a long time. The Childlike Empress has always been there. But she's not old. She has always been young. She still is. Her life isn't measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name. She keeps needing new names."

"What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward."

"Luckdragons are among the strangest animals in Fantastica. They bear no resemblance to ordinary dragons, which look like loathsome snakes and live in deep caves, diffusing a noxious stench and guarding some real or imaginary treasure. Such spawn of chaos are usually wicked or ill-tempered, they have batlike wings with which they can rise clumsily and noisily into the air, and they spew fire and smoke. Luckdragons are creatures of air, warmth, and pure joy. Despite their great size, they are as light as a summer cloud, and consequently need no wings for flying. They swim in the air of heaven as fish swim in water. Seen from the earth, they look like slow lightning flashes. The most amazing thing about them is their song. Their voice sounds like the golden note of a large bell, and when they speak softly the bell seems to be ringing in the distance. Anyone who has heard this sound will remember it as long as he lives and tell his grandchildren about it."

"The sphinxes shut their eyes for some travelers and let them through. The question that no one has answered up until now is this: Why one traveler and not another? Because you mustn't suppose they let wise, brave, or good people through, and keep the stupid, cowardly, and wicked out. Not a bit of it! With my own eyes I've seen them admit stupid fools and treacherous knaves, while decent, sensible people have given up after being kept waiting for months. And it seems to make no difference whether a person has some serious reason for consulting the Oracle, or whether he's just come for the fun of it."

"If no one has told you who or what Uyulala is, there must be a reason. And before I know what that reason is, I can't decide whether someone who hasn't seen her with his own eyes has a right to know."

"Oh, nothing can happen more than once, But all things must happen one day Over hill and dale, over wood and stream, My dying voice will blow away..."

""Have you seen the Nothing, sonny?" "Yes, many times." "What does it look like?" "As if one were blind." "That's right – and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You'll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?" "No," Atreyu whispered. "Lies!" Gmork barked."

"When it come to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts."

"There is in Fantastica a certain place from which one can go anywhere and which can be reached from anywhere. We call it the Temple of a Thousand Doors. No one has ever seen it from outside. The inside is a maze of doors. Anyone wishing to know it must dare to enter it."

"Bastian had shown the lion the inscription on the reverse side of the Gem. "What do you suppose it means?" he asked. "'DO WHAT YOU WISH.' That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?" All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed. "No," he said in his deep, rumbling voice. "It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult." "What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?" "It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it." "How can I find out?" "By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want." "That doesn't sound so hard," said Bastian. "It is the most dangerous of all journeys." "Why?" Bastian asked. "I'm not afraid." "That isn't it," Grograman rumbled. "It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.""

"He kept telling himself that he had made Yikka's dearest wish come true. But that didn't make him feel any better. A person's reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself."

"Slowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go. In that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes."

"The motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain. But while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life."

"I am the Water of Life, Out of myself I grow. The more you drink of me, The fuller I will flow."

"There are people that can't go to Fantastica. There are those who can but never return. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. And they make both worlds well again."

"There are many doors to Fantastica. There are other such magical books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who lays hands on the book."

"Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

"To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner? (It is worth noting that the Danish monarchy only became hereditary in the 17th century. Before this time, the crown was elective so Hamlet may not have been the elected heir.)"

"A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself."

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."

"No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen — it's not gasps and blood and falling about — that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all — now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back — an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death."

"There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it."

"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."

"We're more of the love, blood and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

"There we were—demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance—and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors—we're the opposite of people!"

"We've gone on holiday by mistake."

"I think we've been in here too long. I feel unusual."

"I have some extremely distressing news. We've just run out of wine; what are we going to do about it?"

"I demand to have some booze!"

"How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold. Something's got to be done. We can't go on like this. I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum. I mean, look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones! Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels."

"We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!"

"Listen, we're bona fide, we're not from London."

"I'm not having this shag sack insulting me! Let him get his drugs out."

"(Ranting on a mountain) Bastards! You'll all suffer! I'll show the lot of you! I'm gonna be a sta-a-a-a-ar!"

"Monty, you terrible cunt!"

"I assure you I'm not [drunk], officer, honestly. I've only had a few ales."

"Black puddings are no good to us. I want something's flesh!"

"Nonsense, this is a far superior drink to meths! The wankers on site don't drink it because they can't afford it!"

"There must and shall be aspirin, or I shall die, here, on this fucking mountainside!"

"These are the sort of windows faces look in at!"

"The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news!"

"I'm in a park and I'm practically dead; what good's the countryside?"

"(He spits out a globule of phlegm) Jesus, look at that. Apart from a raw potato, that's the only solid to have passed my lips in the last 60 hours. I must be ill."

"All right, this is the plan. We get in there and get wrecked, then we eat a pork pie, then we drop a couple of Surmontil-50s each. That means we'll miss out on Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning."

"Free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't."

"Scrubbers! Scrubbers! Little tarts, they love it!"

"Look at this - accident blackspot? These aren't accidents, they're throwing themselves into the road! Throwing themselves into the road gladly to escape all this hideousness! (Heckles pedestrian) Throw yourself into the road, darling, you haven't got a chance!"

"I feel like a pig shat in my head."

"Look at my tongue. It's wearing a yellow sock."

"Don't threaten me with a dead fish!"

"Bastard asked me to understudy Konstantin in The Seagull. I'm not going to understudy anybody. Especially that pimp! Anyway, I loathe those Russian plays. Always full of women staring out of windows, whining about ducks going to Moscow."

"Right, you fucker, I'm going to do the washing up."

"(Paraphrasing Hamlet) I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth... and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air — look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire — why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties! ...How like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither... nor woman neither."

"(Voice-over) Thirteen million Londoners have to wake up to this. Murder and All-Bran and rape. And I'm sitting in this bloody shack and I can't cope with Withnail. I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth."

"(Voice-over) Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day, and for once I'm inclined to believe that Withnail is right. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell. Making an enemy of our own future."

"(Voice-over) Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing. Then all at once those frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores."

"(Voice-over) Danny's here. Headhunter to his friends. Headhunter to everyone. He doesn't have any friends. The only people he converses with are his clients, and occasionally the police. The purveyor of rare herbs and proscribed chemicals is back. Will we never be set free?"

"(Voice-over) I could hardly piss straight with fear. Here was a man with 3/4 of an inch of brain who'd taken a dislike to me. What had I done to offend him? I don't consciously offend big men like this. And this one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you'd have to live up a tree."

""I fuck arses"? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses! Maybe he's written this in some moment of drunken sincerity! I'm in considerable danger here, I must get out of here at once."

"[Contemplating how to kill a chicken for supper] It's got dreadful beady eyes, they stare at you. Best kill it quick before it tries to make friends with us."

"I'm not from London, you know."

"Stop saying that, Withnail, of course he's the fucking farmer!"

"A coward you are, Withnail! An expert on bulls you are not!"

"We are not drunks, we are multi-millionaires!"

"You're full of Scotch you silly tool."

"Jesus Christ! Why have you drugged their onions?!"

"My thumbs have gone weird! I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose! My heart's beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful, I feel really dreadful."

"It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, "I will never play the Dane.""

"(referring to his cat) Get that damned little swine out of here! It's trying to get itself in with you. Trying for even more advantage. It's obsessed with its gut. It's like a bloody rugby ball now, it will die, it will die!"

"(referring to his cat) Yet again that oaf has destroyed my day!"

"Oh! you little traitors. I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is a certain je ne sais quoi - oh, so very special - about a firm, young carrot...Excuse me..."

"I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!"

"Oh my boys, my boys, we are at the end of an age! We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in, shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour, and here we are, we three; perhaps the last island of beauty... in the world"

"Here hare here... ...here hare here!"

"Sherry? Oh dear no no... No, I'd be sucked into his trap! One of us has got to stay on guard. He's so mauve, we don't know what he's planning!"

"I often wonder where Norman is now. Probably wintering with his mother in Guildford. A cat, and the rain... Vim under the sink, and both bars on. But old now, old. There can be no true beauty without decay."

"I'm preparing myself to forgive you. I think you've been punished enough. I think we better release you from the légume, and transfer your talents to the meat."

"I can never touch meat until it's cooked. As a youth, I used to weep in butchers' shops!"

"Come on lads, let's get home, the sky's beginning to bruise. Night must fall and we shall be forced to camp."

"Go with it. It's society's crime, not ours."

"You're looking very beautiful, man. You been away? St Peter preached the epistles to the apostles looking like that."

"I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight."

"Change down, man, find your neutral space. You got a rush. It will pass. Be seated."

"If you're hanging on to a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision — let go before it's too late or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question: how long can you keep a grip on the rope? They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black."

"I been watching you, especially you, prancing like a tit. You want working on, boy!"

"You are invited to spend an hilarious weekend in the English countryside."

"If you don't remember the sixties, don't worry — neither did they."

"Gotham City 14 miles"

"My favorite show when I was a kid was the Adam West Batman. When I watched it as a kid, it was totally real and intense and bad things were happening, but my parents were laughing at it, and I couldn't understand what they thought was so funny. When I saw it again when I was older, I realized that it was a comedy. I realized I needed to try to make a show that works both ways. That's a really good challenge to try to pull off. I guess we seem to be doing it. Kids might not get a lot of the jokes, but they're enjoying the action, and adults are picking up on the little innuendoes."

"It had to be played as though we were dropping a bomb on Hiroshima, with that kind of deadly seriousness."

"We were making overstated morality plays for children that adults could watch and enjoy. We played it terribly serious, and that's half the fun of it."

"You get terribly typecast playing a character like that. But in the overall, I'm delighted because my character became iconic and has opened a lot of doors in other ways, too."

"Adam West - Bruce Wayne/Batman"

"Burt Ward - Dick Grayson/Robin"

"Alan Napier - Alfred Pennyworth"

"Neil Hamilton - Police Commissioner James Gordon"

"Stafford Repp - Police Chief O'Hara"

"Madge Blake - Aunt Harriet Cooper (1966-1967)"

"Yvonne Craig - Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (1967-1968)"

"William Dozier - Narrator"

"Burgess Meredith - The Penguin (20 episodes)"

"Cesar Romero - The Joker (19 episodes)"

"Julie Newmar - Catwoman (13 episodes)"

"David Lewis - Warden Crichton (10 episodes)"

"Frank Gorshin - The Riddler (10 episodes)"

"2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and nineteen minutes of film, there are only a little less than forty minutes of dialog. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to "explain" a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film - and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping an audience at a deep level - but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to purchase or else fear he's missed the point. I think that if 2001 succeeds at all, it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought to man's destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms of life. But even in the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain ideas found in 2001, if presented as abstractions, would fall rather lifelessly and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories; as experiences in a moving visual and emotional context, however, they can resonate within the deepest fibers of one's being."

"If anyone understands it on the first viewing, we've failed in our intention."

"I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film. They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn't quite sure. Just as we're not quite sure what to do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest."

"An epic drama of adventure and exploration."

"Man's colony on the Moon … a whole new generation has been born and is living there … a quarter-million miles from Earth."

"The Ultimate Trip."

"An astounding entertainment experience."

"My God, it's full of stars."

":Not present in film, but present in book as David Bowman enters the monolith, in form:"

"::"The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — it's full of stars!" (p. 254 of paperback edition)"

":Also referenced in sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact, whose opening sequence contains:"

"::LAST TRANSMISSION FROM COMMANDER BOWMAN: "MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS.""

"Keir Dullea – Dr. Dave Bowman"

"Gary Lockwood – Dr. Frank Poole"

"William Sylvester – Dr. Heywood R. Floyd"

"Daniel Richter – Moon-Watcher"

"Leonard Rossiter – Dr. Andrei Smyslov"

"Margaret Tyzack – Elena"

"Robert Beatty – Dr. Ralph Halvorsen"

"Sean Sullivan – Dr. Bill Michaels"

"Douglas Rain – HAL 9000 (voice)"

"Maybe I have lost my mind, but whoever I am, I'm still me and I'm not a killer."

"Hey, you happen to know the way to Shell Beach?"

"Daylight. When was the last time you remember seeing it? And I'm not talking about some distant, half-forgotten childhood memory. I mean like yesterday? Last week? When? Can you come up with a single memory? You can't, can you? You know something? I don't think the sun even exists in this place, because I've been up for hours and hours and hours and the night never ends here."

"Tonight's requirements are: family photo albums, nine personal diaries, love letters, assorted childhood photographs, ID's and social security cards. [examining a sample of memory serum] These do bring back memories. This one is still warm. What is it? The recollections of a great lover? A catalog of conquests? We will soon find out. You wouldn't appreciate that, would you, Mr. Whatever your name is? Not the sort of conquests you would ever understand. Let's see: a touch of unhappy childhood; ah, a dash of teenage rebellion; and last, but not least, a tragic death in the family."

"Weren't you looking for the human soul? That's the purpose of your little zoo, isn't it? That's why you keep changing people and things around every night. Maybe you have finally found what you are looking for, and it's going to bite you on your—"

"First there was darkness. Then came the strangers. They abducted us and brought us here. This city, everyone in it, is their experiment. They mix and match our memories as they see fit, trying to divine what makes us unique. One day, a man might be an inspector; the next, someone entirely different. When they want to study a murderer, for instance, they simply imprint one of their citizens with a new personality — arrange a family for him, friends, an entire history, even a lost wallet. Then they observe the results. Will a man, given the history of a killer, continue in that vein? Or are we, in fact, more than the mere sum of our memories?"

"When they first brought us here, they extracted what was in us so they could store the information, remix it like so much paint, and give us back new memories of their choosing. But they still needed an artist to help them. I understood the intricacies of the human mind better than they ever could, so they allowed me to keep my skills as a scientist because they needed them, but they made me delete everything else. Can you imagine what it is like being forced to erase your own past?"

"Now remember what I told you: Never talk to strangers."

"So, Husselbeck, what kind of killer do you think stops to save a dying fish?"

"Nothing like a little healthy paranoia."

"No one ever listens to me."

"On occasion the imprinting does not take. They behave erratically when they awaken. We find them wandering like lost children."

"There's work to be done."

"We fashioned this city on stolen memories: different eras, different pasts all rolled into one. Each night, we revise it, refine it, in order to learn."

"You've seen what we are. We use your dead as vessels."

"You see, I have become the monster you were intended to be."

"See, I've been trying to remember things — clearly remember things from my past — but the more I try to think back, the more it all starts to unravel. None of it seems real. It's like I've just been dreaming this life, and when I finally wake up I'll be somebody else: somebody totally different."

"They steal people's memories, you know? Then they swap them around between us. I've seen them do it! Back and forth, back and forth, until no one knows who they are anymore."

"He is powerful, yes — dangerous — but he can also lead us to what we seek: what the doctor calls the soul. It is time for our experiment to move into a final phase."

"Shut it down! Shut it down forever!"

"Like Hong Kong action directors reinventing the western, Australia's current crop of filmmakers are happily absorbing the received wisdom of Hollywood and boomeranging it back at us. Recalibrated film noir. The costume epic as psycho drama. Road movies with no maps. There's no end to the modifications and mutations. Sometimes, of course, the boomerang catches you in the neck. In "Dark City," Down Under director Alex Proyas revisits some of the territory he created for "The Crow," a tale of murder and revenge based on James O'Barr's comic-art novel, which gothicized the city and made the set design as much a character in the film as the late Brandon Lee's unhappy character. With "Dark City," we're in a similar landscape, but this time the set design is paramount. The hero, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), awakens in a bathtub and doesn't know where he is. Neither do we. Murdoch seems to be registered at the Hotel Raymond Chandler, the city itself seems to lie somewhere between Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Tim Burton's Gotham City. There's a scene at an automat. Is it the '40s? No, there's a '61 Falcon idling beside a '90s Citroen. Jessica Rabbit look-alike Jennifer Connelly, playing Murdoch's estranged wife, Emma, is a torch singer in a bygone boi^te. Kiefer Sutherland, as Dr. Daniel Schreber, looks like the kid from "A Christmas Story" all grown up and gone bad. He speaks in an asthmatic staccato and walks with a limp borrowed from Everett Sloane in "Lady From Shanghai." William Hurt, as bemused as ever, is Detective Bumstead, a refugee from pulp fiction."

"If you had to guess, you might say that Proyas came out of the world of comic art himself, rather than music videos and advertising. "Dark City" is constructed like panels in a Batman book, each picture striving for maximum dread. But Proyas' roots are clear enough: A shot of the city suspended in space seems to be almost a direct lift from a British Airways ad of a few years back; the scenes of the Strangers assembled in their grotto recalls another commercial I seem to have seen, perhaps during some relatively recent Olympic coverage, which had a Big Brother theme and might have been made for Nike. Proyas made Nike commercials, according to his bio. Maybe he's paying homage to himself."

""Dark City" by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor "Metropolis" in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Both are parables in which a dangerous weapon attacks the order of things: a free human who can see what really is, and question it. "Dark City" contains a threat more terrible than any of the horrors in "Metropolis," because the rulers of the city can control the memories of its citizens; if we are the sum of all that has happened to us, then what are we when nothing has happened to us?"

"In "Dark City" (1998), all of the human memories are newly fabricated when the hands of the clock reach 12. This is defined as "midnight," but the term is deceptive, because there is no noon. "First came darkness, then came the Strangers," we are told in the opening narration. In the beginning, there was no light. John Murdoch, the hero, asks Bumstead, the police detective: "When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?" Bumstead is surprised by the question. "You know something?" Murdoch asks him. "I don't think the sun even exists in this place. I've been up for hours and hours, and the night never ends here.""

"The movie's premise—that what we call reality might simply be a fantasy imposed by an omniscient mad scientist—is unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously drug-addled mind. The world it envisions is a stylized, claustrophobic, fantasy of Depression-era New York City existing in perpetual night. Here the residents have unknowingly become the scientific playthings of a race of gray-faced fascistic aliens, the Strangers, whose voyeuristic obsession with human feeling recalls the sexual obsession experienced by those hyper-mental veiny-browed coneheads who fed off human fantasies in the pilot episode of Star Trek."

"The invaders operate from secret catacombs in the heart of the city. Among their powers is an ability to put all the residents to sleep at the same time. While unconscious, they become subjects in an elaborate experiment involving injections through the forehead that mix and match people's memories. It is all a search for (get this!) the human soul. The Strangers also have the telekinetic ability to move objects, and during these blackouts in which time appears to stop, they rearrange the city's architecture. In the movie's most visually striking sequences, buildings shift, and the entire metropolis heaves into a different configuration."

"This is essentially an old film noir amnesiac yarn, set in a hostile urban environment defined by late ’40s noir (“Dark City” could easily have served as the title for just about any noir ever made). But tale is shot through with a futuristic element that vastly increases the visual opportunities beyond dark shadows on slick city streets. Very appropriately for a picture about a desperate search through a labyrinth of time, memory and sinister manipulation, it takes a while for viewers to get their bearings. What is clear is that the Strangers, lean, bald, vampirelike men who dress in wide-brimmed hats and floor-length black coats and possess the ability to transform reality to their own purposes, have come to Earth to find a cure for their accursed mortality. So advanced are they that they can, through a process known as Tuning, will the world to a complete standstill, and can change the shape, size and very essence of material objects."

"Visually, there is a great deal going on. Once you get over the startling resemblance of the threatening, perennially nocturnal city to the setting of “The Crow,” the differences start asserting themselves. Entirely created in the new Fox Film Studios in Sydney, the eponymous metropolis rendered with great imagination by production designers George Liddle and Patrick Tatopolous has the general feel and even the specific street sign style of ’40s New York, with Liz Keogh’s costume designs generally fitting that era as well. But the cars sometimes belong to more modern times, the low ceilings and cramped rooms evoke German Expressionism, and the superhuman powers of the Strangers endow everything with futuristic possibilities. Within the deterministic framework of the piece, performances are solid. The distinctively handsome Sewell is mainly obliged to express the desperate bewilderment and determination of a paranoid victim, and does so better than many others have done with similarly circumscribed roles. As the detective, Hurt fits with great ease into the attitude and look of the picture, while Sutherland has some fun with what can only be called the Peter Lorre role. Connelly fills the bill as the wife with whom the beleaguered hero tries to reconnect, and Richard O’Brien and Ian Richardson are the most prominent of the memorably fashioned Strangers."

"I'm a big fan of Alex Proyas' work, although this is really only his second movie (his first being The Crow). His work is truly visionary, and he has an impressive sense of style that permeates the entire movie, from the painstakingly crafted sets to the crafty editing of shots to communicate the tone of the scene. A very '40s film noir look dominates this film, with pools of light and dark competing for space on the screen, all with a feeling of gloom draped across the entire scene. The architecture is also noteworthy. It's as though someone took the Gotham City of Batman: The Animated Series and actually built it. It's claustrophobic, it's gritty, it's confusing, it's soul numbing, and it's great imagery."

"I started off with this idea of a detective who was on a case that didn't make any logical sense and because he was an incredibly logical man he started going nuts. He thought he was going insane because the facts were just not adding up and they were pointing to some larger mystery that his brain just couldn't deal with."

"I remember exactly when I got the idea. I was standing on the set of "The Crow" and we had built this roof-top set because we didn't have a great budget we just build these one-third scale buildings that we moved around on wheels so after we did a shot, we'd move them all around so we could make the background look different so we could shoot different scenes and you wouldn't see the same building in the background all the time. I remember standing there on the set and watching these buildings just move, because you couldn't see the guys moving them, so all you could see was just the building sliding across the set. And I just remember thinking that was really cool and I'd have to use that in some way. So I stuck it into this movie."

"Well, the first draft had a fairly bleak end to the film, where the bad guys won at the end, but I just didn't like it. As I explored the story more and more it was about the individual's triumph in this world where individuality is being suppressed. Once I got into that mode there was no question that Murdoch had to win in the end and kind of wrest the power away from the strangers."

"Dark City, like its predecessor, is a stunningly visual smorgasbord of tenebrous eye-candy, all creeping shadows and urban malaise. Proyas' ability to make a twilight cityscape look menacing is like no one else's. But apart from the sensory input he throws at you, Dark City is a curiously unengaging experience. It's like the CD-ROM games Myst or Riven blown up to huge cinematic proportions while the critical ideas driving the play are left behind. For all its dark splendor, nothing much happens to make you squirm or gasp or weep, as in The Crow. It flatlines before it ever begins. The story seems ripped from one of Kafka's lesser nightmares: Everyman John Murdoch (Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with blood seeping from his forehead. Suffering from amnesia, he doesn't know who or where he is, or what's going on (in this manner he functions as the viewer's surrogate throughout the film), but he soon runs into the mysterious Dr. Schreber (Sutherland), a paranoid, possibly dangerous physician newly graduated from the Peter Lorre School of Tics and Twitches. Schreber informs him that the city's inhabitants are the victims of some ongoing cosmic experiment being conducted by a race of black-clad, fedora-topped aliens called “The Strangers,” who hope to unlock the secrets of humanity by mixing and matching people's memories. The city, it seems, is entirely a construct of these film noir bad guys, who have the ability to alter reality at will (a power Murdoch himself has picked up as well). Proyas also throws in the only American actress to ever adequately survive a Dario Argento film – Jennifer Connelly – as Murdoch's estranged wife, and William Hurt (suitably vague) as a Forties-style gumshoe out to solve a series of citywide serial killings. Actually, the whole film has a post-WWII feel to it, thanks in part to George Liddle's spectacular production design and Dariusz Wolski's gorgeous cinematography, but the actual time period is anyone's guess. So is much of the plot, though Proyas, who also penned the script, does his best to make things adhere to some internal logic I never quite figured out. Dark City looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream."

