"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then."

"When I'm with him I feel... Yes, I am living. And when I'm not with him... Yes, everything does seem sort of silly."

"Why is everything wrong?"

"That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other."

"There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life."

"Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."

"Obviously, you feel unworthy. Gives you feelings of unworthiness. You survive and they don't."

"I'm gonna make a cake. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make the cake for daddy's birthday."

"Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours."

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard."

"If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the Capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death."

"I am ungrateful? You call me ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in. I'm living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen?"

"I am attended by doctors! Everywhere, I am attended by doctors who inform me of my own interests."

"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die."

"I am saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked."

"I can't think of anything more exhilarating than a trip to London."

"It's on this day. This day of all days. Her fate becomes clear to her."

"Leonard, I believe I may have a first sentence."

"A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life."

"Ed Harris - Richard Brown"

"Meryl Streep - Clarissa Vaughan"

"Julianne Moore - Laura Brown"

"Nicole Kidman - Virginia Woolf"

"We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so... There she is with another hour before her."

"Julia: So that's the monster."

"Dan: The thought of this life, that's what kept me going. I had an idea of our happiness."

"Julia: They're all here, aren't they? All the ghosts... All the ghosts are assembling for the party!"

"Vanessa: Your aunt is a very lucky woman, Angelica. She has two lives. She has the life she is leading and also the books she is writing."

"Louis: The day I left him I got on a train and made my way across Europe. I felt free for the first time in years."

"Kitty: I don't think you can call yourself a woman until you're a mother."

"Kitty: All my life I could do everything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted."

"Sally: Why do I always have to sit next to the exes? Is this some kind of a hint, sweetheart? And anyway, shouldn't the exes have a table of their own where they can all ex together in ex-quisite agony?"

"Never let your friends tie you to the tracks."

"Peter Mullan - Swanney "Mother Superior""

"Kelly Macdonald - Diane Coulston"

"Robert Carlyle - Francis Begbie"

"Kevin McKidd - Tommy MacKenzie"

"Jonny Lee Miller - Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson"

"Ewan Bremner - Daniel "Spud" Murphy"

"Ewan McGregor - Mark "Rent Boy" Renton"

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a starter home. Choose dental insurance, leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose your future. But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?"

"Picture the scene. The other fucking week there, down the fucking Volley with Tommy, playing pool. I'm playing like Paul fucking Newman by the way. Giving the boy here the tanning of a lifetime. So it comes to the end, to the last shot, the deciding ball of the whole tournament. I'm on the black and he's sitting in the corner looking all fucking biscuit-arsed. When this hard cunt comes in, obviously fucking fancied himself, like, starts staring at me. Looking at me, like right fucking at me, as if to say, "Come ahead, square go." You ken me. I'm not the type of cunt that goes looking for fucking bother, like, but at the end of the day I'm the cunt with a pool cue, and he can get the fat end in his puss any time he fucking wanted like. So I squares up, casual like. What does the hard cunt do? Or the so-called hard cunt? Shites it. Puts down his drink, turns, and gets the fuck out of there. And after that, well, the game was mine."

"Well, it's not our fault! Your boy went down because he was a fucking smack-head, and if that's not your fault then I don't know what is! I was the fucking cunt trying to get hum off it."

"See, inside you won't last two fucking days."

"You better clean up your fucking act, sunshine. Cut that shite out forever."

"It was fucking obvious that that cunt was gonna fuck some cunt."

"Hey rent boy, no fucking skag!"

"No way I would poison my body with that shite. All the fucking chemicals. No fucking way!"

"[Closing narration] Now, I've justified this to myself in all sorts of ways. It wasn't a big deal, just a minor betrayal. Or we'd outgrown each other, you know, that sort of thing. But let's face it, I ripped them off - my so-called mates. But Begbie, I couldn't give a shite about him. And Sick Boy; well, he'd have done the same to me, if he'd only thought of it first. And Spud; well...okay, I felt sorry for Spud - he never hurt anybody. So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers - all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person. But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television, the washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die."