"Newsreel Announcer: [Newsreel film of Notre Dame using the backfield shift] What is this new miracle that Rockne has wrought? This bolt of Irish lightning, that strikes from all sides with such blinding speed and fury! A 'shift' they call it. Yes, but Heisman at Georgia Tech also has a shift, so has Tad Jones at Yale. But theirs are simple tunes compared to Rockne's symphony! For this shift is music, the music of a master's hand! Knute Rockne, whose ingenious brain perfected the forward pass, has brought a great new thrill to football and its millions of followers!"

"Who can say for certain what a man was really born to be? That's God's will. Someday Knute will find his right place in the world, and when he does, whether it be science or not, I have a feeling it will be the one he was meant to do."

"Rock, someday when the team's up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, ask 'em to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, but I'll know about it. I'll be happy."

"We haven't got any use for gamblers around here. You've done your best to ruin baseball, and horse racing, and this is one game that's clean and is gonna stay clean."

"Now I'm going to tell you something I've kept to myself for years. None of you ever knew George Gipp. He was long before your time, but you all know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame. And the last thing he said to me, "Rock," he said, "sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock," he said, "but I'll know about it and I'll be happy.""

"Well, there were three of them; it was like being slapped around by a Pakistani vaudeville team."

"My loyalty? For 24 years people have been trying to kill me, people who know how. Now do you think that's because my dad was a Greek soda pop maker or because I'm an American spy? Go fuck yourself, you fucking child!"

"A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We'll see.” 'The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.” The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”"

"Thats how a cold war turns into a real war and that's something you want to keep a very good eye on."

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the end game."

"You know you've reached rock bottom when you're told you have character flaws by a man who hanged his predecessor in a military coup."

"Roy Dotrice - Leopold Mozart"

"Elizabeth Berridge - Constanze Mozart"

"Tom Hulce - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"

"F. Murray Abraham - Antonio Salieri"

"[from trailer] Are we going to appal you with something confidential and disgusting? Let's hope so, because that is what you really like. Unconfessed crimes of buried wickedness - if that is what brings you to us, the prospect of hearing horrors, you shall not go unrewarded."

"Everything you've heard is true."

"The man... The music... The magic... The madness... The murder... The mystery... The motion picture..."

"While my father prayed earnestly to God, to "protect commerce", I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of: "Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God. Make me immortal. After I die, let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give You my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life. Amen". And do you know what happened? A miracle!"

"[to Father Vogler] I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint."

"Your merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the time fainter till no one plays it at all, and his..."

"[to Father Vogler] My plan was so simple that it terrified me. First, I must get the death mass and then I must achieve his death....His funeral! Imagine it! The cathedral, all Vienna sitting there. His coffin, Mozart's little coffin in the middle. And then, in that silence, music! A divine music bursts out over them all. A great mass of death! Requiem mass for Wolfgang Mozart. Composed by his devoted friend, Antonio Salieri! Oh what sublimity! What depth! What passion in the music! Salieri has been touched by God at last. And God forced to listen! Powerless, powerless to stop it! I, for once, in the end, laughing at him! The only thing that worried me was the actual killing. How does one do that? Hmmm? How does one kill a man? It's one thing to dream about it. Very different when, when you, when you have to do it with your own hands."

"So rose the dreadful ghost from his next and blackest opera. There, on the stage, stood the figure of a dead commander. And I knew - only I understood - that the horrifying apparition was Leopold, raised from the dead! Wolfgang had summoned up his own father to accuse his son before all the world! It was terrifying and wonderful to watch. Now a madness began in me. A madness of a man splitting in half. Through my influence, I saw to it Don Giovanni was played five times in Vienna. But in secret, I went to every one of those five - all alone - unable to help myself, worshipping sound I alone seem to hear. And hour after hour, as I stood there, understanding even more clearly how that bitter old man was still possessing his poor son from beyond the grave, I began to see a way - a terrible way - I could finally triumph over God."

"[to Father Vogler] All I ever wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise Him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?"

"[addressing a crucifix] From now on, we are enemies... You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature on earth as far as I am able. I will ruin Your incarnation."

"[about the beginning of the third movement of Mozart's Serenade No. 10] Extraordinary! On the page it looked nothing! The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons, basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox. And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took it over, sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I had never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God."

"Jeffrey Jones - Emperor Joseph II"

"Christine Ebersole - Katerina Cavalieri"

"Simon Callow - Emanuel Schikaneder"

"That was Mozart. That! That giggling dirty-minded creature I had just seen, crawling on the floor!"

"You don't have to write anything down to be a poet. Some work in gas stations. Some shine shoes. I don't really call myself one because I don't like the word. Me? I'm a trapeze artist. Sighting it and hearing it and breathing it in; rubbing it all in the pores of my skin. And the wind between my eyes, milk and honey in my comb."

"Heath Ledger – Robbie Clark"

"Marcus Carl Franklin – Woody Guthrie"

"Richard Gere – Billy the Kid"

"Christian Bale – Jack Rollins/Pastor Jack"

"Ben Whishaw – Arthur Rimbaud"