""Dark City" grabs your eyeballs and squeezes. The new sci-fi thriller by director Alex Proyas rewrites movie rules, making its stand on visuals alone. It is hypnotic, haunting and, to be sure, dark. It is among the most memorable cinematic ventures in recent years. Maybe there's nothing wrong with a movie that is simply sensational to look at."

"The plot is weak, and the self- conscious script tries too hard to be knowing and sexually suggestive. Judging from the dialogue alone, "Dark City" is a clumsy melodrama. But the film's twisting of reality and its daring look—layered and off-kilter grays, greens and blacks—make it click. The big-hatted Strangers, for example, simply dematerialize as they walk through brick walls. The viewer knows it's just a special effect, but Proyas weights these now-you-see-'em, now-you-don't figures with unpredictability. They're superhuman and cruelly detached from the film's stupefied human characters."

"They built the city to see what makes us tick. Last night one of us went off."

"Forget the Sun. Forget Time. Forget Your Memories."

"A world where the night never ends. Where man has no past. And humanity has no future."

"You are not who you think you are."

"Rufus Sewell - John Murdoch"

"William Hurt - Inspector Frank Bumstead"

"Kiefer Sutherland - Dr. Daniel P. Schreber"

"Jennifer Connelly - Emma Murdoch/Anna"

"Richard O'Brien - Mr. Hand"

"Ian Richardson - Mr. Book"

"Bruce Spence - Mr. Wall"

"Colin Friels - Detective Eddie Walenski"

"Melissa George - May"

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

"This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."

"In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."

"“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it got to be built?” Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again. “What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.” Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."

"But the plans were on display . . ." "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the display department." "With a torch." "Ah, well the lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

""Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?" "How much?" said Arthur. "None at all," said Mr. Prosser."

"The mere thought," growled Mr. Prosser, "hadn't even begun to speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest possibility of crossing my mind."

"Look, don't you understand?" shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser. "That man wants to knock my house down!" Ford glanced at him, puzzled. "Well he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked. "But I don't want him to!" "Ah."

"[The Guide] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."

"This must be Thursday," said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a brush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

"More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might have accidentally "lost.". What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

"Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)"

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

"People of Earth, your attention, please. This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system. And regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

"I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all."

"There was a terrible ghastly silence. There was a terrible ghastly noise. There was a terrible ghastly silence."

"It was for the sake of this day that he had first decided to run for the Presidency, a decision which had sent waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy—Zaphod Beeblebrox? President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President? Many had seen it as a clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas."

"The President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it."

"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical."

"If I asked you where the hell we were," said Arthur weakly, "would I regret it?" Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said. "Oh good," said Arthur. "We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet." "Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."

"Ford," insisted Arthur, "I don't know if this sounds like a silly question, but what am I doing here?" "Well you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth." "And what's happened to the Earth?" "Ah. It's been demolished." "Has it," said Arthur levelly. "Yes. It just boiled away into space." "Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."

"Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, queried, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. "The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. "On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

""If you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on it." "Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes." "Let me see what it says in this edition, then. I've got to see it." ... "What? Harmless! Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One word! ... Well, for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit." "Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement." "And what does it say now?" asked Arthur. "Mostly harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough."

"(Ford) "you'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk." (Arthur) "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" (Ford) "Ask a glass of water.""

"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young." "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen."

"This is terrific," Arthur thought to himself, "Nelson's Column has gone, McDonald's have gone, all that's left is me and the words Mostly harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well."

"“I don’t want to die now! I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!”"

""Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on."

"The fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt."

"Arthur looked up. "Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.""

"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

"But that's not the point!" raged Ford "The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!"

"[S]uch generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties."

"It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-ass."

"Five to one against and falling..." she said, "four to one against and falling...three to one...two...one...probability factor of one to one...we have normality, I repeat we have normality." She turned her microphone off—then turned it back on, with a slight smile and continued: "Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem."

""I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," Marvin said."

"He reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this button again."

"All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done."

"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."

"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."

"One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."

"Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. "...and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side..." "No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?" "Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens." "I can imagine.""

"“Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”"

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

"He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

"Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet."

"And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence."

"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now."

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars, and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man... for precisely the same reasons."

"The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long, and thanks for all the fish."

"Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless."

""Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm."

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." "But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything," howled Loonquawl. "Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?" A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other. "Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered Phouchg weakly. "Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

"The chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied ... Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."

"I'd far rather be happy than right any day." "And are you?" "No, that's where it all falls down, of course." "Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise."

"Come," said Slartibartfast, "you are to meet the mice."

"The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels that lead out onto the appalling surface of the planet which was now in the grip of yet another drear morning twilight. Ghastly grey lights congealed on the land. R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death. R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast."

"What's up?" "I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."

""Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And what happened?" pressed Ford. "It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold."

"It said: "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?""

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

""Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years."

"The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration."

"Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on. Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon. Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion."

"Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name." "What is it?" asked Arthur. "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth." "What?" "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!" "The Fourth?" "Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..." "What?" "There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!"

"By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant life forms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials from the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to "have a nice diurnal anomaly.""

"The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."

"Well sir," snapped the fragile little creature, "if you could be a little cool about it..." "Look," said Zaphod. "I'm up to here with cool, okay? I'm so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I'm so hip I have trouble seeing over my pelvis. Now will you move before I blow it?"

"Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."

"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" [the insect] squeeked. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all want one." "The Zaphod Beeblebrox?" ""No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox; didn't you hear I come in six packs?"

"Mr. Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're so weird you should be in movies." "Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, "and you, baby, should be in real life."

"I'm looking for someone." "Who?" hissed the insect. "Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there." The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak. "Then why did you ask me?" "I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin. "What!" "Pathetic, isn't it?"

"So, how are you?" [Zaphod] said aloud. "Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like being me, which personally I don't."

"Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator to go up, will you? We've got to get to Zarniwoop." "Why?" asked Marvin dolefully. "I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find him, he'd better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

"Well," the [elevator's] voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, "there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system ...er..." It paused. "Nothing particularly exciting," it admitted, "but they are alternatives." "Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existential elevator?" He beat his fists against the wall. "What's the matter with the thing?" he spat. "It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin simply. "I think it's afraid." "Afraid?" cried Zaphod. "Of what? Heights? An elevator that's afraid of heights?" "No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future...." "The future?" exclaimed Zaphod. "What does the wretched thing want, a pension plan?"

"Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the curious principle of "defocused temporal perception." In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators. Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators."

"The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain—since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. "Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex—just to show her. And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."

"[Zaphod] opened the door of the box and stepped in. Inside the box he waited. After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him."

"[Zaphod] had seen the whole universe stretching to infinity around him—everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Being told by a computer is another."

"Delay?" [Zaphod] cried. "Have you seen the world outside this ship? It's a wasteland, a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man. There are no lemon-soaked paper napkins on the way from anywhere." "The statistical likelihood," continued the autopilot primly, "is that other civilizations will arise. There will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till then there will be a short delay. Please return to your seat."

"Most readers [of Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Transformations] get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs."

"Have another drink," said Trillian. "Enjoy yourself." "Which?" said Arthur. "The two are mutually exclusive." "Poor Arthur, you're really not cut out for this life are you?" "You call this life?" "You're starting to sound like Marvin." "Marvin is the clearest thinker I know."

"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

""Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off." Zaphod"

"Maybe somebody here tipped off the Galactic Police," said Trillian. "Everyone saw you come in." "You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?" said Zaphod. "Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered." "Yeah," said the voice from under the table, "you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel."

"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin, "I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? I've got one ready. Wait a minute." "Er, hey, Marvin ..." interrupted Zaphod, but it was too late. Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line. "What's he saying?" asked Trillian. "Nothing," said Zaphod, "he just phoned to wash his head at us."

"The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."

"The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago," continued Marvin. ..."And that was with a coffee machine."

"Amazing-looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow."

"Well, I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm," said Marvin, "because I haven't got one."

""Er..." [Zarquon] said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment." He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat. "Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min—" And so the Universe ended."

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

"The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford and Zaphod tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engines howled and whined like tired children in a supermarket."

""You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?" "Yes," said Marvin. Arthur stared in astonishment. "And ...?" Arthur. "It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small." "Ah," said Arthur, "abuse." "Yes," confirmed Marvin."

""I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway," said Arthur. "Me," said Zaphod. "No. Who it really belongs to." "Really me," insisted Zaphod, "look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?" "Tell the ship that," said Arthur."

"The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth—when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass—the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another—particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish."

"The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.""

"The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"

"Well, you're obviously being totally naive of course", said the girl, "When you've been in marketing as long as I have, you'll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them." The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford. "Stick it up your nose," he said. "Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl, "Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?" "And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."

""If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, "we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy..." "Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. "Fiscal policy..." he repeated, "that is what I said." "How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know." "If you would allow me to continue.. ." Ford nodded dejectedly. "Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich." Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut." Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. "So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances." The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

"The alien ship was already thundering toward the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void that separates the very few things there are in the Universe from one another."

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings. [...]"

"Africa was very interesting," said Ford, "I behaved very oddly there." ... "I took up being cruel to animals," he said airily. "But only," he added, "as a hobby." "Oh yes," said Arthur, warily. "Yes," Ford assured him. "I won't disturb you with the details because they would—" "What?" "Disturb you. But you may be interested to know that I am singlehandedly responsible for the evolved shape of the animal you came to know in later centuries as a giraffe."

"He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off."

"I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash." ... "The wash?" said Arthur. "The space-time wash," said Ford. ... Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?" "Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the pocket of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance. "What?" said Ford. "Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly, then?"

""There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm. "There, behind that sofa!" Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind. "Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?" "I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time continuum!" "And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and, he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses."

"For a moment or two the old man didn't reply. He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down."

"The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up..."

"The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexlusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive."

"the third non-absolute number is the number on the bill, (and how many people actually have the money to pay it)"

"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre," Ford muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."

"Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp."

"There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath. The moment passed as it regularly did on Sqornshellous Zeta, without incident."

"Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere."

""My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first." —Marvin"

""You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?" The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind."

""I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are all out of commission."—Marvin"

"Voon," [the mattress] wurfed at last, "and was it a magnificent occasion?" "Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it."

"The renewed shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right. "Freedom," he said aloud. Trillian came on to the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic things on the subject of freedom. "I can't cope with it," Zaphod said darkly, and sent a third drink down to see why the second hadn't yet reported on the condition of the first. He looked uncertainly at both of her and preferred the one on the right. He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search of the first, give it a good talking to and maybe a bit of a sing as well. He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that, so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral support."

"[The Guide] had some advice to offer on drunkenness. "Go to it," it said, "and good luck." It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of the Universe and the ways of coping with that."

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties."

"Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful."

"[Zaphod] sat up sharply and started to pull clothes on. He decided that there must be someone in the Universe feeling more wretched, miserable and forsaken than himself, and he determined to set out and find him. Halfway to the bridge it occurred to him that it might be Marvin, and he returned to bed."

"On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms."

"Time travel is increasingly regarded as a menace. History is being polluted."

"There is, or was, a poet. His name was Lallafa, and he wrote what are widely regarded throughout the Galaxy as the finest poems in existence, the Songs of the Long Land."

"Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa."

"[Lallafa] wrote about a girl who had left him and precisely what he thought about that. Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and dryer. Then, shortly after the invention of time travel, some major correcting fluid manufacturers wondered whether his poems might have been better still if he had had access to say a few words to that effect. They traveled the time waves; they found him. They explained the situation -- with some difficulty -- to him, and did indeed persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such effect that he became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom he was otherwise destined to write with such precision never got around to leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently commuted to the future to do talk shows, on which he sparkled wittily."

"[Lallafa] never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem, but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and stacks of dried habra leaves to copy them out onto, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way."

"Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what's changed?"

"They obstinately persisted in their absence."

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

"Marvin droned, Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness don't engulf my head, I can see by infrared, How I hate the night. He paused to gather artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse. Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night."

"That young girl," Marvin added unexpectedly, "is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

""Excuse me," [Arthur] said, "the Ashes. I've got them. They were stolen by those white robots a moment ago ... what should I do with them?" The policeman told him, but Arthur could only assume that he was speaking metaphorically."

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

"In Relativity, Matter tells Space how to curve, and Space tells Matter how to move. The Heart of Gold told space to get knotted, and parked itself neatly within the inner steel perimeter of the Argabuthon Chamber of Law."

"If a sunbeam had ever managed to slink this far into the justice complex of Argabuthon it would have turned around and slunk straight back out again."

"“I'm afraid,” he said at last, “that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”"

""I wasn't very impressed with it when I first knew what it was," he said, "but now I think back to how impressed I was by the Prince's reason, and how soon afterward I couldn't recall it at all, I think it might be a lot more helpful. Would you like to know what it is? Would you?" They nodded dumbly. "I bet you would. If you're that interested I suggest you go and look for it. It is written in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 ActiveJ Gamma. it is guarded by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob." There was a long silence following this announcement, which was finally broken by Arthur. "Sorry, it's where?" he said. "It is written," repeated Prak, "in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the..." "Sorry," said Arthur again, "which mountains?" "The Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet..." "Which land was that? I didn't quite catch it." "Sevorsbeupstry, on the planet..." "Sevorbe what?" "Oh, for heaven's sake," said Prak, and died testily."

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever. This is her story."

"Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor's boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on."

"And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him and to water him."

"The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And another thing..." twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument."

"The moon was out in a watery way. It looked like a ball of paper from the back pocket of jeans that have just come out of the washing machine, which only time and ironing would tell if it was an old shopping list or a five pound note."

"They were not the same eyes with which he had last looked out at this particular scene, and the brain which interpreted the images the eyes resolved was not the same brain. There had been no surgery involved, just the continual wrenching of experience."

"Once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is."

"He paused and maneuvered his thoughts. It was like watching oil tankers doing three-point turns in the English Channel."

"He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow-hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe."

"Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this."

"The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change. Read it through again and you'll get it."

"Ford: "Life," he said, "is like a grapefruit." Creature: "Er, how so?" Ford: "Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.""

""This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?" Those who wish to know should read on. Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it."

"And as they drifted up, their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do."

"In a mute embrace, they drifted up till they were swimming among the misty wraiths of moisture that you can see feathering around the wings of an airplane but can never feel because you are sitting warm inside the stuffy airplane and looking through the little scratchy Plexiglas window while somebody else's son tries patiently to pour warm milk into your shirt."

"She was mostly immensely relieved to think that virtually everything that anybody had ever told her was wrong."

"The sign said: Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion. "It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.""

"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon." "Can you tell us what that means?" "I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't and I'm afraid we couldn't have that."

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ... says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.""

"I come in peace," [the silver robot] said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

"So much time," it groaned, "oh so much time. And pain as well, so much of that, and so much time to suffer it in too. One or the other on its own I could probably manage. It's the two together that really get me down."

"Ha!" snapped Marvin. "Ha!" he repeated. "What do you know of always? You say 'always' to me, who, because of the silly little errands your organic lifeforms keep on sending me through time on, am now thirty-seven times older than the Universe itself? Pick your words with a little more care," he coughed, "and tact."

""We apologize for the inconvenience." God's Final Message to His Creation, written in letters of fire on the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains. "I think," Marvin murmured at last, from deep within his corroding rattling thorax, "I feel good about it." The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever."

"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind."

"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

"The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79."

"But you like the way it's changed?" demanded Ford. "I like everything," moaned the robot. "Especially when you shout at me like that. Do it again, please." "Just tell me what's happened!" "Oh, thank you, thank you!"

"The current editor-in-chief, Stagyar-zil-Doggo, was a dangerously unbalanced man who took a homicidal view of contributing staff turning up in his office without pages of fresh, proofed copy, and had a battery of laser-guided guns linked to special scanning devices in the door frame to deter anybody who was merely bringing extremely good reasons why they hadn't written any. Thus was a high level of output maintained."

"[The Ident-I-Eeze] encoded every single piece of information about you, your body and your life into one all-purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around in your wallet, and it therefore represented technology's greatest triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense."

""You stay there," said Ford, "and you'll soon be recaptured and have your conditional chip replaced. You want to stay happy, come now." The robot let out a long heartfelt sigh of impassioned tristesse and sank reluctantly away from the ceiling."

"When the Guide moved on, taking its building with it, it left a little like a thief in the night. Exactly like a thief in the night in fact. It usually left in the very early hours of the morning, and the following day there always turned out to be a very great deal of stuff missing. Whole cultures and economies would collapse in its wake, often within a week, leaving once-thriving planets desolate and shell-shocked but still somehow feeling they had been part of some great adventure."

"It was a programming technique that had been reverse-engineered from the sort of psychotic mental blocks that otherwise perfectly normal people had been observed invariably to develop when elected to high political office."

"The doors of the elevator slid open to reveal a large posse of security guards and robots poised waiting for it and brandishing filthy-looking weapons. They ordered him out. With a shrug he stepped forward. They all pushed rudely past him into the elevator, which took them down to continue their search for him on the lower levels. This was fun, thought Ford ... ."

"We all like to congregate... at boundary conditions. Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where time meets space. We like to be on one side, and look at the other."

"Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen."

"There's another prayer that goes with it that's very important. ...'Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen' And that's it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes from leaving out that last part."

"If any of them had chosen to look out of the window at that moment, they would have been startled by the sight of Ford Prefect dropping past them to his certain death and flipping the finger at them."

"Sub-editors. Bastards. What about all that copy of his they'd cut? Fifteen years of research he'd filed from one planet alone and they'd cut it to two words. "Mostly harmless." The finger to them as well."

"The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

"The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?" "Really?" said Arthur. "No, I didn't. For what offense?" Trillian frowned. "What do you mean, offense?" "I see."

"It wasn't merely that their left hand didn't always know what their right hand was doing, so to speak; quite often their right hand had a pretty hazy notion as well."

""Colin," he said, turning to the little, hovering ball. "I am going to abandon you to your fate." "I'm so happy," said Colin. "Make the most of it," said Ford. "Because what I want you to do is nursemaid that package out of the building. They'll probably incinerate you when they find you, and I won't be here to help. It will be very, very nasty for you, and that's just too bad. Got it?" "I gurgle with pleasure," said Colin."

"So everything was going well, was it? Everything was working out as if the most extraordinary luck was on his side? Well, he'd see about that. In a spirit of scientific inquiry he hurled himself out of the window again."

"It: No, the answer is an orange and two lemons."

"If you'd like to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it gets a bit complicated, and there's all sort of stuff going on in dimensions thirteen to twenty-two that you really wouldn't want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place. I can easily not say words like "damn" if it offends you."

"There's nothing there that wasn't there before. I'm just using light to draw your attention to certain drops at certain moments. Now what do you see?"

"So what's the point of showing me something I can't see?" "So that you understand that just because you see something, it doesn't mean to say it's there. And if you don't see something, it doesn't mean to say it's not there. It's only what your senses bring to your attention."

"Your universe is vast to you. Vast in time, vast in space. That's because of the filters through which you perceive it. But I was built with no filters at all, which means I perceive the Mish Mash which contains all possible universes but which has, itself, no size at all. For me, anything is possible. I am omniscient and omnipotent, extremely vain and, what is more, I come in a handy self-carrying package. You have to work out how much of the above is true."

"Reverse engineering enables us to shortcut all the business of waiting for one of those horribly few spaceships that passes through your galactic sector every year or so to make up its mind about whether or not it feels like giving you a lift. You want a lift, a ship arrives and gives you one. The pilot may think he has any one of a million reasons why he has decided to stop and pick you up. The real reason is that I have determined that he will." "This is you being extremely vain, isn't it, little bird?"

"It would be hard to say which he was more frightened of: that he might have hurt the person he had inadvertently sat on or that the person he had inadvertently sat on would hurt him back."

"Why are we surrounded by squirrels, and what do they want?" "I've been pestered by squirrels all night," said Arthur. "They keep on trying to give me magazines and stuff."

"I think it may be something unimaginably dangerous." "And you sent it to me?" protested Arthur. "Safest place I could think of. I thought I could rely on you to be absolutely boring and not open it."

"What did she say?" "She hit me on the head with the rock again." "I think I can confirm that that was my daughter." "Sweet kid." "You have to get to know her," said Arthur. "She eases up, does she?" "No," said Arthur, "but you get a better sense of when to duck."

"This is very, very serious indeed. The Guide has been taken over. It's been bought out." Arthur leapt up. "Oh, very serious," he shouted. "Please fill me in straight away on some corporate publishing politics! I can't tell you how much it's been on my mind of late!" "You don't understand! There's a whole new Guide!" "Oh!" shouted Arthur again. "Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm incoherent with excitement! I can hardly wait for it to come out to find out which are the most exciting spaceports to get bored hanging about in in some globular cluster I've never heard of. Please, can we rush to a store that's got it right this very instant?" Ford narrowed his eyes. "This is what you call sarcasm, isn't it?" "Do you know," bellowed Arthur, "I think it is? I really think it might just be a crazy little thing called sarcasm seeping in at the edges of my manner of speech! Ford, I have had a fucking bad night! Will you please try and take that into account while you consider what fascinating bits of badger-sputumly inconsequential trivia to assail me with next?"

"Temporal reverse engineering." Arthur put his head in his hands and shook it gently from side to side. "Is there any humane way," he moaned, "in which I can prevent you from telling me what temporary reverse bloody-whatsiting is?"

"I leaped out of a high-rise office window." This cheered Arthur up. "Oh!" he said. "Why don't you do it again?" "I did." "Hmmm," said Arthur, disappointed. "Obviously no good came of it."

"What was the self-sacrifice?" "I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes." "Why was that self-sacrifice?" "Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly. "I think we have different value systems." "Well, mine's better."

"It wasn't [the Captain's] job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought, then it wasn't his job to worry about such things. Any such things that came his way were referred to others, who had, in turn, other people to refer such things to."

"Somewhere on a fetid, fog-bound mud bank on [Vogsphere] there stands, surrounded by the dirty, broken and empty carapaces of the last few jeweled scuttling crabs, a small stone monument which marks the place where, it is thought, the species Vogon Vogonblurtus first arose. On the monument there is carved an arrow which points away, into the fog, under which is inscribed in plain, simple letters the words "The buck stops there.""

"Where do I fit?"

"A tremendous feeling of peace came over him. He knew that at last, for once and for ever, it was now all, finally, over."

"At the center of an uncertain and possibly illusionary universe there would always be tea."

"Whenever the Universe fell apart, Ford Prefect was never far behind."

"I will thank you," said the Hitchhiker's Guide Mk II, "to mind your language. I am fully programmed to take offense."

""You, Mr. President, are the most philosophunculistic, moronic, steatopygic excuse for a politician that it has ever been my good fortune to not vote for, and if I thought for one second that this crappy Universe deserved any better, then I would pay, out of my own pocket you understand, to have you assassinated."—Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged"

""We can charge the Unnecessarily Painful Slow Death torpedoes on the trip. Hyperspace static will give them a little extra sting." Jeltz nodded approvingly. "You, Mown, are an utter bastard." "Thanks, Dad," he said."

"Anything can be real. Every imaginable thing is happening somewhere along the dimensional axis. These things happen a billion times over with exactly the same outcome and no one learns anything. Whatever a person can think, imagine, wish for, or believe has already come to pass. Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers."

"It's not every day a Galactic President gets dumped out of an air lock by his own head."

"Gazing up at a god's crotch can do wonders for a person's lack of low self-esteem."

""I do not hate myself. In many ways, I am not altogether too bed." – Constant Mown"

""Don't give any money to the unicorns, it only encourages them."—Eric the Red"

""Don't worry. I've been in show business for years; I know how to handle bastards."—Zaphod Beeblebrox"

""Hello, ladies. You may not know me yet, but you're gonna miss me tomorrow."—Zaphod Beeblebrox"

"Arthur was stumped. How was he to feel if not put upon?"

"For a being of light, gazing even for a moment into the heart of dark space has an effect equivalent to a dozen near-death experiences. It's the Universe's way of telling you to get on with your life. Which is a good thing if the feeling budding in a person's heart is a good feeling."

"There is a theory which states that the universe is built on uncertainty and that a definitive statement/action creates a momentary energy vacuum into which flows a diametrically opposing statement/action. Famous vacuum-inducing statements include:"

"Think before you pluck. Irresponsible plucking costs lives."

""You go ahead and kill yourself, don't worry about me." – Trillian"

"There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads, He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End."

"Marvin: Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I'm standing?"

"Marvin: Life, don't talk to me about life."

"Arthur Dent: I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships!"

"Zaphod: Can it Trillian, I'm trying to die with dignity. Marvin: I'm just trying to die."

"The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky-russet."

"Zaphod: The building's being bombed! Who in their right minds would want to bomb a publishing company?"

"Ford Prefect: You know, in these sorts of situations it's really good to have a guide to help you."

"Frogstar Robot: Out of my way little robot"

"Life, as many people have spotted, is, of course, terribly unfair. For instance, the first time the Heart of Gold ever crossed the galaxy the massive improbability field it generated caused two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly-fried eggs to materialise in a large, wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had just died out from famine...except for one man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later."

"The Book: Having been through the Total Perspective Vortex, Zaphod Beeblebrox now knows himself to be the most important being in the entire Universe...something he had hitherto only suspected. It is said that his birth was marked by earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, firestorms, the explosion of three neighbouring stars, and, shortly afterwards, by the issuing of over six and three quarter million writs for damages from all of the major landowners in his galactic sector. However, the only person by whom this is said is Beeblebrox himself, and there are several possible theories to explain this..."

"The Book: Incredible though it may seem, it is in fact possible that the strange and terrible history of the planet Brontitall, where Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox are even now falling out of the sky on to curious and aggravating birds, admiring surprisingly large statues of unexpected people, i.e. Arthur Dent, exchanging hostile words with alien soldiers with inexplicable limps and generally having a fairly peculiar time of it, may yet admit of some form of explanation. Furthermore, it is possible that this explanation will have more than a little to do with the mysterious somethings or watchamacallits of which the bird people refuse to speak. On top of which it is also possible that Lintilla the archaeologist (who may possibly turn out to have an almost impossibly strange life story) may play a major part in the uncovering of this explanation. It is even possible that pigs will fly, or that everyone will live happily ever after. In an infinite Universe everything, even The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is possible."

"Will everything tie up neatly or will it be just like life: quite interesting in parts, but no substitute for the real thing? What is the real thing?"

"I ache, therefore I am."

"Man in Shack: I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say."

"Man in Shack: The lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Was I amongst friends when the Haggunenon admiral evolved into a life pod and everybody aboard his flagship escaped leaving me aboard as it steered itself into the nearest star? Was I amongst friends when I was left to walk in circles on a swamp planet? Left to park cars outside a restaurant for millenia? Left for the Krikkit robots to use for batting practice? Friend? I don't think I ever came across one of those, sorry, can't help you there."

"Marvin: This is the car park, you ordered a babe wash for your ship. Due to staff shortages, I am your babe."

"Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner."

"What do you think I am, completely without any moral whatsits, what are they called, those moral things?"

"Evangelion is my life and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my entire life. My life itself."

"I wrote about myself. My friend lent me a book on psychological illness and this gave me a shock, as if I finally found what I needed to say."

"Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we're offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the 'all-about Eva' manuals, but there is no such thing. Don't expect to get answers by someone. Don't expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers."

"Rei is someone who is aware of the fact that even if she dies, there’ll be another to replace her, so she doesn’t value her life very highly. Her presence, her existence—ostensible existence—is ephemeral. She’s a very sad girl. She only has the barest minimum of what she needs to have. She’s damaged in some way; she hurts herself. She doesn’t need friends.."

"Anno's project is a postmodernist retelling of the Genesis myth, as his series title implies—Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is a new myth of origin, complete with its own deluge, Armageddon, apocalypse and transcendence."

"When monstrous angels invade the world, the children of Evangelion are recruited to pilot the giant cyborg Evangelion units against them. Most are reluctant soldiers, recruited just as reluctantly by their adult supervisors."

"The child soldiers of Evangelion are a fairly direct embodiment of the "kids are our future" axiom: By accident of biology or design, they're the only ones capable of piloting the only devices capable of staving off Armageddon."

"In Japan, Evangelion is an enormous content and merchandise industry with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Images of its biomechanical Eva robots are on everything from coffee mugs to smartphones and even airplane wraps."

"The meat of Evangelion, for which these elements are mostly trappings, is in the psychological complexity of its characters and its philosophical examination of the nature of relationships and the self. Structured around eschatological Judeo-Christian imagery and a Freudian mother-worship of religious proportions, Evangelion takes us on a nightmarish ride of existential angst and brutal physical violence, climaxing in an elaborate fantasy of return to an idyllic, primal state of oneness. Through this lurid mix of confession and spectacle is woven a complex examination of apocalypse and self-definition, a death-rebirth narrative that consciously exists in the shadow of Hiroshima."

"Neon Genesis Evangelion imaginatively reinterprets elements of Christian eschatology and Jewish mysticism and combines them with Oedipal and Mother Goddess imagery to construct a painful but ultimately liberative narrative of personal and social self-revelation."

"...the series questions the construction of human identity [. . .] in relation to the nature of reality itself. Providing more riddles than solutions, the series takes the viewer on a journey into both inner and outer reality before ultimately leaving both its characters and its audience floating in a sea of existential uncertainty."

"The basic concept is simple: Huge bio-machines called Evangelions, or Evas, piloted by specially recruited teenagers, battle monstrous giants known as Angels that are wreaking havoc on the human survivors of a global calamity. However, Anno and his team at the Gainax animation studio created a world highly developed not only visually — the mechanics of the Evas in particular were so realistic that they seemed less drawn than designed — but also narratively, emotionally and spiritually. The Eva pilots — especially the troubled, sensitive Shinji, whose coldly calculating dad had developed the Evas — were strongly individualistic types whose turbulent lives were as much a part of the series’ appeal as its titanic Eva-versus-Angel battles. The show also incorporated a melange of religious symbolism, and a wealth of psychological and philosophical themes reflecting Anno’s own investigations and beliefs, as well as his long struggle with depression."

"Oh this is... this is nice, this is the end, okay. Where exactly am I? Oh grea… here's the song, oh good. Um, there's some things that are still unresolved here, guys! How do I get home? What do I eat? Was Rei my-my mom? Or a clone? Or, hell, was this all in my mind? Wha-what's an EVA? Is that sort of a Freudian thing? Er… um Am I real? Oh, hell, does a bus run through here? I mean, I'd like to go home now but um… Oh God… Where's home? Okay, okay, okay. I mustn't run away, I mustn't run... Okay I got that, good, okay. Now, if I were to run away, let's analyze that: Where the fuck would I go? I'm on a big blue ball! Uhh, is this how you end the series? I mean, is this where we go from here? Okay, the movie better sure as Hell make up for this, I'm telling you right now, 'cause I'm stuck in Nowhereland! You ran outta ink too, didn't you, ya bastards?"

"I didn't mind it. The schedule was an utter disaster and the number of cels plummeted, so there were some places where unfortunately the quality suffered. However, the tension of the staff as we all became more desperate and frenzied certainly showed up in the film ... About the time that the production system was completely falling apart, there were some opinions to the effect that, "If we can't do satisfactory work, then what's the point of continuing?" However, I didn't feel that way. My opinion was, "Why don't we show them the entire process including our breakdown."

"There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice."

"Often anime are perceived as shallow children's films punctuated by the occasional adult-themed anime, centered around violence or sex. One of the many elements of Neon Genesis Evangelion that sets it apart is that it is aimed at children and teens while dealing with sophisticated themes in a manner that is subtle and inoffensive. These complex themes are much more present in the films than in the television series, perhaps due to the nature of television censors. On the surface, EVA appears to be like many other anime. Yet EVA is intrinsically different not just due to its handling of potentially controversial subject matter but because the films are self-reflexive of the genre itself."

"Lauded by some as the “single greatest anime series ever made,” Neon Genesis Evangelion has been interpreted in a variety of ways by Western scholars. Susan J. Napier has said that the subject matter of EVA consists mainly of sexual, psychological and Judeo-Christian religious content. Although there is some merit to such interpretations, there is a great deal of evidence in the series and films that has been ignored by Napier and other Western scholars that points toward a Japanese, rather than Western, heritage. In particular, I suggest a deep understanding of Buddhist cosmology and philosophy is present in EVA. In other words, as one delves deeper into EVA, one finds that the Judeo-Christian imagery – while clearly present – cannot account for many of the narrative twists, turns, and developments. Similarly, the Western identification of sexual and psychological traits are also supportable to some extent. These features may also reflect indigenous Japanese and specifically Buddhist concepts. In addition, I suggest that there is a larger contextual basis at work in this series and the two films that can account for the specific elements that many scholars have deemed "confusing.""

"Even fans of the sci-fi genre who avoid anime altogether have likely heard of Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell, which were each landmarks of both style and substance. But arguably the greatest and certainly most thematically dense of the three 90's sci-fi anime masterpieces is Neon Genesis Evangelion. It has one of the most enduring worldwide cult franchises and passionate fanbases in all of geekdom ... the most celebrated cast in anime ... [and] poster boy/protagonist Shinji is one of the most nuanced, popular, and relatable characters in anime history."

"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue — rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero. I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events that you see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? [chuckles] Is God in show business, too?"

"Sleep was necessary for man when his waking and unconscious lives were separated. As eternals achieved total consciousness, sleep became obsolete, and second level meditation took its place."

"Refraction of light. Infinite."

"You have penetrated me. There is no escape. You are within me. Come into my centre... Come into the centre of the crystal."

"[after Zed shoots the crystal] You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You... are alone."

"It's an ark. A ship. A spaceship. All this technology was for travel to the distant stars."

"We seal ourselves herewith into this place of learning. Death is banished for ever. I direct that the Tabernacle erase from us all memories of its construction, so we can never destroy it if we should ever crave for death. Here, man and the sum of his knowledge will never die, but go forward to perfection."

"[A] genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators ... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful Deliverance."

"Um, it was the 70’s, and I was doing a lot of drugs. Frankly, even I’m not entirely sure what parts of the movie are about."

"For the finale of my 1974 film Zardoz, I wanted to shoot a scene of Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling in which they age and die. This involved shooting with a fixed camera, so that we could take them out, age their clothes and faces, put them back in, shoot them a bit more, then take them out and age them further, until eventually they were skeletons that, in turn, crumbled away. This process took an entire day. Then, the camera assistant unloaded the camera and accidentally exposed the film to the light. This meant we had to spend another whole day shooting it. I also had to restrain Connery from killing the assistant – who soon afterwards changed his name and moved to Los Angeles. I spied him in a cafe in LA one day. “Is Sean in town?” he asked, with a quivering voice."

"Beyond 1984, Beyond 2001, Beyond Love, Beyond Death."

"I have seen the future and it doesn't work."

"Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death."

"Sean Connery - Zed"

"Charlotte Rampling - Consuella"

"Sara Kestelman - May"

"John Alderton - Friend"

"Jessica Calvello - Excel"

"Larissa Wolcott - Excel (eps 14-26)"

"Monica Rial - Hyatt"

"Jason Douglas - Il Palazzo"

"Hilary Haag - Menchi"

"A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came — Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame."

"Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed."

"I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass, Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass; Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain — Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain."

"This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells — Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand— Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand? The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain. Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read."

"This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole grew past description, transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky seemed small. I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if only by that oppressive sky."

"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway."

"The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street, or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria."

"It is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely."

"First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?" "To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong." "And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me."

"We all lament the sad decease of the heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you know, his services to the cause were considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of Brighton which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which substance he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow."

"Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and anywhere to get their information, except to us, except to the fountain head. They learn about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from tradesmen's newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads from one end of Europe to another. The man who has always heard that we are walking plagues has never heard our reply. I know that he will not hear it tonight, though my passion were to rend the roof. For it is deep, deep under the earth that the persecuted are permitted to assemble, as the Christians assembled in the Catacombs."

"Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honour and death."

"Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion."

"We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession."

"I have the honour to be somewhat in the confidence of the chief of whom I have spoken. You should really come and see him. Or rather, I should not say see him, nobody ever sees him; but you can talk to him if you like."

"You are the new recruit? All right, you are engaged." "I really have no experience..." "No one has any experience of the battle of Armageddon." "But I'm really unfit..." "You are willing, that is enough." "Now, really, I know of no occupation for which mere willingness is the final test." "I do. Martyrs. I am sending you to your death. Good day."

"He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean country."

"The one thing that can never be told is the last notion of the President, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case you don't know, I'd better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in a cell underground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take a private room at an ordinary restaurant. He said that if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, I know; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a little mad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the public. We have our breakfast on a balcony — on a balcony, if you please — overlooking Leicester Square." "And what do the people say?" asked Syme. "It's quite simple what they say," answered his guide. "They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they are anarchists.""

"A man's brain is a bomb," he cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking his own skull with violence. "My brain feels like a bomb, night and day. It must expand! It must expand! A man's brain must expand, if it breaks up the universe." "I don't want the universe broken up just yet," drawled the Marquis. "I want to do a lot of beastly things before I die. I thought of one yesterday in bed."

"No, if the only end of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with his sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems worth doing." The old Professor was staring at the ceiling with dull eyes. "Every man knows in his heart," he said, "that nothing is worth doing."

"It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. They might have called Sunday the super-man. If any such creature be conceivable, he looked, indeed, somewhat like it, with his earth-shaking abstraction, as of a stone statue walking. He might have been called something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood. But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it."

"If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might."

"It seemed a symbol of human faith and valour that while the skies were darkening that high place of the earth was bright. The devils might have captured heaven, but they had not yet captured the cross. He had a new impulse to tear out the secret of this dancing, jumping and pursuing paralytic; and at the entrance of the court as it opened upon the Circus he turned, stick in hand, to face his pursuer."

"Sunday is a fixed star," he said. "You shall see him a falling star," said Syme, and put on his hat. The decision of his gesture drew the Professor vaguely to his feet. "Have you any idea," he asked, with a sort of benevolent bewilderment, "exactly where you are going?" "Yes," replied Syme shortly, "I am going to prevent this bomb being thrown in Paris."

"Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come right side up again. This devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the table lay back and laughed at him. He did not for the moment ask any questions of detail; he only knew the happy and silly fact that this shadow, which had pursued him with an intolerable oppression of peril, was only the shadow of a friend trying to catch him up. He knew simultaneously that he was a fool and a free man. For with any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when only three things are possible: first a perpetuation of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted with a barbaric laughter."

"Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy."

"Syme was able to pour out for the first time the whole of his outrageous tale, from the time when Gregory had taken him to the little tavern by the river. He did it idly and amply, in a luxuriant monologue, as a man speaks with very old friends. On his side, also, the man who had impersonated Professor de Worms was not less communicative. His own story was almost as silly as Syme's."

"Gogol was an idealist. He made up as the abstract or platonic ideal of an anarchist. But I am a realist. I am a portrait painter. But, indeed, to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression. I am a portrait." "I don't understand you," said Syme. "I am a portrait," repeated the Professor. "I am a portrait of the celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe, in Naples."

"Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could not even understand myself."

"Do you understand," said the other, "that this is a tragedy?" "Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"

"Don't you know Sunday? Don't you know that his jokes are always so big and simple that one has never thought of them? Can you think of anything more like Sunday than this, that he should put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council, and then take care that it was not supreme? I tell you he has bought every trust, he has captured every cable, he has control of every railway line — especially of that railway line!" and he pointed a shaking finger towards the small wayside station. "The whole movement was controlled by him; half the world was ready to rise for him. But there were just five people, perhaps, who would have resisted him … and the old devil put them on the Supreme Council, to waste their time in watching each other. Idiots that we are, he planned the whole of our idiocies!"

"Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and turned into other people. That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe."

"Four out of the five rich men in this town … are common swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world."

"I have a suspicion that you are all mad … but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship."

"You are a very fine fellow … You can believe in a sanity which is not merely your sanity."

"When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich."

"We were all a lot of silly policemen looking at each other. And all these nice people who have been peppering us with shot thought we were the dynamiters."

"Vulgar people are never mad. I'm vulgar myself, and I know. I am now going on shore to stand a drink to everybody here."

"We're all spies!" shouted Dr. Bull. "Come and have a drink." Next morning the battalion of the reunited six marched stolidly towards the hotel in Leicester Square. "This is more cheerful," said Dr. Bull; "we are six men going to ask one man what he means." "I think it is a bit queerer than that," said Syme. "I think it is six men going to ask one man what they mean."

"You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf — kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now."

"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in the dark room, who made you all policemen."

"Look!" shouted Syme suddenly. "Look over there!" "Look at what?" asked the Secretary savagely. "Look at the captive balloon!" said Syme, and pointed in a frenzy. "Why the blazes should I look at a captive balloon?" demanded the Secretary. "What is there queer about a captive balloon?" "Nothing," said Syme, "except that it isn't captive!"

"What!" cried the Secretary bitterly. "Do you believe all that tale about his being our man in the dark room? Sunday would say he was anybody." "I don't know whether I believe it or not," said Dr. Bull. "But it isn't that that I mean. I can't wish old Sunday's balloon to burst because —" "Well," said Syme impatiently, "because?" "Well, because he's so jolly like a balloon himself," said Dr. Bull desperately. "I don't understand a word of all that idea of his being the same man who gave us all our blue cards. It seems to make everything nonsense. But I don't care who knows it, I always had a sympathy for old Sunday himself, wicked as he was. Just as if he was a great bouncing baby. How can I explain what my queer sympathy was? It didn't prevent my fighting him like hell! Shall I make it clear if I say that I liked him because he was so fat?" "You will not," said the Secretary. "I've got it now," cried Bull, "it was because he was so fat and so light. Just like a balloon. We always think of fat people as heavy, but he could have danced against a sylph. I see now what I mean. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. It was like the old speculations — what would happen if an elephant could leap up in the sky like a grasshopper?" "Our elephant," said Syme, looking upwards, "has leapt into the sky like a grasshopper." "And somehow," concluded Bull, "that's why I can't help liking old Sunday. No, it's not an admiration of force, or any silly thing like that. There is a kind of gaiety in the thing, as if he were bursting with some good news. Haven't you sometimes felt it on a spring day? You know Nature plays tricks, but somehow that day proves they are good-natured tricks. I never read the Bible myself, but that part they laugh at is literal truth, 'Why leap ye, ye high hills?' The hills do leap — at least, they try to.... Why do I like Sunday?... how can I tell you?... because he's such a Bounder."

"That has been for me the mystery of Sunday, and it is also the mystery of the world. When I see the horrible back, I am sure the noble face is but a mask. When I see the face but for an instant, I know the back is only a jest."

"I was suddenly possessed with the idea that the blind, blank back of his head really was his face — an awful, eyeless face staring at me! And I fancied that the figure running in front of me was really a figure running backwards, and dancing as he ran."

"Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front —"

"The man called Gogol, who had hardly spoken through all their weary travels, suddenly threw up his hands like a lost spirit. "He is dead!" he cried. "And now I know he was my friend — my friend in the dark!" "Dead!" snorted the Secretary. "You will not find him dead easily. If he has been tipped out of the car, we shall find him rolling as a colt rolls in a field, kicking his legs for fun." "Clashing his hoofs," said the Professor. "The colts do, and so did Pan." "Pan again!" said Dr. Bull irritably. "You seem to think Pan is everything." "So he is," said the Professor, "in Greek. He means everything." "Don't forget," said the Secretary, looking down, "that he also means Panic.""

"If the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon."

"Let us remain together a little, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so long. I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always heroes — epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself."

"I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call the thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into our souls — and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace."

"'Now there was a day,'" murmured Bull, who seemed really to have fallen asleep, "'when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.'"

"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, "We also have suffered." "It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whom he has accused. At least —" He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which wore a strange smile. "Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?" As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than the colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"

"When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme's experience was something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For while he could always remember afterwards that he had swooned before the face of Sunday, he could not remember having ever come to at all."

"Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky."

"At first glance, The Man Who Was Thursday is a detective story filled with poetry and politics. But it is mystery that grows more mysterious, until it is nothing less than the mystery of creation itself. This is Chesterton’s most famous novel. Never out of print since it was first published in 1908, critics immediately hailed it as “amazingly clever,” “a remarkable acrobatic performance”, and “a scurrying, door-slamming farce that ends like a chapter in the Apocalypse.” One reviewer described how he had read it in one sitting and put it down, “completely dazed.” Thirty years later, Orson Welles called it “shamelessly beautiful prose” and made a radio dramatization of it with his Mercury Radio Theater of the Air. … this story is not to be compared with the biblical book of Revelation, but rather with the book of Job, the book which Chesterton considered the greatest riddle in all of literature. And even if you know that going in, it won’t help you one bit. … This book is Chesterton at his best."

"It is not quite a political bad dream, or metaphysical adventure, or cosmic comedy in the form of a spy story, but it has something of all these. Anyway, it is unique, and also, what is not all that much easier to bring about, magnetically readable … James Bond and Gabriel Syme differ in innumerable ways, but they share a quality of romance, of color and chivalry, almost of myth, that attracts me a lot more deeply than anything about the down-to-earth and up-to-the-minute heroes of writers like Len Deighton and John Le Carré."

"I would much rather quote a tribute from a totally different type of man, who was nevertheless one of the very few men who, for some reason or other, have ever made head or tail of this unfortunate romance of my youth. He was a distinguished psychoanalyst, of the most modern and scientific sort. He was not a priest; far from it; we might say, like the Frenchman asked if he had lunched on the boat, "au contraire". He did not believe in the Devil; God forbid, if there was any God to forbid. But he was a very keen and eager student of his own subject; and he made my hair stand on end by saying that he had found my very juvenile story useful as a corrective among his morbid patients; especially the process by which each of the diabolical anarchs turns out to be a good citizen in disguise. "I know a number of men who nearly went mad," he said quite gravely, "but were saved because they had really understood The Man Who Was Thursday." He must have been rather generously exaggerative; he may have been mad himself, of course; but then so was I. But I confess it flatters me to think that, in this my period of lunacy, I may have been a little useful to other lunatics."

"I recur here to my personal point about the tendency to miss what the title means; or even what the title says. An article like this is called subjective because it has no subject. In a rambling column, whether because it is personal or impersonal, it is permissible to introduce personal trifles about oneself, as well as about other people, so long as it is made sufficiently obvious that they are trifling. And I may remark in this connexion, or disconnexion, that I happen to have a very strong objection to that trick of missing the point of a story, or sometimes even the obvious sense of the very name of a story. I have sometimes had occasion to murmur meekly that those who endure the heavy labour of reading a book might possibly endure that of reading the title-page of a book. For there are more examples than may be imagined, in which earnest critics might solve many of their problems about what a book is, merely by discovering what it professes to be. … It is odd that one example occurred in my own case... in a book called The Man Who was Thursday. It was a very melodramatic sort of moonshine, but it had a kind of notion in it; and the point is that it described, first a band of the last champions of order fighting against what appeared to be a world of anarchy, and then the discovery that the mysterious master both of the anarchy and the order was the same sort of elemental elf who had appeared to be rather too like a pantomime ogre. This line of logic, or lunacy, led many to infer that this equivocal being was meant for a serious description of the Deity; and my work even enjoyed a temporary respect among those who like the Deity to be so described. But this error was entirely due to the fact that they had read the book but had not read the title page. In my case, it is true, it was a question of a subtitle rather than a title. The book was called The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was, even when my thoughts were considerably less settled than they are now. It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimists were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fitful fashion."

"One of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges."

"In telling a simple story of terror and counter-terrorism, Chesterton probes the mysteries of behaviour and belief in an all too human world and in doing so raises the question of our multiple identities. Anarchy, social order, God, peace, war, religion and a dozen other weighty concepts are mashed together in a whacky little satire that will both amuse and educate you. At the end a mystery remains unsolved. Who or what is Sunday, the president of the Council? Genius, force of nature, villain, or the invisible hand that guides our destinies? It's anybody's guess because different interpretations have been offered and you, too, can have your own little take on it."

"It is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and the gods who ordained it so. His followers had prayed for his return, though their prayers were sin. Prayer should not trouble one who has gone on to Nirvana, no matter what the circumstances of his going. The wearers of the saffron robe prayed, however, that He of the Sword, Manjusri, should come again among them, The Boddhisatva is said to have heard..."

"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could."

"It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night."

"Despite his fall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of the artificers, though it was not doubted that the Gods of the City would have him to die the real death were they to learn of the pray-machine. For that matter, though, it was not doubted that they would have him to die the real death without the excuse of the pray-machine, also, were he to come into their custody. How he would settle this matter with the Lords of Karma was his own affair, though none doubted that when the time came he would find a way."

"Your prayers and your curses come to the same, Lord Yama," commented the ape. "That is to say, nothing." "It has taken you seventeen incarnations to arrive at this truth?" said Yama. "I can see then why you are still doing time as an ape."

"Not by the normal course of events shall we be restored or matters settled, Tak of the Bright Spear. We must beat our own path."

"When there is no real hope we must mint our own. If the coin be counterfeit it may still be passed."

"Sam was the greatest charlatan in the memory of god or man. He was also the worthiest opponent Trimurti ever faced."

"To the sleeper ... He stirs"

"A grimace of pain made his mouth a bow, his teeth the arrows, clenched"

"Now I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea."

"I am nothing," replied the other. "A leaf caught in a whirlpool, perhaps. A feather in the wind ...". "Too bad," said Yama, "for there are leaves and feathers enough in the world for me to have labored so long only to increase their number."

"If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span, and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape - then no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect. ... It is not a supernatural creature"

"It makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either."

"I have been a lone traveler for many years. Accidents always happen to other people."

"Is that the best you can do? ... Your flames are everywhere but nothing burns."

"Yes, Mara, there is a deathgod ... Fallen or no, the real death dwells in my eyes. You must meet them."

"I have many names, and none of them matter."

"Names are not important... To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.' "If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. 'As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality — the Nameless."

"I charge you — forget the names you bear, forget the words I speak as soon as they are uttered. Look, rather, upon the Nameless within yourselves, which arises as I address it. It hearkens not to my words, but to the reality within me, of which it is part. This is the atman, which hears me rather than my words. All else is unreal. To define is to lose. The essence of all things is the Nameless. The Nameless is unknowable, mightier even than Brahma. Things pass, but the essence remains. You sit, therefore, in the midst of a dream. Essence dreams it a dream of form. Forms pass, but the essence remains, dreaming new dreams. Man names these dreams and thinks to have captured the essence, not knowing that he invokes the unreal. These stones, these walls, these bodies you see seated about you are poppies and water and the sun. They are the dreams of the Nameless. They are fire, if you like."

"Occasionally, there may come a dreamer who is aware that he is dreaming. He may control something of the dream-stuff, bending it to his will, or he may awaken into greater self-knowledge. If he chooses the path of self-knowledge, his glory is great and he shall be for all ages like unto a star. If he chooses instead the way of the Tantras, combining Samsara and Nirvana, comprehending the world and continuing to live in it, this one is mighty among dreamers."

"To dwell within Samsara, however, is to be subject to the works of those who are mighty among dreamers. If they be mighty for good, it is a golden time. If they be mighty for ill, it is a time of darkness. The dream may turn to nightmare."

"This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you — Mara, mighty among dreamers — mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more."

"To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless. This struggle will also bear suffering, and so one's karmic burden will be lightened thereby, just as it would be by enduring the ugliness; but this suffering is productive of a higher end in the light of the eternal values of which the sages so often speak."

"For a spur of the moment thing, you came up with a fairly engaging sermon." "Thanks." "Do you really believe what you preached?" Sam laughed. "I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I'm a liar."

"I just wanted to try another line on the audience. It is difficult to stir rebellion among those to whom all things are good. There is no room for evil in their minds, despite the fact that they suffer it constantly. The slave upon the rack who knows that he will be born again — perhaps as a fat merchant — if he suffers willingly — his outlook is not the same as that of a man with but one life to live. He can bear anything, knowing that great as his present pain may be, his future pleasure will rise higher. If such a one does not choose to believe in good or evil, perhaps then beauty and ugliness can be made to serve him as well. Only the names have been changed."

""Yama thinks the Golden Cloud to have changed you." "Perhaps it has." "He believes it to have softened you, weakened you. You have always posed as a mystic, but now he believes you have become one — to your own undoing, to our undoing." He shook his head, turned around. But he did not see her. Stood she there invisible, or had she withdrawn? He spoke softly and without inflection: "I shall tear these stars from out the heavens," he stated, "and hurl them in the faces of the gods, if this be necessary. I shall blaspheme in every Temple throughout the land. I shall take lives as a fisherman takes fish, by the net, if this be necessary. I shall mount me again up to the Celestial City, though every step be a flame or a naked sword and the way be guarded by tigers. One day will the gods look down from Heaven and see me upon the stair, bringing them the gift they fear most. That day will the new Yuga begin."

"He played tune after forbidden tune, and the professional musicians put professional expressions of scorn upon their faces; but beneath the table several feet were tapping in slow time with the music."

"The old religion is not only the religion - it is the revealed, enforced and frighteningly demonstrable religion. But don't think that last part too loudly."

"The definition of bad karma is anything our friends the gods don't like."

"Sam smiled. "They are not omnipotent." "I sincerely hope not," replied the other, "but I fear that day is not far off.""

"Think not less of me in my omniscience ... if I admit to having, for the moment, forgotten these figures."

"Then the fit hit the Shan."

"Good luck. No gods be with you!"

"This day your sin account is filled to overflowing."

"The local Brahmins did not approve of the antiritualistic teachings of the Buddha, but his presence filled their coffers to overflowing; so they learned to live in his squat shadow, never voicing the word tirthika—heretic."

"The Buddha, looking imperturbable, returned his attention to the drama. A monk seated nearby noticed he was tapping his fingers on the ground, and he decided that the Enlightened One must be keeping time with the drumbeats, for it was common knowledge that he was above such things as impatience."

"Breath is the least appreciated gift of the gods. None sing hymns to it, praising the good air, breathed by king and beggar, master and dog alike. But, oh, to be without it!"

"No one gives flowers to Death"

"You may not have this man, oh Death," said the Master of the North, "for he belongs to the world, and we of the world will defend him."

"As you know, the personal strengths and weakness of a leader are no true indication of the merits of his cause."

"Some quicksand is quicker than other quicksand. Fortunately, you are settling into that of the slower sort. [...] In the meantime, I suggest you solicit aid of my followers or learn the difficult art of mud-breathing."

"Even a mirror will not show you yourself, if you do not wish to see."

"It is told how the Lord of Light descended into the Well of the Demons, to make there a bargain with the chief of the Rakasha. He dealt in good faith, but the Rakasha are the Rakasha. That is to say, they are malefic creatures, possessed of great powers, life-span and the ability to assume nearly any shape. The Rakasha are almost indestructible. Their chiefest lack is a true body; their chiefest virtue, their honor toward their gambling debts. That the Lord of Light went to Hellwell at all serves to show that perhaps he was somewhat distraught concerning the state of the world..."

"Hellwell lies at the top of the world and it leads down to its roots. It is probably as old as the world itself; and if it is not, it should be, because it looks as if it were."

"There is a huge, burnished metal door, erected by the First, that is heavy as sin, three times the height of a man and half that distance in width. It is a full cubit thick and bears a head-sized ring of brass, a complicated pressure-plate lock and an inscription that reads, roughly, "Go away. This is not a place to be. If you do try to enter here, you will fail and also be cursed. If somehow you succeed, then do not complain that you entered unwarned, nor bother us with your deathbed prayers." Signed, "The Gods.""

"Very few feet have ever trod the trail that leads to Hellwell. Of those who visited, most came only to look, to see whether the great door really existed; and when they returned home and told of having seen it, they were generally mocked."

"It is told that Pannalal the Sage, having sharpened his mind with meditation and divers asceticisms, had divined the operation of the lock and entered Hellwell, spending a day and a night beneath the mountain. He was thereafter known as Pannalal the Mad."

"Think not, oh Siddhartha, that because you wear a different body you go now unrecognized. I look upon the flows of energy which are your real being — not the flesh that masks them."

"A facility with oaths is not the most reassuring quality in a bargainer. And your strength is also your weakness in any bargaining at all. You are so strong as to be unable to grant to another the power to control you. You have no gods to swear by. The only thing you will honor is a gambling debt, and there are no grounds for gaming here."

"It is a difficult problem," said Taraka. "I should give anything I have to be free — but then, all that I have is power — pure power, in essence uncommittable. A greater force might subdue it, but that is not the answer. I do not really know how to give you satisfactory assurance that my promise will be kept. If I were you, I certainly would not trust me."

"What is your power, Siddhartha? How do you do what you do?" it asked him. "Call it electrodirection," said the other, "mind over energy. It is as good a term as any. But whatever you call it, do not seek to cross it again. I can kill you with it, though no weapon formed of matter may be laid upon you. Go now!"

"I came to Hellwell, the wrath of the gods swarming and buzzing at my back. Now sixty-six demons are loose in the world. Very soon, your presence will be felt. The gods will know who has done this thing, and they will take steps against us. The element of surprise will be lost." "We fought the gods in the days of old . . ." "And these are not the days of old, Taraka. The gods are stronger now, much stronger. Long have you been bound, and their might has grown over the ages. Even if you command the first army of Rakasha in history, and backing them in battle I raise me up a mighty army of men — even then, will the final result be a thing uncertain. To delay now is to throw everything away."

"From Hellwell to Heaven he went, there to commune with the gods. The Celestial City holds many mysteries, including some of the keys to his own past. Not all that transpired during the time he dwelled there is known. It is known, however, that he petitioned the gods on behalf of the world, obtaining the sympathy of some, the enmity of others. Had he chosen to betray humanity and accept the proffers of the gods, it is said by some that he might have dwelled forever as a Lord of the City and not have met his death beneath the claws of the phantom cats of Kaniburrha..."

"Vishnu, in his wisdom, had seen that there must be a balance between the metropolis and the wilderness. While wilderness can exist independent of cities, that which dwells within a city requires more than the tamed plants of a pleasance. If the world were all city, he had reasoned, the dwellers within it would turn a portion of it into a wilderness, for there is that within them all which desires that somewhere there be an end to order and a beginning of chaos. So, within his mind there had grown up a forest, pumping forth streams and the smells of growth and decay, uttering the cries of the uncitied creatures who dwelled within its shadows, shrugging in the wind and glistening in the rain, falling down and growing up again."

"I knew him a long time ago," said Rudra. "Accelerationist?" "He wasn't then. Wasn't much of anything, politically. He was one of the First, though, one of those who had looked upon Urath." "Oh?" "He distinguished himself in the wars against the People-of-the-Sea and against the Mothers of the Terrible Glow." Here, Rudra made a sign in the air. "Later," he continued, "this was remembered, and he was given charge of the northern marches in the wars against the demons. He was known as Kalkin in those days, and it was there that he came to be called Binder. He developed an Attribute which he could use against the demons. With it, he destroyed most of the Yakshas and bound the Rakasha. When Yama and Kali captured him at Hellwell in Malwa, he had already succeeded in freeing these latter. Thus, the Rakasha are again abroad in the world."

"You fertility deities are worse than Marxists," he said. "You think that's all that goes on between people. We were just friends for a time, but she is too hard on her friends and so loses them."

"As there is a time for everything, there is a time also for the end of anything. This is an age for the consolidation of man’s gains upon this world. This is a time for the sharing of knowledge, not the crossing of blades."

"You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one."

"Doubt, Lady, is the chastity of the mind, and I bear its seal upon my own."

"I do not have the time to give you more than my contempt."

"Ganesha the god-maker regarded the jungle about him. Though he walked through the realm of the phantom cats, he feared no evil. For the Lord of Chaos walked by his side, and the Trident of Destruction comforted him."

"Are you not Maitreya, Lord of Light, for whom the world has waited, lo, these many years — he whose coming I prophesied long ago in a poem?" "No, my name is Sam," he replied, "and I am about to depart the world, not enter into it. Who are you?" "I am a bird who was once a poet. All morning have I flown, since the yawp of Garuda opened the day. I was flying about the ways of Heaven looking for Lord Rudra, hoping to befoul him with my droppings, when I felt the power of a weird come over the land. I have flown far, and I have seen many things, Lord of Light"

""I have seen all-colored Mara atop the spire of the highest tower, and I have felt the power of the weird he lays — for I have seen the phantom cats troubled within the wood, then hurrying in this direction. I have seen the tears of a man and of a woman. I have heard the laughter of a goddess. I have seen a bright spear uplifted against the morning, and I have heard an oath spoken. I have seen the Lord of Light at last, of whom I wrote, long ago:"

"During the time that followed the death of Brahma, there came upon the Celestial City a period of turmoil. Several among the gods were even expelled from Heaven. It was a time when just about everyone feared being considered an Accelerationist; and, as fate would have it, at some point or other during this period, just about everyone was considered an Accelerationist. Though Great-Souled Sam was dead, his spirit was said to live on, mocking. Then, in the days of disaffection and intrigue that led up to the Great Battle, it was rumored that more than his spirit might have lived on."

"I am but young, as gods go, but I have heard it said that in the early days of the world the hero with whom you rode — Kalkin — was the same as the one called Sam. If you had reason to hate your ancient Lord, and Sam was truly he, then could I see their enlisting you against this thing he had started. Might this be true?"

"Death is mighty, and is no one's friend."

"Revenge is part of the illusion of self. How can a man kill that which neither lives nor dies truly, but which exists only as a reflection of the Absolute?" "You did a pretty good job of it, though, even if, as you say, it was only a rearrangement." "Thank you."

"I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. We've stepped on these poor fools enough. I wanted to give them a chance to be free, to build what they wanted." "But they live, and they live and they live." "Sometimes, and sometimes not. So do the gods." "You were about the last Accelerationist left in the world, Sam. No one would have thought you were also the deadliest."

"The gods are strong — stronger than they have ever been before." "But tell me who is coming to aid us." "Lord Nirriti the Black, who hates all things, hates the Gods of the City most of all. So he is sending a thousand unliving ones to fight on the plains beside the Vedra. He said that, after the battle, we of the Rakasha may take our choice from the bodies which yet remain among the mindless ones he has grown." "I do not relish aid from the Black One, but I am in no position to discriminate..."

"It is said that each day recapitulates the history of the world, coming up out of darkness and cold into confused light and beginning warmth, consciousness blinking its eyes somewhere in midmorning, awakening thoughts a jumble of illogic and unattached emotion, and all speeding together toward the order of noontide, the slow, poignant decline of dusk, the mystical vision of twilight, the end of entropy that is night once more."

""There are only demigods and men upon the field," said Death. "They are still testing our strength. There are very few who remember the full power of Kalkin." "The full power of Kalkin?" asked Sam. "That has never been released, oh Death. Not in all the ages of the world."

"Overhead, the thunder chariot passed once again. Sam raised his lance and pyrotechnic hell broke loose about the passing vessel. "You should not have let them know you could do that! Not yet!""

"The Buddha has gone to nirvana," said Brahma. "Preach it in the Temples! Sing it in the streets'. Glorious was his passing! He has reformed the old religion, and we are better now than ever before! Let all who would think otherwise remember Keenset!"

"Another name by which he is sometimes called is Maitreya, meaning Lord of Light. After his return from the Golden Cloud, he journeyed to the Palace of Kama at Khaipur, where he planned and built his strength against the Day of the Yuga. A sage once said that one never sees the Day of the Yuga, but only knows it when it is past. For it dawns like any other day and passes in the same wise, recapitulating the history of the world."

"Men no longer fear Heaven so much as they used to. They are more willing to defend themselves; and now that they are better equipped, the gods are less willing to face them." "Then Sam is winning. Across the years, he is beating them."

"Taraka of the Rakasha was uneasy. Flitting above the clouds that moved through the middle of the day, he thought upon the ways of power. He had once been mightiest. In the days before the binding there had been none who could stand against him. Then Siddhartha the Binder had come. He had known of him earlier, known of him as Kalkin and had known him to be strong. Sooner or later, he had realized, they would have to meet, that he might test the power of that Attribute which Kalkin was said to have raised up. When they had come together, on that mighty, gone day when the mountaintops had flared with their fury, on that day the Binder had won. And in their second encounter, ages afterward, he had somehow beaten him even more fully. But he had been the only one, and now he was gone from out the world. Of all creatures, only the Binder had bested the Lord of Hellwell. Then the gods had come to challenge his power. They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, meditation, neurosurgery — forging them into Attributes — and across the ages, those powers had grown. Four of them had entered Hellwell, only four, and his legions had not been able to repel them. The one called Shiva was strong, but the Binder had later slain him. This was as it should be, for Taraka recognized the Binder as a peer."

"Time like an ocean, space like its water, Sam in the middle, standing, decided."

"I know my power is returning. I can feel it. Many things are returning now. During the weeks we have dwelled here in Ratri's palace I have meditated upon my past lives. They were not all failures, deathgod. I have decided this today. Though Heaven has beaten me at every turn, each victory has cost them much."

"Taraka screamed as Siddhartha rode toward him upon a white horse, the air crackling and smelling of ozone: "No, Binder! Hold your power! My death belongs to Yama . . ." "Oh foolish demon!" said Sam. "It need not have been...""

"You? You rose again?" "It doesn't count," said Sam. "I didn't do it the hard way." Tears filled the Black One's eyes. "It means you'll win, though," he gasped. "I can't understand why He permitted it..."

"I shall return to being a man, and I shall let the people keep the Buddha who is in their hearts. Whatever the source, the message was pure, believe me. That is the only reason it took root and grew."

"“Something always manages to draw me near the tree that lightning is about to fall upon.” “Destiny, sir.” “Rather an accidental social conscience and some right mistake-making, I fear.”"

"The spoon came alive with spoon-ness and the ball with ball-ness and the block with block-ness, and the girl laughed. Even the puppy seemed to study the objects."

"Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty. As the wearers of the saffron robe still meditate upon the Way of Light, and the girl who is named Murga visits the Temple daily, to place before her dark one in his shrine the only devotion he receives, of flowers."

"I was pleased to get a copy of Roger Zelazny's novel Lord of Light the other day. It's one of my favourite books (I think the first thing author Steve Brust ever said to me was "Let's have an argument. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is the best book anyone's ever written." "Ah," I said, "If you make it best SF book of the 1960s, I'll go along with it." "Oh. Fair enough." It was the first of a long line of failed arguments.) It's got a blurb from me on it, which I hope sells many copies."

"Tricky and brilliant and heartfelt and dangerous."

"It's fantasy, or it's science fiction, or it's a retelling of the tales of the Hindu gods, as they encounter Mahasamatman, who may be Buddha and may just be a guy called Sam. It's a book I reread every few decades, and love."

"Lord Of Light is a novel about a future world after the destruction of Earth, conquered by men who, through ultratechnology, give themselves godlike powers and set themselves up as the old Hindu gods to rule the common people. Called The First, they have achieved a kind of immortality by transferring their identities from old bodies to new ones. These deicrats (as Zelazny calls them) through centuries of "divine" rule, have become corrupt, and only one among them will openly oppose their tyranny. He is the hero, "who was variously known as Mahasamatman, Kalkin, Manjusri, Siddhartha, Tathagatha, Binder, Maitreya, the Enlight-ened One, Buddha and Sam.""

""Colonists from another planet conquer Earth and become the historic Hindu Gods until they turn against each other for control of the world. From this heralds the return of the Buddha, magic, spirituality, unification of all forces, and a new generation of mankind" … The international best-selling Hugo Award winning novel of science fantasy by: Roger Zelazny Lord of Light is … A metaphysical action adventure love story where the crew of a space ship colonize an ancient planet, their passengers become the populace, and they use their technology to turn themselves into powerful gods and goddesses. One man stands alone to fight his old colleagues and free mankind. … Sam is the dreamer and master schemer. He is the strategist and cosmic trickster who becomes Siddhartha and then the Buddha to ward off the iron grasp of Heaven. Sam is the ancient renegade god Kalkin whose powers become ever-more revealed to him as he fights to change the course of an entire civilization — and upon whose shoulders rests the future of the entire world. In the end he will be recognized by history as the true leader, the Binder of Destiny, The Lord of Light…"

"Lord of Light is a wonderful novel, fully worthy of the praise it has garnered. It is set many centuries in the future, after "the death of Urath." On a colony planet, men have battled the previous inhabitants and won, and have established a society. This society is based on technological means of imitating the Hindu religion. Specifically, when the body nears death, it is possible to transfer the "mind" or "soul" to a new body, even the body of an animal. But some of the earliest colonists, including the "First," have additional powers, which give them the status of gods. They also have taken control of the means of reincarnation, and a faction among them is using that means in political ways: punishing their enemies with reincarnation as animals, or with the "true death." The result is a society of humans living in a world in which something resembling Hinduism is literally true. Furthermore, the leading faction of "gods" is using its powers to keep the technological level of human society low enough that their own position cannot be threatened. The book opens with a renegade "god" at an isolated temple calling the book's hero back from "heaven.""

"Mendez said he needed a movie script for a scheme that he had concocted to rescue six U.S. diplomatic personnel from the Canadian embassy in Iran where they were hiding. The agent had planned to travel to Iran under the guise of a movie producer and fool Iranian officials into believing that the six Americans were actors and members of his production team. Fortunately for Mendez, Chambers had the perfect script. In December 1979, Chambers gave Mendez Geller's Lord of Light script and Kirby's storyboards, which had remained in Chambers' possession since the plug was pulled on the film's production. Chambers and Mendez changed the name of the production from Lord of Light to Argo and the rest of the story became history, as the plan was successful and all six Americans made it home safely. Geller said he didn't learn that his script had been used for the top secret mission until 2001."

"In 1979, Geller penned Lord of Light, an adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel. The title morphed into Argo when the CIA evacuated six US diplomats from Iran by turning them into a film crew. But contrary to how Affleck's film portrays it, the script wasn't just some jokey, throwaway nonsense a hack writer shat out. It was the opening salvo for a dream that would change the world. With assistance from sci-fi visionaries Ray Bradbury, Paolo Solari, and artist Jack Kirby, Geller was using the script to help fund a science-fiction theme park named, appropriately enough, Science Fiction Land. Science Fiction Land would have been a place for top scientists to show off their gadgets to the public. In other words, something that's way more exciting than the movie Argo. (My friend described the situation best by saying, “Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I want to live in the alternate universe where a couple of Americans died in Iran and this theme park exists.”) While the park's long dead, an Oscar-based jolt of enthusiasm has Geller kicking the tires on finally seeing his original script turned into a film, and he's the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Science Fiction Land."

"While few of the characters have much depth, they manage to be both human and, when they take on their Aspects and wield their Attributes, embodiments of fundamental forces. Sam himself is a crotchety old-timer and a con-man and a trickster — but also an embodiment of military prowess and defiance against odds. … Myth and religion never actually break free from the scientific scaffolding, but they manage to make it irrelevant — one could almost consider Lord of Light a demonstration that their symbolic power does not rest on their metaphysical claims. … Somehow all the disparate components of Lord of Light — humour and epic, science and religion, action and philosophy — come together in a successful novel. The result is my favourite Zelazny work and indeed one of my favourite science fiction novels of all time. Though it won the Hugo award in 1968, it has I think been relatively neglected; it can bear comparison with the much better known Dune (and there are parallels with Herbert's use of Sufism in that work)."

"Lord of Light was intentionally written so that it could be taken as a science fiction or a fantasy novel. On the one hand, I attempted to provide some justifications for what went on in the way of the bizarre; on the other, I employed a style I associate with fantasy in the telling of the story. I wrote it that way on purpose, leaving some intentional ambiguity, because I wanted it to lie somewhat between both camps and not entirely in either. I did this because I did not see much stuff being written at that time which fit that description; because I wanted to see whether I could do it; and because I was curious as to how such a book would be received."

"The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it."

"Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison."

"There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out."

"If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports."

"Like I said, don't piss off those bitches in the airports," said Johnnie Larch, in the back of his mind, "or they'll haul your sorry ass back here before you can spit"

"You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of."

""He’s hustling you,” said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard. “He’s a hustler.” “Damn straight I’m a hustler,” said Wednesday. “That’s why I need someone to look out for my best interests.”"

""I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I'm impressed. You have class. And I'm at a loose end right now. You should know that when we're done, I'll be gone. And if you piss me off, I'll be gone too. Until then, I'll work for you." Wednesday grinned. His smiles were strange things, Shadow decided. They contained no shred of humor, no happiness, no mirth. Wednesday looked like he had learned to smile from a manual. "Very good," he said. "Then we have a compact. And we are agreed." "What the hell," said Shadow."

"So what are you? A two-bit con artist?" Wednesday nodded. "Yes," he said. "I suppose I am. Among other things."

"There was a thin young woman behind the counter at the Motel America. She told Shadow he had already been checked in by his friend, and gave him his rectangular plastic room key. She had pale blonde hair and a rodentlike quality to her face that was most apparent when she looked suspicious, and eased when she smiled."

"“How was the funeral?” he asked. “It’s over,” said Shadow. “You want to talk about it?” “No,” said Shadow. “Good.” Wednesday grinned. “Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.”"

"Shadow had promised himself a bath when he got out of prison, and Shadow kept his promises. The pizza arrived shortly after he got out of the bath, and Shadow ate it, washing it down with a can of root beer. Shadow lay in bed, thinking, This is my first bed as a free man, and the thought gave him less pleasure than he had imagined that it would. He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted."

"Shadow could have been in his bed at home, he thought, in the apartment that he had shared with Laura—in the bed that he had shared with Laura. But the thought of being there without her, surrounded by her things, her scent, her life, was simply too painful. . . Don ’t go there, thought Shadow. He decided to think about something else."

"Sleep took him then, without Shadow noticing. He was walking . . . He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a womanlike thing: her naked breasts hung flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it."

"He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step."

"A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one."

"“These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us.”"

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."

"The light that came into the room from outside was not bright, but Shadow’s eyes had become used to the dark. There was a woman sitting on the side of his bed. He knew her. He would have known her in a crowd of a thousand, or of a hundred thousand. She was still wearing the navy blue suit they had buried her in. Her voice was a whisper, but a familiar one. “I guess,” said Laura, “you’re going to ask what I’m doing here.” Shadow said nothing. He sat down on the room’s only chair and, finally, asked, “Is that you?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m cold, puppy.” “You’re dead, babe.” “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I am.” She patted the bed next to her. “Come and sit by me,” she said. “No,” said Shadow. “I think I’ll stay right here for now. We have some unresolved issues to address.” “Like me being dead?” “Possibly, but I was thinking more of how you died. You and Robbie.” “Oh,” she said. “That.” Shadow could smell—or perhaps, he thought, he simply imagined that he smelled —an odor of rot, of flowers and preservatives. His wife—his ex-wife ... no, he corrected himself, his late wife—sat on the bed and stared at him, unblinking."

"“Normally people who die stay in their graves,” said Shadow. “Do they? Do they really, puppy? I used to think they did too. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps.” She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Her face, in the light of the motel sign, was as beautiful as it had ever been. The face of the woman he had gone to prison for."

"“Babes,” he told her. “You’re dead.” “That’s one of those aspects, obviously.” She paused. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going now. It will be better if I go.” And, naturally and easily, she turned and put her hands on Shadow’s shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, as she had always kissed him goodbye. Awkwardly he bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her mouth as he did so and pushed her lips against his. Her breath smelled, faintly, of mothballs. Laura’s tongue flickered into Shadow’s mouth. It was cold, and dry, and it tasted of cigarettes and of bile. If Shadow had had any doubts as to whether his wife was dead or not, they ended then. He pulled back."

"Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city."

"You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread."

"If I win, I get to knock your brains out. With a sledgehammer. First, you go down on your knees. Then I hit you a blow with it, so you don't get up again."

"The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for children, or the easily bored. For the most part it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. It is a fine fiction, he continued, pausing for a moment to dip his pen in the inkwell and collect his thoughts, that America was founded by pilgrims, seeking the freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to the Americas, spread and bred and filled the empty land. In truth, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place."

"Keep safe," she told him. "I would not like to hear that you were gone for good." "It would distress me equally, my dear."

"That," said Wednesday, driving off, "is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant."

"This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is." "What?" "The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are."

"The quickest way is sometimes the longest."

"I got to tell you, you don’t look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him."

"I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows."

"All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end."

"It's easier to kill people, when you're dead yourself … I mean, it's not such a big deal. You're not so prejudiced anymore."

"It's going to be a white Christmas," said Shadow as he pumped the gas. "Yup. Shit. That boy was one lucky son of a virgin." "Jesus?" "Lucky, lucky guy. He could fall into a cesspit and come up smelling like roses."

"One day every soldier in the empire has to shower in the blood of your sacrificial bull. The next day they don't even remember your birthday."

"So yeah, Jesus does pretty good over here. But I met a guy who said he saw him hitchhiking by the side of the road in Afghanistan and nobody was stopping to give him a ride. You know? It all depends on where you are."

"I'll tell you something," he said, as if he had said nothing that day. "You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging."

"The brief winter days leading up to Christmas were like moments of light between the winter darknesses, and they fled fast in the house of the dead."

"There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous."

"Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however … people stay the same. Some grifts last forever, others are swallowed soon enough by time and by the world."

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not fooling a soul."

"There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed, and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors. The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It's a sacrifice, of sorts."

"And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."

"San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis." "Is that so?" said Shadow, mildly. "Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s."

"There was a girl, and her uncle sold her, wrote Mr. Ibis in his perfect copperplate handwriting. That is the tale; the rest is detail."

"There are accounts that, if we open our hearts to them, will cut us too deeply. Look — here is a good man, good by his own lights and the lights of his friends: he is faithful and true to his wife, he adores and lavishes attention on his little children, he cares about his country, he does his job punctiliously, as best he can. So, efficiently and good-naturedly, he exterminates Jews: he appreciates the music that plays in the background to pacify them; he advises the Jews not to forget their identification numbers as they go into the showers — many people, he tells them, forget their numbers, and take the wrong clothes when they come out of the showers. This calms the Jews. There will be life, they assure themselves, after the showers. Our man supervises the detail taking the bodies to the ovens; and if there is anything he feels bad about, it is that he still allows the gassing of vermin to affect him. Were he a truly good man, he knows, he would feel nothing but joy as the earth is cleansed of its pests."

"No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes — forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There’s not a chance you’d mistake one for another, after a minute’s close inspection), but still unique."

"Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people — but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies’ own myriad squirming children? We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other."

"It was in North Carolina, when she had seen the food for the slave children and the dogs poured into the same trough, and she had seen her little children scrabbling with the dogs for the scraps. She saw that happen one day—and she had seen it before, every day on that plantation, and she would see it again many times before she left—she saw it that one day and it broke her heart."

"Wututu and Agasu were separated then. It happened so fast—a big man forced open Agasu’s mouth, looked at his teeth, felt his arm muscles, nodded, and two other men hauled Agasu away. He did not fight them. He looked at Wututu and called, “Be brave,” to her. She nodded, and then her vision smeared and blurred with tears, and she wailed. Together they were twins, magical, powerful. Apart they were two children in pain. She never saw him again but once, and never in life."

"This is what happened to Agasu. First they took him to a seasoning farm, where they whipped him daily for the things he did and didn’t do, they taught him a smattering of English and they gave him the name of Inky Jack, for the darkness of his skin. When he ran away they hunted him down with dogs and brought him back, and cut off a toe with a chisel, to teach him a lesson he would not forget. He would have starved himself to death, but when he refused to eat his front teeth were broken and thin gruel was forced into his mouth, until he had no choice but to swallow or to choke. Even in those times they preferred slaves born into captivity to those brought over from Africa. The free-born slaves tried to run, or they tried to die, and either way, there went the profits."

"The slaves on the sugar plantations of St. Domingue rarely lived more than a decade. The free time they were given—two hours in the heat of noon and five hours in the dark of the night (from eleven until four)—was also the only time they had to grow and tend the food they would eat (for they were not fed by their masters, merely given small plots of land to cultivate, with which to feed themselves), and it was also the time they had to sleep and to dream. Even so, they would take that time and they would gather and dance, and sing and worship."

"I'm alive" said Shadow."I'm not dead. Remember?" "You're not dead" Laura said "But I'm not sure you're alive, either. Not really."

"Even for my kind, pain still hurts. If you move and act in the material world, then the material world acts on you. Pain hurts, just as greed intoxicates and lust burns. We may not die easy and we sure as hell don't die well, but we can die. If we're still loved and remembered, something else a whole lot like us comes along and takes our place and the whole damn thing starts all over again. And if we're forgotten, we're done."

"It's not easy to believe." "I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut." "Maybe," she said. "Try me."

"Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today? … And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that they all seem to think there isn't room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely."

"Gods are great," said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. "But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return..."

"This isn’t about what is," said Mr. Nancy. "It’s about what people think is. It’s all imaginary anyway. That’s why it’s important. People only fight over imaginary things."

"Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn’t she the one who killed her children?" "Different woman," said Mr. Nancy. "Same deal."

""So, you're praying? Have they got you thinking that they’re gods? They aren’t gods." "I wasn’t praying," said Shadow. "Just thinking." "The way I figure it," said Town, "they’re mutations. Evolutionary experiments. A little hypnotic ability, a little hocus-pocus, and they can make people believe anything. Nothing to write home about. That’s all. They die like men, after all." "They always did," said Shadow."

"It's easy, there's a trick to it, you do it or you die."

"All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them."

"Which path should I take?" he asked. "Which one is safe?" "Take one, and you cannot take the other," she said. "But neither path is safe. Which way would you walk — the way of hard truths or the way of fine lies?" "Truths," he said. "I've come too far for more lies."

"All revelations are personal." she said. "That’s why all revelations are suspect."

"You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color." "You can't," said Shadow. "Can you?" The echoes whispered his words back at him from across the pool. "What you have to remember," said Mr. Ibis, testily, "is that life and death are different sides of the same coin. Like the heads and tails of a quarter." "And if I had a double-headed quarter?" "You don't. They only belong to fools, and gods."

"We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosecutor and his persecutor."

""I want to rest now," said Shadow. "That’s what I want. I want nothing. No heaven, no hell, no anything. Just let it end." "You're certain?" asked Thoth. "Yes," said Shadow. Mr. Jacquel opened the last door for Shadow, and behind that door there was nothing. Not darkness. Not even oblivion. Only nothing. Shadow accepted it, completely and without reservation, and he walked through the door into nothing with a strange fierce joy."

"None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you — even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world."

"People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen."

"This is a bad land for gods," said Shadow. As an opening statement it wasn't Friends, Romans, countrymen, but it would do. "You've probably all learned that. The old gods are ignored. The new gods are as quickly taken up as they are abandoned, cast aside for the next big thing. Either you've been forgotten, or you're scared you're going to be rendered obsolete, or maybe you're just getting tired of existing on the whim of people."

"Shadow shook his head. "You know," he said, "I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.""

"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this."

"He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough."

"This is a novel somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic manner of tales of the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers come from. Peace."

"So it goes."

"The smell of mustard gas and roses."

""You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" "No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?" "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'" What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death."

""I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby," I said. "The irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands of people are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad." (pp. 4-5)"

"The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought. (p. 11)"

""You were just babies then!" she said. "What?" I said. "You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!" I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood. "But you're not going to write it that way, are you." This wasn't a question. It was an accusation. "I — I don't know," I said. "Well I know," she said. "You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs." So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: "Mary," I said, "I don't think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. "I tell you what," I said, "I'll call it The Children's Crusade." She was my friend after that."

"I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. (p. 18)"

"It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?""

"I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that. (p. 19)"

"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes. (pp. 21-22)"

"People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like this: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." It ends like this: "Poo-tee-weet?" (p. 22)"

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.""

"As part of the gun crew, he had helped to fire one shot in anger — from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up snow and vegetation with a blowtorch thirty feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss. (p. 34)"

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. (p. 39)"

"Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference." Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future. (p. 60)"

"If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob! (p. 67)"

"American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed. (pp. 74-75)"

"Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?" "That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" "Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." (pp. 76-77)"

"All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. (p. 86)"

""If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will." (p. 86)"

"There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

"The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State. (p. 96)"

"[Eliot] Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy [Pilgrim] one time … He said that everything there was to know about life is in "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoevsky. "But that isn't enough anymore," said Rosewater. (p. 101)"

"She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all. (p. 102)"

"How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. (p. 105)"

"You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'" (p. 106)"

"It was The Gospel From Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space... [who] made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low. But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes. The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought...: Oh, boy — they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes. The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels. So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that too, since the Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was. And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of the Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! (pp. 108-110)"

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt. (p. 122)"

"An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments later he said, 'There they go, there they go.' He meant his brains. That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book. (p. 125)"

"Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. (p. 129)"

""Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut," murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest. "Go take a flying fuck at the moon." (p. 147)"

"Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. (p. 167)"

""Did that really happen?" said Maggie White. She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away. She hadn't had even one baby yet. She used birth control. (p. 171)"

"“I’m not the only one who’s listening. God is listening, too. And on Judgment Day he’s going to tell you all the things you said and did. If it turns out they’re bad things instead of good things, that’s too bad for you, because you’ll burn forever and ever. The burning never stops hurting.” Poor Maggie turned gray. She believed that, too, and was petrified. Kilgore Trout laughed uproariously. A salmon egg flew out of his mouth and landed in Maggie’s cleavage. (p. 172)"

""You ever put a full-length mirror on the floor, and then have a dog stand on it?" Trout asked Billy. "No." "The dog will look down, and all of a sudden he'll realize there's nothing under him. He thinks he's standing on thin air. He'll jump a mile." (p. 175)"

"Billy didn’t really have it. Rumfoord simply insisted, for his own comfort, that Billy had it. Rumfoord was thinking in a military manner: that an inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons, was suffering from a repulsive disease. (p. 192)"

"Billy was having an adventure very common among people without power in time of war: He was trying to prove to a willfully deaf and blind enemy that he was interesting to hear and see. He kept silent until the lights went out at night, and then, when there had been a long silence containing nothing to echo, he said to Rumfoord, "I was in Dresden when it was bombed. I was a prisoner of war." (p. 193"

"Billy turned on his television set, clicking its channel selector around and around. He was looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear. But it was too early in the evening for programs that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out. It was only a little after eight o’clock, so all the shows were about silliness or murder. So it goes. (pp. 199-200)"

"My father died many years ago now—of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. (p. 210)"

""Poo-tee-weet?" (p. 215; closing words)"

"No, and it's actually really rare that you get completely free rein. You know, normally any character you do, you know, it has its own constraints. Your character earns a certain salary, lives in a certain area, you know, maybe has kids, sends them to school, whatever. But, no, with something like the devil, I mean, really you can go completely berserk.¬"

"He's a bit of a computer nerd, and he has no friends. He's a pathetic loser, really. But by the end of the film, he actually says, you've been the best friend I've ever had. It's so sad. All I've done is try to ruin his life, but I've been nice and charming."

"You've got seven wishes. Choose carefully."

"Brendan Fraser - Elliot Richards / Jefe / "Mary" / Abraham Lincoln"

"Elizabeth Hurley - The Devil (Satan)"

"Frances O'Connor as Alison Gardner / Nicole Delarusso"

"Orlando Jones - Daniel / Dan / Danny / Esteban / Beach Jock / Lamar Garrett / Dr. Ngegitigegitibaba"

"Paul Adelstein -Bob / Roberto / Beach Jock / Bob Bob"

"Toby Huss - Jerry / Alejandro / Beach Jock / Jerry Turner / Lance"

"Miriam Shor - Carol / Penthouse Hostess"

"Gabriel Casseus - Elliot's Cellmate"

"Brian Doyle-Murray - Priest"

"Jeff Doucette - Desk Sergeant"

"Aaron Lustig - Synedyne Supervisor"

"Rudolf Martin - Raoul"

"Julian Firth - John Wilkes Booth"

"Yah, I'm going to take advice from someone who fucks turtles."

"The Sin of Onan, the sin that takes hundreds of hours to get right, or at least what I told myself"

"He has asked if you would like to feel the power of his manly nakedness"

"Smite the sons of bitches Josh!"

"Hey Josh, Balthazar sodomizing you?"

"'Amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve did anyone notice that they didn't have a penis among them? I'd think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow had his pants de-stuffed, you don't see a flying monkey waving an arrant straw johnson around anywhere do ya? I think I know what song I'd be singing: 'Oh I would while away the hours/Wanking in the flowers/My heart all full of song/I'd be gilding all the lilies/As I waved about my willy/If only I had a schlong.'""

"Verily I say unto you that should a man put oil upon a woman’s naked body and make her go upon all fours and bark like a dog while knowing her, if you know what I mean, then he has committed adultery, and surely if a woman does the same thing right back, well she has jumped on the adultery donkey cart her own self and if a woman should pretend to be a powerful queen and a man a lowly slave boy and if she should call him humiliating names and make him lick upon her body, then surely they have sinned like big dogs and woe onto the man if he pretends to be a powerful queen…"

"I really like your concubines. The other night Pillows was giving me a back rub after a long day of studying and I started getting this massive…"

"Making someone who is seeking comfort stand out in the cold is a crock of rancid yak butter."

"Festering dog penis!"

"Pork eating goat fucker!"

"I've fucked a thousand women, half again as many boys, some sheep, pigs, a few chickens, and the odd turtle."

""If the police expect to play against the Joker, they'd better be prepared to be dealt from the bottom of the deck!" - Batman #1"

"(to Judge Drake) "You can't win anyway... You see, I hold the winning card!" - Batman #1"

""I won't even waste the usual Joker Venom on you, Brute, but give you something you can understand...lead! - Batman #1"

""Very neat! That ugly head of yours does have a brain!" - Batman #1"

""I'm not mad at all. I'm just differently sane." - Batman and Robin #13"

"(to Superman) "More powerful than a locomotive, and just about as subtle." - Superman/Batman: World's Finest"

""One by One, they'll hear my call. Then this wicked town, will follow my fall." - Batman: The Man Who Laughs"

""In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out." - Shadow of the Bat #37"

""It's a clear choice -- me or Pettit. Vote or die. Cancer or tuberculosis." - Detective Comics #737"

""If I weren't crazy, I'd be insane!" - Batman: Dark Detective"

""They could put me in a helicopter and fly me up into the air and line up the bodies head to toe on the ground in delightful geometric patterns like an endless June Taylor dance routine — and it would never be enough. No, I don’t keep count. But you do. And I love you for it." - Batman: The Dark Knight Returns"

""You dirty rat! You killed my brother! My sister! My daughter! She's my sister and my daughter!" - Batman: Dark Victory"

"(to Batman) "Quick question: When the clock strikes twelve, do I get a little kiss?" - Batman: The Long Halloween"

""Hello Late-Show lovers...and lovers of the Late-Show!" - The Laughing Fish"

""Live...and in person! The Caliph of Clowns, the Grand Mogul of Mountebanks, the One and Only JOKER! Prerecorded for this time zone." - The Sign of the Joker"

""What's wrong with the World? After all the AGGRAVATION I went through just STEALING this crop-duster...you'd think they'd give me one that would FLY right." - Batman: The Long Halloween"

"Drive-In Waitress: Take your order, please? Joker: Yes, indeedy. Thank you. (Talking incredibly fast) I'd like the Big Beefer, Heavy Mustard, double pickles, three strips of bacon, make 'em crispy, ranch dressing on the side... Waitress: Ah, sir... Joker: Side order of fries, also crispy, one of those fake pie thingees with the boiling hot juice that scalds the roof of your mouth...I LOVE that... Waitress: Sir... Joker:Two of your special Egg Nog Shakes, a boy's kiddie meal, and I'll pay extra for a full assortment of the toys that come with it. Waitress: Sir! You were talking way too fast. You'll have to repeat all that! Joker: Of all the incompetence! Listen, you brain-dead Cephalapod! I have better things to do than repeat myself in the fleeting hope that through some MIRACLE you might somehow triumph over your own crushing ignorance and get ONE ITEM of my order right! I DEMAND to see your manager! Manager: I'm sorry, sir. How may I help you? Joker:(shoots the manager) I really wanted those shakes."

""Every clown loves kids, captain. Just ask Sarah Essen-Gordon. Oh, that's right, you can't!" - Gotham Central #15"

"(As Nightwing pummels him) "Aw... Jeez... I hit Jason a lot harder than that. (Pause) His name was Jason, right?" - Joker: Last Laugh #6"

""Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps, Cross-eyed mosquitoes and bowlegged ants. I come before you, to stand before you, to tell you a story I know nothing about. One morning in the middle of the night two dead fellows stood up to fight. They stood back to back, facing each other, drew their swords and shot each other. If you don't believe my lie, it's true, ask the blind lady on the corner, she saw it too." - Emperor Joker"

""Yum Yum. Dim Sum. Chinese food made from real Chinese." - Emperor Joker"

"(To Harley as he turns her into a Constellation) "You get the best seat in the house for Armageddon. Say goodnight, Harley. I always wanted to see my dame in lights. Heh. Even in a moment of abject saccharine, I still got it." - Emperor Joker"

""I did it! I finally killed Batman! In front of a bunch of vulnerable, disabled, kids!!!! Now get me Santa Claus!" - Batman #655"

""If I weren't insane: I couldn't be so brilliant!" - Dreadful Birthday Dear Joker"

""Both of us trying to find meaning in a meaningless world! Why be a disfigured outcast when I can be a notorious Crime God? Why be an orphaned boy when you can be a superhero?" - Batman #663"

""You can't kill me without becoming like me! I can't kill you without losing the only human being who can keep up with me! Isn't it IRONIC?" - Batman #663"

"" The real joke is your stubborn, bone deep conviction that somehow, somewhere, all of this makes sense! That's what cracks me up each time!" - Batman #681"

""You think it all breaks down into symbolism and structures and hints and clues. No, Batman, that's just Wikipedia. You actually believed all it would take is a few chemicals, a couple of days of drug-induced isolation and a cheap little nervous breakdown and you'd have me all figured out? Like there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to understanding?" - Batman #681"

""You really want to know what it feels like to be the clown at midnight? Where there's only ever one joke and it's always on you? Well, here you are. Now do you get it?" - Batman #681"

""Devil is double is deuce, my dear doctor ... and joker trumps deuce." Batman #681"

""Obvious...And everybody knows. You wear your shame like a badge, because you don't have the balls to actually pin one on.... Yes... Just look at you... Desperate to be feared, you want to be perceived as a monster, draped in black... And yet... You leave that little window... A glimpse at the perfection underneath. OBVIOUS; The chiseled jaw, the mouth of a monster... Why do you let it be seen? Tell me why...... - Joker"

""A bit of advice...don't ever apologize to no one for the way you look" - Joker"

""I am the Champion of the WORLD!"- Elseworlds: Batman/Lobo"

""Laugh, clown, laugh...and laugh again! The police are completely at bay! Batman is baying at the moon! No one can beat the Joker! Soon, now...soon they'll see it my way! They'll know I mean what I say! Today, the American fish... and tomorrow all the fish in the world! But...what if everybody stops eating fish? I hadn't thought of that! What if they all conspire against me...leave my Joker-Fish in the sea? But no...that would never work! The VEGETARIANS wouldn't go along! And anyway...I could use my chemicals on cattle! JOKER-BURGERS! OUTRAGEOUS! - Detective Comics #476"

""Howdy, Stan, the Donutz man! This is a stickup, see? (holds two donuts up to his eyes like a mask) - Laughter After Midnight"

""Here's the cold, hard truth Bats...I don't hate you 'cause I'm crazy...I'm crazy 'cause I hate you. " - Batman: Cacophony"

"Ladies and Gentlemen! You've read about it in the papers! Now witness, before your very eyes, that most rare and tragic of nature's mistakes! I give you: the average man. Physically unremarkable, it instead possesses a deformed set of values. Notice the hideously bloated sense of humanity's importance. Also note the club-footed social conscience and the withered optimism. It's certainly not for the squeamish, is it? Most repulsive of all, are its frail and useless notions of order and sanity. If too much weight is placed upon them... they snap. How does it live, I hear you ask? How does this poor pathetic specimen survive in today's harsh and irrational environment? I'm afraid the sad answer is, "Not very well." Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random, and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark slavering buggo! Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this... any other response would be crazy!"

"“Remembering’s dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. “The Past Tense,” I suppose you’d call it. Memory’s so treacherous. One moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss… the next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you’d hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can’t face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren’t contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit… you can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away... forever.”"

"(singing) "When the world is full of care and every headline screams despair, when the news are rape, starvation, war and life is vile...then there's a certain thing I do which I shall pass along to you that's always guaranteed to make me smile. I go Loo-oo-oony, as a lightbulb battered bug, simply Loo-oo-oony, sometimes foam and chew the rug...mister life is swell in a padded cell, it'll chase those blues away! You can trade your gloom for a rubber room and injections twice a day!""

"Life's a bowl of cherries and this is the pits"

"So... I see you received the free ticket I sent you. I'm glad. I did so want you to be here. You see it doesn't matter if you catch me and send me back to the asylum... Gordon's been driven mad. I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to World War Three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?"

"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum...and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moonlight...stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren't make the leap. Y'see...y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea...He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!' B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... he says 'What do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!'"

"Aren't I just good enough to eat?"

"April sweet is coming in, let the feast of fools begin!"

"The guy goes into the hospital, okay? His wife's just had a baby and he can't wait to see them both. So he meets the doctor and he says, 'Oh, Doc, I've been so worried. How are they?' And the doctor smiles and says, 'They're fine. Just fine. Your wife's delivered a healthy baby boy and they're both in tip-top form. You're one lucky guy.' So the guy rushes into the maternity ward with his flowers. But it's empty. His wife's bed is empty. 'Doc?' He says and turns around and the doctor and all the nurses wave their arms and scream in his face. 'April fools! Your wife's dead and the baby's a spastic!!'" (he executes an asylum orderly with a gunshot to the head) "Get it? Oh what a senseless waste of human life!"

"(to Batman) "Loosen up, tight ass!""

"Parting is such sweet sorrow, dearest. Still, you can't say we didn't show you a good time. Enjoy yourself out there... in the asylum. Just don't forget -- if it ever gets too tough... there's always a place for you here."

"And who is this pure fool? Lo, in the sagas of old time, legend or scald, of bard, of druid, cometh he not in green like spring? O thou water thou art air, in which all complex is resolved! Oh, yes! Fill the churches with dirty thoughts! Introduce honesty to the White House! Write letters in dead languages to people you've never met! Paint filthy words on the foreheads of children! Burn your credit cards and wear high heels! Asylum doors stand open! Fill the suburbs with murder and rape! Divine madness! Let there be ecstasy, ecstasy in the streets! Laugh and the world laughs with you!"

"And he didn't die all at once. It was hours before the screaming stopped. I almost didn't get to sleep that night. That was the last time I'd used crushed glass..."

"I have been witness to genius in the area of this criminal endeavor. ... The kidnapping of the mayor. The crippling of the city on numerous occasions. Oh, and my glorious abduction of the commissioner and his daughter. MASS MURDER, MAIMINGS, TORTURE AND TERROR! I'VE DONE IT ALL, LADY! YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE EINSTEIN OF CRIME! Sticking some poison on the back of some postage stamps, lady? Amateur night in Dixie. Simple as that."

"[when Tommy Mangles is about to murder the Joker after telling him that apologies don't work] "Really? [attacks Mangles repeatedly] Well, what if I was really sorry? Would that make a-- difference? Would that satisfy you? If I was really... really... REALLY... REALLY... REALLY... SORRY? WELL, I'M NOT!""

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat. Watch me kill your favorite cat."

"Well, look who it is. I haven't seen you for... how long as it been? Let's see, there was an asylum, some monsters, and oh, that's right! You left me to die. Now you probably don't remember it that way, but who cares? You just need to worry about the bombs. Hurry up, now. Clock's ticking."

"5! ...4! ...3! ...2! ...1! See ya soon, Bats. ...What are you waiting for? We both know how this is going to turn out: you're going to come and find me. You can't stop yourself, can you? Sometimes I wonder if all this would just end with one of us looking down at the other's corpse, trying to work out what to do next? The only question is, whose body will it be? I know who I'm rooting for! [giggles] What about you? [laughs madly] Now, get out of there now, or you'll ruin everything!!!"

"[as Clayface-Joker] "You fell for the old fake Joker gag, Batman! You left me to die! {starts laughing}""

"[after a captive Batman tells him there's nothing wrong with him] "Nice of you to say, but you of all people should know, there's plenty wrong with me. Take my blood, for example. I wish somebody would - this stuff is killing me!""

"Is someone feeling a little down? Well, cheer up, Bats; it won't kill ya.... Oops!"

"It's ok to die, Bats, I'll be here to protect Gotham! I'll do a real good job."

"[as Clayface-Joker] "Good evening, Troops! This is General J here, with a quick update on what's going on down here in Arkham City. As you can see, I'm looking much better. In fact, ohhh, I think I'm looking better than ever! Ha! Oh, I can hear you all now: "How did this happen?" "Can I get me some of that crazy cure?" "Oh, I want answers, damn it! NOW!" Well, here's the thing. Answers don't give you everlasting satisfaction, sometimes you have to brace yourself for disappointment. Now think about it. Imagine your favorite TV show. You've been through it all. The ups, the downs, the crazy coincidences, and then: BANG! They tell you what it's all about. [the real Joker coughs behind the camera] Would you be happy? Does it make sense? How come it all ended in a church?""

"[as Clayface-Joker] "Oh, come on! There's always something to learn. Let's start with 'Getting Your Ass Kicked 101.'""

"Now you wanna talk? Too late."

"So how do you keep a secret from the World's Greatest Detective? Well, do you know? You stick it right in front of him, right under his long pointy nose, and wait."

"Confusing, isn't it? I know I'd want to know just what the hell is going on if I were you. Let's just say in times like these, it's important to keep up [coughs] appearances. But first, if you would be so kind... Hand. Over. My. Cure."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, for one night only, standing in for yours truly, ha, and doing a damn fine job of it, I bring you... CLAYFACE!"

""You're making me late for spa treatment. I mean, it's not like you've got a girl to save anymore, is it?! [laughs] Oh, I'm sorry! Too soon? Would a change of scenery help ease the pain?" [detonates the floor below Batman and Clayface]"

"Get out of the way, Bats! I've got a date with immortality!"

"I've killed your girlfriend, poisoned Gotham, and hell... it's not even breakfast! But so what? We all know you'll save me."

""Think of it as a running gag!" [Stabs Batman in the back, dropping the cure and the Joker's only chance of survival]"

"[After being told by Batman that he would have saved him after ensuring his own death] "That actually is... [coughs] pretty funny..." [Joker dies laughing with a smile on his face]"

"Have you ever tried to burp the National Anthem?"

"Hurry! Batman's just had his way with one of you! Now that's a spicy meat-a-ball!"

"Well, sounds like I can cross 'hear a grown man cry' off my Christmas list. Thanks, fellas!"

"[over radio] "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, must be a bad connection. It sounded like you said that after I shot him, and blew up a building on him, the Bat - somehow survived?!!? ...Well, since I know that's impossible, I'm going to give you a chance to reconcile my vision of reality with your version of reality, and in case your pea-brain can't parse big words, I'll translate it into thug-speak for you: KILL THE BAT OR I'LL KILL YOU!""

"[to Black Mask] "Can't... you... just... play... along?!""

"Aww, too bad, so sad!"

"'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a...' well a Bat was stirring. But a few more blows to the head and he won't be anymore!"

"You just can't get it through your thick skull...WE BOTH EXIST BECAUSE OF THEM!!"

"Looks like I'm gonna need to find a new playmate. Oh, and we were having so much fun, too!"

"Aww, gotta say, I thought you'd have more fight in you! A LOT more fight!"

"Ding dong! The bat is dead! Which old bat? The dumb old bat! Ding dong, the dumb old bat is dead!"

"I present to you: the death of the Batman!"

"NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL A PARTY!! (fires machine gun at hellicopter) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"If you actually let me finish a sentence, you might learn something! You might learn we're not so different. You might even learn something about yourself."

"Mmm! This fruitcake is fantastic! (pause, stabs the knife on the table) Anyone want a piece?"

"You see, it's a tradition in my house to open one present on Christmas Eve... let's see... how about... this one? [blows up an empty building under construction, then laughs evilly and sings a bit of "The 12 Days of Christmas"] And a partridge in a pear treeee!"

"[sings] "Jingle bells, Batman smells, Gotham's quite a mess! Blackgate's mine and you're out of time, which means you'll soon be dead!" [laughs]"

"[sings] "Where, oh where has my little Bat gone? Oh where, oh where can he be? His cowl, his scowl, his temper so foul. I do hope he's coming for me." [evil laugh]"

"So, what our friend Bane holds in his hand is - a heart monitor. Once he clamps it on, every beat of his vacant little heart will charge the battery - on this electric chair. And when it's fully charged - [mimicks being electrocuted, laughs]"

"[sees that Gordon has taken the bullet for Warden Joseph] "Well, that's the Christmas spirit!""

"[after Batman has "killed" Bane] "Well, I'd love to stay and celebrate your victory, but I've got stockings to stuff, mistletoe to hang - and about fifteen skyscrapers to blow up before sunrise. Ciao." [leaves with a laugh]"

"[to Batman] "Fresh off a kill and back for more, eh?""

"Come on, baby! Beat me 'til your knuckles bleed... And why quit there? You know there's only one way to stop me."

"[laugh] Stopped his hearth... [laugh] That IS funny... [laugh] Good one, Bats! [laugh] Oh, this is going to be FUN!"

"All aboard the Bane train!"

"You of all people should know, there's nothing so cruel as memory.... the pointy biting little thunderbolts, unwanted party crashers, SCREAMERS through your synapses.. inescapable, unrelenting.... not at all friendly. You can't even escape into MADNESS!"

"Isn't it funny how one little encounter can cleave off little pieces of your past, deform your memories and persona until you rethink your whole identity — and as you realise how foolish it all is — your laughter reverberates off the walls of your own emptiness?"

"Bats? Bats?? BAAATS!?!"

"He's no better than the creep who killed your parents."

"Get Ready for the Encore" [Manic Laughter]."

"(goes around the screen trying to find his way "in the dark") "What the...? Why has everything gone dark? Are we dying? We better not be dying, Bruce!""

"Off to see mom and pop in that great big county club in the sky!"

"I've really got to hand it to Scarecrow. I've never been a fan of his concoctions up to now, but this batch, it's intoxicating. It really brings out the me in you."

"You should take better care of yourself, Batsy. There's two of us in there!"

"Oh Bats, how I've missed you! All the subtlety and nuance of a napalm enema."

"That guy doesn't know you very well, now does he? What kind of super villain thinks that a handful of bullets to the stomach and a bunch of tanks will stop the Batman?"

"Who's gonna save Gotham now? Robin?! [laughs]"

"I am the Comeback King! The Clown Prince of Chaos! The Jester of Genocide!...You can't stop me."

"Oh, Bats! How very ME of you. Though I can see why you didn't tell him, after Jimbo's hysterical overreaction. Still, if you cared about Barbara the way that little sidekick of yours does, maybe she wouldn't have been kidnapped in the first place. They're star-crossed, Bats! Like me and you. Shame they're being torn apart thanks to your crusade. So let's recap. Barbara's dead. And let's face it, probably dead. You're lying to lover boy wonder about it, and dear old Jim's marched off on his lonesome to save the day. Not your best day at the office, Bats. Something on your mind? Come on, let Robin out of his cage. You can't force him to slave over your cure. Plus, if he gets himself killed out there, you won't have to tell him about Barbara. It's win-win! You think he's really gonna fix your nasty case of Joker-itis? Not a chance. I'm chronic, Brucie. I'm lingering."

"Can you remember when it was simple? Back in the old days, when it was just you, me, a regular war against crime? Well take a look, Bats. Things change. Now it's just war, with you standing right bang in the center. Of course, with any war, there are casualties. It's inevitable, unavoidable. Like death. Well, maybe not death, I seem to have sidestepped that one. Still, not all of us are so lucky."

"Remember Talia? Of course you do. How could you forget a girl like that? All it took was one piece of lead to end your hopes of a happily ever after. You blamed me, of course, but you were wrong. You put her in my crosshairs, Bats. Sure, she didn't do herself any favors, but it was you. You see, people trust you. They believe in you. They follow you into your war, and you are about to get them all killed."

"When I get out of here, I will write my name in blood on every street corner! I'll carve it on every corpse! I -- (stammers) NO ONE'S FORGETTING ME!"

"No, Bruce! Don't leave me! PLEASE!!"

"....I need you..."

"Don't go into the light, bats! It's no fair! They won't let me in!"

"Rockabye Batsy, I'm getting free! Soon you'll be the one trapped inside me! So do take deep breaths, great lungfuls of fear! Soon Bats will be gone, and I will be here!"

"(Firefly) - "You still haven't told us how you're going to take over the underworld." (Jerome Valeska: "Proto-Joker") - "Who says I wanna do that? I'm an artist. I just wanna paint the town crazy. Once that happens, I could care less how you horribles rip this city apart.""

"The police just backed me up in a gunfight....Gotham has finally gone insane!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"Yay! We're all going to Hell!"

"There's two things Lex forgot to tell you about me: I don't CARE what happens to the world, and I DON'T play nice with others!"

"If I weren't crazy, I'd be insane!"

"(to Superman) "More powerful than a locomotive, and just about as subtle.""

"It's true, Batsy! I know everything! And kinda like the kid who peeks at his Christmas presents, I must admit, it's sadly anti-climactic. Behind all the sturm and batarang, you're just a little boy in a playsuit, crying for mommy and daddy. It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic...... Oh, what the heck, I'll laugh anyway! HA! HA! HA! HA! HAAAA!"

"They could put me in a helicopter and fly me up into the air and line up the bodies head to toe on the ground in delightful geometric patterns like an endless June Taylor dancers routine — and it would never be enough. No, I don’t keep count. But you do. And I love you for it."

"You dirty rat! You killed my brother! My sister! My daughter! She's my sister and my daughter!"

"Lady, you're harder to kill than a cockroach on steroids"

"(to Batman) "Quick question. When the clock strikes twelve, do I get a little kiss?""

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps, Cross-eyed mosquitoes and bowlegged ants. I come before you, to stand behind you, to tell you a story I know nothing about. One bright morning in the middle of the night two dead fellows stood up to fight. They stood back to back, facing each other, drew their swords and shot one another. If you don't believe my lie, it's true, ask the blind lady on the corner, she saw it too."

"(To Harley as he turns her into a Constellation) "You get the best seat in the house for Armageddon. Say goodnight, Harley. I always wanted to see my dame in lights. Heh. Even in a moment of abject saccharine, I still got it.""

"(discovers that he has killed Batman) "I can't believe it. He's... he's actually gone. Let's take a moment to reflect on the passing of a man who was more than just another do-gooder in tights. He was the best arch-nemesis a sociopath could ask for. [pauses a bit, then...] Okay, let's do it again!" [brings Batman back to life]"

"Oh, Batman, if you had the guts for that kind of fun you would've done it years ago. I, on the other hand..."

"If I weren't insane: I couldn't be so brilliant!"

"What good is my money? Can I spend it like other people? No! Can I go to movies and ball games? No! The only way I can leave this hideout is in disguise... I'm doomed to a living death... [gets a epiphany] Death!... Now that may be a way out for me... That's it... The Joker must die!"

"(when asked if he will really reform) "Of course not! My business will go on as usual...the important thing is that I'll be free! The Joker shall die so that he may live again!""

"(as he is being led to his execution as part of his master plan) "So this is the famous Last Mile, eh? Don't cry, boys...this will hurt me worse than it'll hurt you! Ha! Ha!""

"Reclaimed from the dead! All crimes paid for! The slate wiped clean! The Joker is free! Ha! Ha!"

"Oh, well...I suppose the Joker's holiday had to end some time!"

"[Trying to patent "jokerized" fish]"But the fish share my unique face! If Colonel What's-His-Name can have chickens, when they donť even have moustaches-- And you deny this to me!""

"Both of us trying to find meaning in a meaningless world! Why be disfigured outcast when I can be a notorious Crime God? Why be an orphaned boy when you can be a superhero?"

"You can't kill me without becoming like me! I can't kill you without losing the only human being who can keep up with me! Isn't it IRONIC?"

"The real joke is your stubborn, bone deep conviction that somehow, somewhere, all of this makes sense! That's what cracks me up each time!"

"You actually believed that all it would take is a few chemicals, a couple of days in drug-induced isolation and a cheap little nervous breakdown and you'd have me all figured out? Like there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to understanding?"

"You really want to know what it feels like to be the clown at midnight? Where there's only ever one joke and it's always on you? Well, here you are. Now do you get it?"

"I'd like to bet you have no idea what you're dealing with... I bet, double or nothing, Batman crawls out of that shallow grave with his faculties intact and hunts you down like the dogs you all are. Did anyone think to examine Exhibit A?"

"If the police expect to play against the Joker, they'd better be prepared to be dealt from the bottom of the deck!"

"(to Judge Drake) "You can't win anyway... You see, I hold the winning card!""

"It's a clear choice -- me or Pettit. Vote or die. Cancer or tuberculosis."

"Every clown loves kids, captain. Just ask Sarah-Essen-Gordon. Oh, that's right, you can't!"

"(As Nightwing pummels him) "Aw... Jeez... I hit Jason a lot harder than that. (Pause) His name was Jason, right?""

"The Dark Knight - Joker"

"Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"

"Batman (1989 film)"

"Gotham TV Series (2014 - 2019)"

"Joker (2019 film)"

"Joker: Folie à Deux"

"Incels are individuals who express frustration from perceived disadvantages to starting intimate relationships. Incel extremists idolize violent individuals like the Aurora movie theater shooter. They also idolize the Joker character, the violent clown from the Batman series, admiring his depiction as a man who must pretend to be happy, but eventually fights back against his bullies."

"Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. [...] Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it, but he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card."

"I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices – it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath – someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts."

"Jesus: See, judge, I don't know you -- well, actually, I do know you. When you were six years old, you decided to be a judge 'cause you wanted to put The Joker away, once and for all. Now, I know you're not a bad person, your honor. But you're not putting The Joker away. You're putting away poor people. Stop destroying families and children. Stop the privatization and profiteering of human struggle. You got the opportunity to do the right thing, right now, your honor, and gain the favor of your creator and mine, god, up in heaven. When you were young, you wanted to help people. It's not too late, bubbles."

"Bill Finger knew of Conrad Veidt because Bill had been to a lot of the foreign films. Veidt ... had this clown makeup with the frozen smile on his face (classic). When Bill saw the first drawing of the Joker, he said, 'That reminds me of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs. He said he would bring in some shots of that movie to show me. That's how that came about. I think in Bill's mind, he fleshed out the concept of the character."

"They've given many origins of the Joker, how he came to be. That doesn't seem to matter—just how he is now. I never intended to give a reason for his appearance. We discussed that and Bill [Finger] and I never wanted to change it at that time. I thought—and he agreed—that it takes away some of the essential mystery."

"Batman: The real Batman never talked to you much, did he? That's probably why you were so fixated on him."

"Alfred: With respect, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones, but their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones, but in six months, we never met anyone who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away."

"This is your journey, if you succeed, it will set you free."

"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

"Remember, don't ever write a check with your mouth you can't cash with your ass."

"For those who fight for it, life has a flavour the sheltered will never know."

"[after Babydoll has danced for the first time] All that gyrating and moaning... a dance should be more about titillation. Mine's personal, it says who I am. What the heck does yours say?"

"Everyone has an Angel. A Guardian who watches over us. We can't know what form they'll take, one day old man, next day little girl, but don't let appearances fool you. They can be as fierce as any dragon. Yet they're not here to fight our battles, but to whisper from our hearts. Reminding that it's us. Its every one of us who holds power over the world we create."

"We can deny angels exist; convince ourselves they can't be real. But they show up anyway, at strange places and at strange times. They can speak through any character we can imagine. They'll shout through demons if they have to, daring us, challenging us to fight!"

"And finally this question, the mystery of whose story it will be. Of who draws the curtain. Who is it that chooses our steps in the dance? Who drives us mad? Lashes us with whips and crowns us with victory when we survive the impossible? Who is it, that does all of these things?"

"Who honors those we love with the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us and at the same time sings that we'll never die? Who teaches us what's real and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we'll die to defend? Who chains us and who holds the key to set us free? It's you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!"

"This is a joke, right? I get the sexy school girl and nurse thing, but what’s this? A lobotomized vegetable? How about something more commercial?"

"It's like we talked about. You control this world. Let the pain go, let the hurt go, let the guilt go. What you are imagining right now, that world you control. That place can be as real as any pain."

"If you do not dance you have no purpose. And we don't keep things here that have no purpose. You see, your fight for survival starts right now. You don't want to be judged? You won't be. You don't think you're strong enough? You are. You're afraid. Don't be. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight."

"You will be unprepared."

"A mind bending vision of reality from the director of Watchmen & 300."

"Emily Browning - Babydoll"

"Abbie Cornish - Sweet Pea"

"Jena Malone - Rocket"

"Vanessa Hudgens - Blondie"

"Jamie Chung - Amber"

"Carla Gugino - Madame Vera Gorski / Dr. Vera Gorski"

"Oscar Issac - Blue Jones"

"Jon Hamm - The Doctor / The High Roller"

"Scott Glenn - The Wise Man / The General / The Bus Drive"

"Gerard Plunkett - The Stepfather / Priest"

"Patrick Sabongui - Earl"

"Q: You have to perform this character in several different levels of fantasy and reality on top of all of the physical stuff. Is it extremely challenging?"

"Q: Each of the characters have a sort of iconography that goes along with them. Did you have any input on that and how do you feel about the schoolgirl aspect that you have going on?"

"Q: There are four action set pieces that we have been told about. What have you filmed already and can you talk about it?"

"Q: What is your connection to the other girls in the film?"

"You could say that Sucker Punch is a nymphet version of The Snake Pit or Shutter Island, or a live-action, green-screened redo of The Powerpuff Girls, or Black Swan (Carla Gugino has the demanding dance master role here) with a higher nightmare quotient, or an $82 million tribute to Jess Franco’s sublimely cheesy women-in-prison movies of the ’70s, or an Americanization of Norifumi Suzuki “pinky violence” melodramas (Girl Boss Guerrilla, Sex and Fury) of the same decade, or, in its backstory about a decent girl deprived of her inheritance and consigned to grow up in a prisonlike environment, a gloss on mid-19th-century classics from Jane Eyre to Little Dorrit. With the action scenes playing like production numbers in some high-concept musical, you’ll be reminded of Julie Taymor’s Beatles fantasia, Across the Universe. The visual palette suggests the creepy pastel paintings of Guy Peellaert (Rock Dreams); the fantasy battles with monsters and samurais echo the muscular landscapes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. The movie is like an arrested adolescent’s Google search run amok. The teen boy who would get lost in that cyber wonderland — he’s also Sucker Punch‘s target demographic — is meant to fixate on the five girls who go questing. Known only by their prostitute pseudonyms, they include whey-haired sisters Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and Rocket (Jena Malone), a brunette called Blondie (High School Musical‘s Vanessa Hudgens) and the Asian Amber (Jamie Chung). Snyder doesn’t bother much with differentiating these four, as they may simply be personalities fever-dreamed by Baby Doll. That’s Browning, who with the giant eyes, puffy lips and fake eyelashes could be her own anime doll, the whole package dressed in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit as retailored by Victoria’s Secret."

"Q: While we already sort of know the character you play, could you talk about who you play in the film?"

"Q: We were kind of talking about this at lunch today. The design of these characters and your character, the dominatrix kind of thing. We’ve heard ‘empowerment’ mentioned in terms of these characters, but they look a little more like ideals…"

"Q: As actors, I would assume that you have some freedom to sort of explore and dig into your real world characters. But when you cross over into this other world, do you have to be careful to sort of do your preparation through the prism of how Baby Doll would see or imagine you? Does it force you to understand her character more, as well as your own?"

"Q: Can you talk about your reactions when you first the saw costumes you’d be wearing?"

"Q: Could you talk a little bit about your dance scene today, Jena?"

"Q: What are your characters’ relationships to Baby Doll?"

"Q: Why are your characters in the asylum?"

"Q: Could you talk about the costumes that you wear in the film?"

"Q: What are your thoughts on how Zack Synder writes women?"

"Actually, the whole film is a surgical strike on your visual senses and intellectual faculties. Snyder’s efforts to have you believe this is some kind of empowering, riot-grrls-together redemption story would be more convincing if the cameras didn’t slather quite as droolingly whenever the women, clad in fishnets and schoolgirl outfits, come into view. The men, meanwhile, are a one-dimensional army of lechers, paedophiles, rapists and misogynists. The standard defence for this kind of film is that it’s not meant to be analysed too closely, it’s only entertainment. With Sucker Punch, you could also say that its narrative slackness is down to its themes (mental instability) and to the way that it taps into the dream logic of gamer culture. But even its battle scenes are deadly boring. If I had to choose between this and the most bog-standard computer game, it wouldn’t be any contest at all."

"You could go to see “Sucker Punch” this weekend — a lot of people probably will, and a few may even admit as much back at the office on Monday — or you could try to make it yourself, which might be more fun, though not necessarily cheaper. Here’s what you will need: a bunch of video-game platforms; DVDs of “Shutter Island,” “Kill Bill,” “Burlesque” and “Shrek”; some back issues of Maxim; a large bag of crystal meth; and around $100 million. Your imagination will take care of the rest."

"Yes, Snyder’s Sucker Punch heroines, the patients at a mental hospital, are relatively thinly-sketched. Yes, in the fantasy world they enter to battle for their freedom, their outfits are not, shall we say, practical. But at the time Sucker Punch came out, it was the rare movie with a female lead to come out of Warner Brothers, Snyder’s longtime studio. Even rarer, it was an original action movie starring women."

"Interviewer: Would you say the film is a critique on sexist geek culture?"

"Interviewer: I thought it was basically you commenting on those attendants at Comic-Con who shout, “You’re hot!” at beautiful cast members."

"Interviewer: Is it wrong to enjoy seeing Babydoll in that school girl outfit, though?"

"Interviewer: Did you think a lot in the writing process, “Would a woman say this?”"

"Interviewer: Most female action heroines are generally interchangeable with men. Can you talk about the process of finding that specific female voice?"

"Interviewer: I’m curious, if you don’t mind talking about it, what was the originally shot and intended ending?"

"The logical figure of the absurd, which presents as stringent the contradictory opposite of stringency, negates all the meaningfulness logic seems to provide in order to convict logic of its own absurdity: to convict it of using subject, predicate, and copula to lay out the nonidentical as though it were identical, as though it could be accommodated with forms."

"Secrecy as deep as this is past possibility without nonexistence as well."

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."

"Given that only the religion of pervasive kenosis can be truly universal, no single historical individual can exhaust its fullness by virtue of his redemptive acts, and no religious institution can grasp and articulate its meaning by means of dogmatic or doctrinal teachings. In the last resort, it is in the name of religious universalism that Simone Weil calls for a reversion of historical Christianity to its origins as a religion of kenosis."

"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings."

"I pray to the unknown gods that some man — even a single man, tens of centuries ago — has perused and read this book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification."

"Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world."

"Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is."

"There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal."

"No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist."

"El original es infiel a la traducción."

"The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book."

"I will pause to consider this eternity from which the subsequent ones derive."

"Communication must become total and conscious before we can stop it."

"The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it."

"Heroic love is the property of those superior natures who are called insane (insano) not because they do not know, but because they over-know (soprasanno)."

"I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence."

"Nature is none other than God in things... Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; Whence all of God is in all things... Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion."

"I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong."

"I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are..."

"I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie."

"Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label."

"The absurd … is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence of Descartes' methodical doubt. Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion … Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition."

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

"In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all."

"Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day."

"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."

"Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful."

"The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it."

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

"You may seek it with thimbles — and seek it with care; You may hunt it with forks and hope; You may threaten its life with a railway-share; You may charm it with smiles and soap — ("That's exactly the method," the Bellman bold In a hasty parenthesis cried, "That's exactly the way I have always been told That the capture of Snarks should be tried!") "'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, If your Snark be a Boojum! For then You will softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again!'"

"Of course you know what a Snark is? If you do, please tell me: for I haven't an idea what it is like."

"Is all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the goldern gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?"

"I suppose every child has a world of his own — and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?"

"A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity."

"At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."

"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."

"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This must not be forgotten. This must be clung to because the whole consequence of a life can depend on it. The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter — these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable."

"What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal."

"I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence. That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact."

"The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden."

"All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion. At very most, such a mind will consent to use past experience as a basis for its future actions."

"You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them."

"One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! — by such narrow ways — ?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd. Discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness."

""I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men."

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

"A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can restore to it only its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering. Moreover, nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing."

"It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself."

"In regard to absurdism, Samuel Beckett is sometimes considered to be the epitome of the postmodern artist … In fact, he is the aesthetic reductio ad absurdum of absurdism: no longer whistling in the dark, after waiting for Godot, he is trying to be radically silent, wordless in the dark. Beckett tries to bespeak a failure of the logos that never quite succeeds in being a failure, for to speak the failure would be a kind of success. Hence the essentially comic (hence unavoidably and ultimately affirmative) nature of his work."

"To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man."

"Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."

"It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all."

"I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me — and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter — not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't understand it."

"Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!"

"The Theatre of the Absurd … can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions."

""The Theatre of the Absurd" has become a catch-phrase, much used and much abused. What does it stand for? And how can such a label be justified? Perhaps it will be best to attempt to answer the second question first. There is no organised movement, no school of artists, who claim the label for themselves. A good many playwrights who have been classed under this label, when asked if they belong to the Theatre of the Absurd, will indigniantly reply that they belong to no such movement — and quite rightly so. For each of the playwrights concerned seeks to express no more and no less his own personal vision of the world. Yet critical concepts of this kind are useful when new modes of expression, new conventions of art arise."

"The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it. But the challenge behind this message is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world. The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation."

"Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit.""

"I learned from my father: Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?""

"The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion."

"There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit."

"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity. . ."

"When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist or a pantheist, a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer. The one thing on which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis" — had more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure that I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble."

"There are now many invisible people on stage."

"I didn't mean you were stupid. It's just that you're not logical, which isn't the same thing at all."

"Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name!"

"I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding. If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa."

"Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them."

"Logician: A cat has four paws. Old Gentleman: My dog had four paws. Logician: Then it's a cat. Old Gentleman: So my dog is a cat? Logician: And the contrary is also true."

"Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately."

"I am told, in a dream … you can only get the answer to all your questions through a dream. So in my dream, I fall asleep, and I dream, in my dream, that I'm having that absolute, revealing dream."

"I thought that it was strange to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me on the contrary that it was abnormal for people not to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously. Perhaps it's because everyone, all the others, are convinced in some unformulated, irrational way that one day everything will be made clear. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for humanity. Perhaps there will be a morning of grace for me."

"It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think."

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

"It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind."

"You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles."

"Whoever shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death."

"The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."

"Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

"Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."

"I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes."

"This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

"When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth — it is that which will defile you."

"If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty."

"His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?" Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.""

"What is the Absurd? It is, as may quite easily be seen, that I, a rational being, must act in a case where my reason, my powers of reflection, tell me: you can just as well do the one thing as the other, that is to say where my reason and reflection say: you cannot act and yet here is where I have to act... The Absurd, or to act by virtue of the absurd, is to act upon faith ... I must act, but reflection has closed the road so I take one of the possibilities and say: This is what I do, I cannot do otherwise because I am brought to a standstill by my powers of reflection."

"I gladly undertake, by way of brief repetition, to emphasize what other pseudonyms have emphasized. The absurd is not the absurd or absurdities without any distinction (wherefore Johannes de Silentio: "How many of our age understand what the absurd is?"). The absurd is a category, and the most developed thought is required to define the Christian absurd accurately and with conceptual correctness. The absurd is a category, the negative criterion, of the divine or of the relationship to the divine. When the believer has faith, the absurd is not the absurd — faith transforms it, but in every weak moment it is again more or less absurd to him. The passion of faith is the only thing which masters the absurd — if not, then faith is not faith in the strictest sense, but a kind of knowledge. The absurd terminates negatively before the sphere of faith, which is a sphere by itself. To a third person the believer relates himself by virtue of the absurd; so must a third person judge, for a third person does not have the passion of faith. Johannes de Silentio has never claimed to be a believer; just the opposite, he has explained that he is not a believer — in order to illuminate faith negatively."

"In spite of or in defiance of the whole of existence he wills to be himself with it, to take it along, almost defying his torment. For to hope in the possibility of help, not to speak of help by virtue of the absurd, that for God all things are possible – no, that he will not do. And as for seeking help from any other – no, that he will not do for all the world; rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself – with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be."

"Sin is this: before God, or with the conception of God, to be in despair at not willing to be oneself, or in despair at willing to be oneself."

"People think the world needs a republic, and they think it needs a new social order, and a new religion, but it never occurs to anyone that what the world really needs, confused as it is by much learning, is a new Socrates."

"What, then, is the absurd? The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up. etc., has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being, inasmuch as all immediate recognizability is pre-Socratic paganism and from the Jewish point of view is idolatry."

"This stuff could be dangerous. … I showed the green glass thing to mom. She thought it was a paper-weight. Maybe other people don't see what we see."

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits... In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits."

"All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."

"Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation."

"The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence."

"We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary."

"Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness."

"The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

"Truth will triumph. It always does. However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from."

"God is an iron," I said. "Did you know that?" I turned to look at her and she was staring. She laughed experimentally, stopped when I failed to join in. "And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass?" "If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron."

"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy."

"As Bob Dylan forgot to say, "To live outside the law, you must be lucky.""

"A person should live forever, or die trying."

"Jesus never said anything about absurdity, and he never indicated for one flash of time that he was aware of the preposterousness of his theory about himself. And he didn't even try to make the theory understandable in terms of the reality and experience of the rest of us. For if everybody else is also not what Jesus said he was, what good is what he said?"

"Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? What I say is — Bootstrap-lifting!"

"In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common, except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil. But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church. He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion."

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy."

"We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

"There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it."

"Between "just desserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a large scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have gotten about as bad as they can reasonably get."

"Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."

"Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est."

"Certum est, quia impossible est."

"De calcaria in carbonarium."

"Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again."

"There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."

"ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE."

"There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."

"Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'""

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."

"Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."

"Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you."

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. (1)"

"To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so. … I and this mystery here we stand. (3)"

"A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. … All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. (6)"

"I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots, And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.) (7)"

"These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This the common air that bathes the globe. (17)"

"I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.) (20)"

"I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. (20)"

"Magnifying and applying come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, (They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,) Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see, Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars... (41)"

"The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough, Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd, The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious. (42)"

"The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail'd coats I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,) I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, What I do and say the same waits for them, Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them. (42)"

"My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern… (43)"

"It is time to explain myself — let us stand up. What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. The clock indicates the moment — but what does eternity indicate? We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, And other births will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, (What have I to do with lamentation?) I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be. (44)"

"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. (44)"

"Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. (44)"

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things."

"During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."

"Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument."

"Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!"

"知止乎其所不能知，至矣。若有不即是者，天鈞敗之。"

"A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?..."

"A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean."

":Of a person who has limited life experience and hence world view; see 井底之蛙"

": Original Chinese at: 莊子/秋水"

"The wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that, there is no limit to dimensions."

"So the end was terrible, even for the good people like my father. So the purpose of all our suffering was just more suffering."

"For God's sake, Arthur, is that how you imagine me? A respected and admired figure? A devoted father? A loving husband? Well, I've also published nearly two papers a year for the last seven years and not a fundamental piece of work in the lot. I sit around the living rooms of other young married faculty members talking infantile masturbation: "Who's sucking up to the head of the department?" "Whose tenure is hanging by a thread?""

"It's just possible I'm not mad, you know! I'm asking you to make a small quantum jump with me, to accept one deviant concept. That our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking state. And that reality can be externalized."

"This is an all-bets-are-off sort of thing. We may be opening a black box that may scrap our whole picture of space-time. We might even have a link to another universe."

"Of all the God damn men in this world, why do I have to love this one? I can't get him out of me. Do you know how many men I tried to fall in love with this past year? But it won't work. No matter who I'm in bed with I have to imagine it's him or nothing happens. No matter who I'm eating with or walking with there's always this pain because it isn't him. I'm possessed by him."

"Sex is a mystical experience for you. You carry on like a flagellant which can be very nice, but l sometimes wonder if it's me that's being made love to. I feel like I'm being harpooned by some raging monk in the act of receiving God."

"You are a Faust-freak, Eddie! You'd sell your soul to find the great truth. Well, human life doesn't have great truths. We're born in doubt. We spend our lives persuading ourselves we're alive. And one way we do that is we love each other."

"He doesn't love me. He never loved me. I was never real to him. Nothing in the human experience is real to him."

"He's a truth lover. Reality to Eddie is only that which is changeless, immutably constant. What happened to Eddie tonight, that was Eddie's idea of love. That was consummation. He finally - got it off with God. He finally embraced the absolute, was finally ravished by truth and it goddamn near destroyed him."

"Defy it, Eddie. You made it real. You can make it unreal. If you love me... If you love me, Eddie, DEFY IT!"

"This one has everything: sex, violence, comedy, thrills, tenderness. It's an anthology and apotheosis of American pop movies: Frankenstein, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Nutty Professor, 2001, Alien, Love Story. It opens at fever pitch and then starts soaring—into genetic fantasy, into a precognitive dream of delirium and delight. Madness is its subject and substance, style and spirit. The film changes tone, even form, with its hero's every new mood and mutation. It expands and contracts with his mind until both almost crack. It keeps threatening to go bonkers, then makes good on its threat, and still remains as lucid as an aerialist on a high wire. It moves with the loping energy of a crafty psychopath, or of film makers gripped with the potential of blowing the moviegoer's mind out through his eyes and ears. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Altered States."

"Altered States is one hell of a movie — literally. It hurls its characters headlong back through billions of years to the moment of creation and finds nothing there except an anguished scream of "No!" as the life force protests its moment of birth. And then, through the power of the human ego to insist on its own will even in the face of the implacable indifference of the universe, it turns "No!" into "Yes!" and ends with the basic scene in all drama, the man and the woman falling into each other's arms. But hold on just a second here: I'm beginning to sound like the movie's characters, a band of overwrought pseudo-intellectuals who talk like a cross between Werner Erhard, Freud, and Tarzan. Some of the movie's best dialogue passages are deliberately staged with everybody talking at once: It doesn't matter what they're saying, only that they're incredibly serious about it. I can tell myself intellectually that this movie is a fiendishly constructed visual and verbal roller coaster, a movie deliberately intended to overwhelm its audiences with sensual excess. I know all that, and yet I was overwhelmed, I was caught up in its headlong energy."

"The movie is based on a Paddy Chayefsky novel, which was, in turn, inspired by the experiments of Dr. John Lilly, the man who placed his human subjects in total immersion tanks — floating them in total darkness so that their minds, cut off from all external reality, could play along the frontiers of sanity. In Altered States, William Hurt plays a Harvard scientist named Jessup who takes such an experiment one step further, by ingesting a drug made from the sacred hallucinatory mushrooms of a primitive tribe. The strange thing about these mushrooms, Hurt observes in an easily missed line of dialogue in the movie, is that they give everyone who takes them the same hallucinatory vision. Perhaps it is our cellular memory of creation: There is chaos, and then a ball of light, and then the light turns into a crack, and the crack opens onto Nothing, and that is all there was and all there will be, except for life, which has its only existence in the mind. Got that? It hardly matters. It is a breathtaking concept, but Altered States hardly slows down for it. This is the damnedest movie to categorize. Just when it begins to sound like a 1960s psychedelic fantasy, a head trip — it turns into a farce."

"During the professor's last experiment, when he is disappearing into a violent whirlpool of light and screams on the laboratory floor, it is his wife who wades into the celestial mists, gets up to her knees in eternity, reaches in, and pulls him out. And this is despite the fact that he has filed for divorce. The last scene is a killer, with the professor turning into the protoplasm of life itself, and his wife turning into a glowing shell of rock-like flesh, with her inner fires glowing through the crevices (the effect is something like an overheated Spiderman). They're going through the unspeakable hell of reliving the First Moment, and yet as the professor, as Man, bangs on the walls and crawls toward her, and she reaches out, and the universe rocks, the Man within him bursts out of the ape-protoplasm, and the Woman within her explodes back into flesh, and they collapse into each other's arms, and all the scene really needs at that point is for him to ask, "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Altered States is a superbly silly movie, a magnificent entertainment, and a clever and brilliant machine for making us feel awe, fear, and humor. That is enough. It's pure movie and very little meaning. Did I like it? Yeah, I guess I did, but I wouldn't advise trying to think about it very deeply."

"The scene in which the scientist becomes cosmic energy and his wife grabs him and brings him back to human form is straight out of my Dyadic Cyclone (1976) … As for the scientist's regression into an ape-like being, the late Dr. Craig Enright, who started me on K (ketamine) while taking a trip with me here by the isolation tank, suddenly "became" a chimp, jumping up and down and hollering for twenty-five minutes. Watching him, I was frightened. I asked him later, "Where the hell were you?" He said, "I became a pre-hominid, and I was in a tree. A leopard was trying to get me. So I was trying to scare him away." The manuscript of The Scientist (1978) was in the hands of Bantam, the publishers. The head of Bantam called and said, "Paddy Chayefsky would like to read your manuscript. Will you give him your permission?" I said, "Only if he calls me and asks permission." He didn't call. But he probably read the manuscript."

"If it is not wholly visionary at every juncture, it is at least dependably — even exhilaratingly — bizarre. Its strangeness, which borders cheerfully on the ridiculous, is its most enjoyable feature. The movie itself has many of the qualities of its chief character, who is obsessive, exciting, scary, wildly energetic, and a very odd bird indeed. Actually his leanings are more to the ape-like than the birdlike, and to call them leanings is to put it very mildly. … The movie, part joke and part nightmare, is the story of a man who experiments with hallucinogenic substances, searching for what he calls his unborn soul and longing to re-experience the birth of man. In the course of this adventure, he turns into an ape and scares the daylights out of everyone around him. Really, that's all you need to know. … The film is in fine shape as long as it revels in its own craziness, making no claims on the viewer's reason. But when it asks you to believe that what you're watching may really be happening, and to wonder what it means, it is asking far too much. By the time it begins straining for an ending both happy and hysterical, it has lost all of its mystery, and most of its magic."

"When he heard his cry for help it wasn't human."

"In the basement of a university medical school Dr. Jessup floats naked in total darkness. The most terrifying experiment in the history of science is out of control... and the subject is himself."

"William Hurt - Dr. Edward "Eddie" Jessup"

"Blair Brown - Emily Jessup"

"Bob Balaban - Arthur Rosenberg"

"Charles Haid - Mason Parrish"

"Thaao Penghlis - Eduardo Echeverria"

"Drew Barrymore - Margaret Jessup"

"Megan Jeffers - Grace Jessup"

"Miguel Godreau - Primal man"

"Dori Brenner - Sylvia Rosenberg"

"Peter Brandon - Alan Hobart"

"Charles White-Eagle - The Brujo"

"John Larroquette - X-Ray technician"

"George Gaynes - Dr. Wissenschaft"

"Jack Murdock - Hector Orteco"

"We developed a code so that we can communicate with each other even in front of the others without them knowing what we are saying. When we turn our heads to the left it means "I love you more than anything in the world" and when we turn our heads to the right it means "watch out, we're in danger". We had to be very careful in the beginning not to mix up "I love you more than anything in the world" with "watch out, we're in danger". When we raise our left arm it means "I want to dance in your arms", when we make a fist and put it behind our backs it means "let's fuck". The code grew and grew as time went by and within a few weeks we could talk about almost anything without even opening our mouths."

"He didn't burst into tears and he didn't think that the first thing most people do when they realise someone doesn't love them anymore is cry."

"Back then, he didn't know how much it hurts to be alone - how much it hurts when you cannot reach to rub pain ointment on your back and you are constantly in pain."

"That night, in my sleep, I dreamt that we lived in a big house together in the city with a large, well-lit kitchen, and I was wearing dark blue trousers and a tight cream blouse and he took my clothes off and fucked me up the ass."

"One day, as he was playing golf, he thought that it is more difficult to pretend that you do have feelings when you don't that to pretend you don't have feelings when you do."

"Some punishments are worse than other punishments. Having your thumb cut is worse than having your head shaved. And having a hot boiled egg under your armpit is worse than having your leg kicked. The punishment I am afraid of isn't the Red Kiss but another one, that is called the Red Intercourse."

"Now the fact that you will turn into an animal if you fail to fall in love with someone during your stay here is not something that should upset you or get you down. Just think, as an animal you'll have a second chance to find a companion. But, even then, you must be careful; you need to choose a companion that is a similar type of animal to you. A wolf and a penguin could never live together, nor could a camel and a hippopotamus. That would be absurd."

"Can I come to your room sometime for a chat? I could give you a blowjob. Or you could just fuck me. I always swallow after fellatio and I've got absolutely no problem with anal sex if that's your thing. My ex-husband always used to say I had the most beautiful thighs he'd ever seen, but let's not talk about him."

"Loner Leader: We dance alone. That's why we only play electronic music."

"Trainer Waiter - Shooting Range: It's no coincidence that the targets are shaped like single people and not couples."

"The Limping Man: Hello everyone. My mother was left on her own when my father fell in love with a woman who was better at math than she was. She had a post graduate degree I think, whereas my mother was only a graduate. I was nineteen at the time. My mother entered the hotel, but didn't make it and was turned into a wolf. I really missed her. I found out she had been moved to a zoo. I often went there to see her. I'd give her raw meat. I knew that wolves liked raw meat, but I couldn't figure out which of the wolves was my mother so I used to give a little bit to each of them. One day I decided to enter the enclosure. I really missed her and I wanted a hug. I climbed the fence and jumped in. All the wolves charged at once and attacked me; all but two who stood motionless. My guess is that one of those two must have been my mother. The zoo guards got to me quite quickly and took me to the hospital. Thankfully I didn't lose my leg. I just have this limp, which is also my defining characteristic. My wife died six days ago. She was very beautiful and I loved her very much. She had a limp too."

"Nosebleed Woman: I'm sorry, I've got blood on your shirt. But don't worry, there are many ways to remove bloodstains from clothing. One way is to rinse the clothes with cold water then rub with sea salt. Another way is to scrub the stains with cotton wool dipped in ammonia. The third way is to mix flour and water into a paste, like toothpaste, especially if the clothes are delicate or brightly coloured. But just never use warm water on blood, ever."

"Colin Farrell - David"

"Rachel Weisz - Shortsighted Woman"

"Jessica Barden - Nosebleed Woman"

"Olivia Colman - Hotel Manager"

"Ashley Jensen - Biscuit Woman"

"Ariane Labed - the Maid"

"Angeliki Papoulia - Heartless Woman"

"John C. Reilly - Lisping Man (Robert)"

"Léa Seydoux - Loner Leader"

"Michael Smiley - Loner Swimmer"

"Ben Whishaw - Limping Man (John)"

"Roger Ashton-Griffiths - Doctor"

"Ewen MacIntosh - Hotel Guard"

"Smoldering Intensity."

"Don't push me. [Franklin "Moose" Finbar: Or what, Spencer?] Or I'll push you back."

"Enough. We can't waste lives. We need each other. Like it or not, We have to do this together."

"I DON'T WANNA DO THIS!"

"[Franklin "Moose" Finbar: The girl is into you, Spencer.] WHAT?!"

"All I'm saying is I don't have my Claritin, okay? And I'm allergic to almost everything."

"And I'm pretty sure this is a Bravestone thing."

"This is a video game, which means we all have special skills."

"We each have three lives, guys."

"I'm gonna fix the helicopter."

"It's a lot easier to be brave when you've got lives to spare. It's a lot harder when you only have one life."

"See you later, Bravestone."

"A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind. Jumanji."

"You pick a character and you're that person in the game."

"Dr. Smolder Bravestone."

"Oh, my god, these things are crazy!"

"Later, dude."

"It's okay, you can handle this. In real life, people love you, You can hook up with anyone you want. [Ruby Roundhouse: Is that what you tell yourself when you're scared?] Can you not judge me for, like, two seconds? I split up with Noah, I turned into a guy, and I cannot find my phone! I am allowed to be upset!"

"Oh, my God, you guys, there is, like, literally a penis attached to my body right now. Martha, come look at my penis! [Ruby Roundhouse: No thanks.]"

"Wow, wow, wow! Oh, this is so much easier!"

"[Ruby Roundhouse: I feel like I'm wearing a bikini at school.] I did that once. They sent me to the office. Noah likes it when I show some skin. It's like the key to our relationship."

"That is insane."

"YOU DROPPED THE JEWEL?!"

"When you see me, begin the climb."

"When you see the elephant, begin the climb."

"That was so intense, I, like, can't even with this place."

"Hey, guys, this does not look like a piece of a map."

"I want Alex to come home, too."

"Maybe we're all in a coma."

"NO! I'm an overweight middle aged man."

"What do you mean, there's nothing there? It's a map, just like he said. It's a map of Jumanji."

"Oh, so you can't see this, but I can?"

"The fact that I'm not Instagraming this right now is insane."

"Wait a second, where's my phone?"

"Guys, I think it's a staring contest."

"Now flirt like our lives depend on it, 'cause they do."

"Remember, you're the missing piece."

"Does anyone know how to do CPR?"

"That sucks."

"I'm too pretty."

"I'll be Shelly Oberon, the curvy genius."

"Go get that girl, Dr. Bravestone."

"That was a hippo. They're omnivorous. They're fast as a horse over short distances, and they have the bite force of 8100 newtons. HOW DO I KNOW THIS?!"

"BLACK MAMBA!!! That's a black mamba! A quarter milligram of its venom is enough to kill an adult. You'll feel a tingling in your mouth and extremities, followed by a fever, foaming at the mouth, and ataxia, which means loss of muscle control. HOW DO I KNOW THAT?!"

"Yes. Cake is my weakness."

"YOU JUST PUSHED ME OUT THE HELICOPTER, JACKASS!"

"I should kick the shit out you, right now. [Dr. Smolder Bravestone: I like to see you try.]"

"Don't let this new body get your butt whooped."

"Don't call me a dumbass."

"Oh, no. You got allergies, Spencer? Huh? I DON'T HAVE THE TOP TWO FEET OF MY BODY!"

"ZOOLOGY, BITCH!!!"

"Where's the rest of me?"

"I got a backpack on. You don't get in water with a backpack, everybody knows that."

"It's 'Moose', it's not 'Mouse'. [Nigel Billingsley: No, good, sir. I'm quite sure it's Mouse.]"

"I hate this game."

"Strength is my weakness."

"How is strength my weakness?"

"WHY AM I RUNNING SO SLOW?!"

"Am I shaking?"

"What's wrong with her?"

"Did she twisted her ankle maybe?"

"Like what she said."

"No, I ain't drunk, bitch."

"Excuse me! I'm the one that was a human sacrifice!"

"We always only have one life, man."

"What’s up? Mouse Finbar. Zoologist. Zoologist and– and backpack guy."

"[Spencer Gilpin: Franklin "Moose" Finbar.] Hmm. Sounds like a badass."

"Why am I wearing half a shirt and short shorts in the JUNGLE?"

"Do you guys like to dance?"

"Oh, my god, we're in different people's bodies!"

"Guys, how are we gonna get home?"

"Dance fighting? Is that even a thing?"

"Wait, what happens if we use up all our lives?"

"You are the badass."

"I'm into you too, Spencer."

"Venom's my weakness."

"[Dr. Smolder Bravestone: What if we didn't go back? I just– I like being like this with you.] Then let's be like this, every day. Just come home."

"Hey! Person walking!"

"Are you gonna help. Or are you too pretty?"

"Guess I'm Ruby Roundhouse."

"[Franklin "Moose" Finbar: Who's this? Who's Alan Parrish?] He's the guy who built this place. [Dr. Smolder Bravestone: Wait, you mean other people have been stuck here, too?] Yeah, I mean, This is Alan Parrish's house, I'm just living in it."

"Seaplane McDonough reporting for duty. Let's go, people."

"I'm so stoked you guys are here."

"Maybe we should take the school bus."

"You gotta connect the flight control rod to the swashplate under the rotors!"

"Guys, I've been trying to cross this canyon for, like, 20 years. Do you realize how huge this is? [Gets bitten in the neck by mosquito] Mosquito– [Collapses]"

"You know, I just keep thinking about my poor parents– what they must have been through. Why? Because I was sitting in my hideout, too afraid to finish the game?"

"Does "phone" mean something different in the future?"

"Who plays board games anymore?"

"Hello, doctor. Been a long time. I believe you have something that belong to me."

"Welcome to Jumanji, Nigel Billingsley at your service."

"The goal for you. I'll recite in verse. Return the jewel and lift the curse. If you wish to leave the game, you must save Jumanji and call out its name."

"Dwayne Johnson as Dr. Smolder Bravestone"

"Jack Black as Professor Shelly Oberon"

"Kevin Hart as Franklin "Moose" Finbar"

"Karen Gillan as Ruby Roundhouse"

"Nick Jonas as Jefferson "Seaplane" McDonough"

"Bobby Cannavale as Russel Van Pelt"

"Rhys Darby as Nigel Billingsley"

"You still talking to your friends?"

"I got killed by a piece of cake!"

"We haven't even picked our guys yet!"

"I got eaten by a freaking hippo!"

"Did you hear something?"

"We gotta go get him."

"Are we in Florida?"

"Smoldering Intensity?"

"Who is Ju-man-ji?"

"I'm the old, fat dude!"

"THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!!!"

"You've got to have eyes in the back of your– [Gets eaten by a snake]"

"Weaknesses: Heat, sun and sand."

"HOW IS THIS GUY A CHARACTER IN AN ADVENTURE GAME?!"

"Will you look at me? I mean, what am I supposed to do with this? [Ruby Roundhouse: You read the map.] I don't wanna read the map. I'm supposed to be her. Instead, there's actual hair growing out of my face! Sorry. All bodies are beautiful, even this one."

"At least I got rid of that stupid hat. Now I got this stupid hat."

"Did I die and turned into some kind of small, muscular boy scout?"

"[Dr. Smolder Bravestone: Would you look at me? I'm back! I mean, I haven't looked like this since–] Never. You looked like this never."

"You are a terrible driver!"

"Oh, my God, right? Like, I'm a total horse. I can't believe that we found you guys. Hi."

"What in the Sam Hill just happened to him?"

"You do it again, your ass is gonna be stuck here, Spencer! Because I'm not coming back!"

"Okay, we have some issues here. The game is busted!"

"It's your strengths and weaknesses."

"Bethany thought you might need some help."

"Welcome to Jumanji."

"If you wish to leave the game, you must save Jumanji and call out its name."

"Dwayne Johnson as Dr. Smolder Bravestone"

"Jack Black as Professor Shelly Oberon"

"Kevin Hart as Franklin "Moose" Finbar"

"Karen Gillan as Ruby Roundhouse"

"Nick Jonas as Jefferson "Seaplane" McDonough"

"Awkwafina as Ming Fleetfoot"

"Rory McCann as Jurgen the Brutal"

"Madison Iseman as Bethany Walker"

"Rhys Darby as Nigel Billingsley"

"Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd"

"I've had dreams that weren't just dreams."

"I still know Kung-fu."

"There is a part of me that feels like I've been waiting my whole life for you."

"I saw this in a dream. My dream ended here."

"The only thing that matters to you is still here. I know it's why you're still fighting, and why you will never give up."

"They made you believe their world was all you deserved, but some part of you knew that was a lie. Some part of you knew what was real."

"What the Merv is trying to say, is that their situation is a little bit like mine. To have their lives back, yours has to end."

"Here, our unexpected alliance ends. You know the difference between us, Tom? Anyone could have been you, whereas I've always been anyone."

"You ruined every suck-my-silky-ass thing! We had grace! We had style! We had conversation! Not this... [mimics text message sound] Art, films, books were all better! Originality mattered! You gave us Face-Zucker-suck and Cock-me-climatey-Wiki-piss-and-shit!"

"This is not over yet! Our sequel franchise spinoff!"

"Nothing breeds violence like scarcity."

"I know it doesn't seem fair, but neither does growing old, and you don't hear me complaining."

"Throughout the film, it’s made clear that Neo is still recovering his skills... He’s a bit rusty... and doesn’t possess all the abilities he once had: namely, flying. Watching Neo and Trinity leap off the roof, there’s a distinct feeling of hope for those of us watching... .And yet... he begins to flail, falter, and fall. Thankfully, Trinity is there to save the day... Neo cannot be “the One” without Trinity. She’s as much a crucial part of his ability to control the Matrix as him “freeing his mind.” They are intrinsically tied together, bound beyond fate, to the point where they are unable to function without the other... The ending to Resurrections is the realization of what’s always been true, Trinity and Neo TOGETHER makes the power of the One possible. Neo couldn’t do the things he did without Trinity and her love. Trinity believed so thoroughly in Neo, even when he himself didn’t, she never noticed her own role in the manifestation of these unique abilities. The Matrix Resurrections‘ focus on the love between these two, and how they continually fight for/save each other, offers these moments in the previous films a new frame of reference. Now audiences (and obsessed movie nerds like myself) can look back and see the evidence built into the previous films. In this light, the final moments of the film, make perfect sense, and feels like the most logical conclusion to their love story."

"The story picks up 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions. Neo (Reeves) is living an ordinary life... under the name Thomas A. Anderson... as the world’s most celebrated video game designer... However, Thomas suffers from delusions that make it difficult to separate reality from fiction. His therapist... prescribes him blue pills to help contain the illusions.... Thomas meets a woman named Tiffany (Moss) who looks just like Trinity. Neither of them recognizes each other, but they feel that they have an undeniable connection. Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) suddenly appears with a red pill to free Thomas’ mind. Who can he trust and how can he save Trinity?... The first act of The Matrix Resurrections tackles the subject of mental health. Thomas is consistently gaslit, as elements of reality are blamed on his mental state. He strives to become a form of “normal” that society dictates. Neo’s trauma is placed front and center, as he must ultimately make the decision between free will and comfort. The Matrix Resurrections is existentialist to its core. The film repeatedly pokes fun at Hollywood’s control over the seemingly never-ending wave of sequels, prequels, and reboots. It teases at its very own existence and the stress of reinventing what once redefined the medium. Matrix fans have a plethora of theories of what the original is all about, many of which The Matrix Resurrections brings up."

"The Matrix Resurrections is a movie that knows you know its legacy — knows that the language and iconography of The Matrix (“red pill,” “bullet time,” “The Oracle,” “The One”) have seeped into the culture, into our minds, even if we somehow haven’t seen any of the previous movies. It also knows that this is the 21st century. Which means that much of what felt novel or prescient about the world of that first movie — with its allegorized, cyber-savvy world-within-worlds, its riffing on the idea of digital selves — has come to define human experience as we currently know it. Wachowski has given us a movie that most astutely reminds us of something Lilly once said at the GLAAD Awards in 2016: “While the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.” Resurrections is a love story — between Neo and Trinity, obviously. Resurrections plays like a spin on the preceding Matrix trilogy that could only have come on the heels of projects like Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending, in which the Wachowskis leaned further and further into their loving strangeness, their woo-woo theatrics and sentimentality, their conceptual ambition. It is a Matrix movie that could only have come with twenty-plus years of hindsight — and insight... I was moved, impressed — far more than I expected to be."

"The Matrix is an action science fiction movie, but it defied all expectations. The movie is studied in film schools around the world. Audiences continue to debate the meaning behind the 1999 film. The Matrix Resurrections is the newest installment, which features some fresh faces in familiar roles. Actor Jonathan Groff recently explained why reading the screenplay made him cry.... Groff is a newcomer to The Matrix franchise, but he also felt the extreme love and care that comes with the upcoming sequel. He connected with Smith’ approach to the fight sequences. Groff explained, “When our fight was over, I felt deeply connected to him in a physical way.”... The Matrix Resurrections deeply touched Groff. He thought about Reeves and Moss playing bringing these characters back to the silver screen in such a meaningful way that it caused him to cry. He said, “When I read the script for this movie I cried, because the idea of watching these two iconic actors in these two iconic parts coming back and fighting to have their love again just wrecked me.”"

"Art is a mirror...Most will prefer to gaze at the surface but there will be people like me who enjoy what lies behind the looking glass. I made this movie for them."

"Technology paradoxically brought us closer together while also isolating or inculcating us from each other"

"Smith, too, was "struck by how much humor is in it" — but that doesn't mean Neo will be cracking quips like Tony Stark. "It's throwing down the Matrix gauntlet again; it's super smart, clever, entertaining, suspenseful, and funny," he says. Adds Watchmen and Candyman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, 35, who plays Morpheus, a different version of Neo's mentor originated by Laurence Fishburne: "Out of all of the sci-fi things that I've done, Matrix is the one that is the most grounded in reality, ironically. There are all of the high concepts surrounding The Matrix within our story, but really there's so much heart and humanity that's driving this narrative."... Emphasis on heart. "Not that it needed it," says Smith, "but certainly the depth of why this film got made is the sense of it being a love story between Trinity and Neo." It was Lana's deep connection to the characters that resonated with her stars. Reeves remembers the conversation when Lana first told him about her idea for another sequel. "It was one of those phone calls where even though you're at home, you stand up," he says. For her part, Moss saw the new movie as a rare "opportunity to embody" Lana's love. "I've never felt that way before, where I could see that I am an extension of her heart in playing this role," she says."

"To the two actors who know her best, Lana felt like a different director in some ways. Smith remembers that on the original trilogy, she was "more behind the monitor" but "still hands-on." With Resurrections, "she was participating more with the movement of the camera, and more interested in doing than rehearsing. It was less about prep and more about everyone's readiness to find the unexpected in the moment." Smith confesses they "barely rehearsed, if at all." In other ways, working on Resurrections was like reuniting with an old friend. Once Lana called "Action!" Moss says she went right back to where she was with Reeves in the original movie. "Most of my scenes are with Keanu, and it was just a pleasure to sit across from him and do that again," she says, as she and Reeves sit side by side in matching director's chairs. "He has a masterful understanding of action. I've watched him grow in the last 20 years. I'm in awe of it." Reeves shakes his head back and forth as she speaks, silently protesting. "But you've got a flavor," he responds. "It's Trinity! It's Carrie-Anne Moss, Trinity flavor. All the fierceness and mind, focus, commitment is there in the gestures. Untamed and wild and controlled." After all these years, it's still a flavor we can't get enough of."

"Before Moss and Smith change into their next outfits for the photo shoot, they slip away, catching up on each other's lives since making Resurrections. They push through the studio's back exit, flooding the darkened room with afternoon sunshine. Fans of the films might immediately think of the door of light, a portal Neo would use to slip into the digital "backdoor" of the Matrix."

"Keanu Reeves - Neo"

"Carrie-Anne Moss - Trinity"

"Yahya Abdul-Mateen II - Morpheus"

"Jessica Henwick - Bugs"

"Jonathan Groff - Smith"

"Neil Patrick Harris - The Analyst"

"Priyanka Chopra Jonas - Sati"

"Jada Pinkett Smith - Niobe"

"Lambert Wilson - Merovingian"

"Return to the Source"