"Merlin: Tricks? Gadzooks, Madam, these are not tricks! I do magic. I — I create, I transpose, I transubstantiate, I break up, I recombine — but I never trick!"

"Apollonius of Tyana: I only read futures; I don't evaluate them."

"All those stories about me, they're lies. I'm not a bank robber or a cattle rustler, and I've never kicked a woman in the stomach even once, really!"

"Now, come on, Doc! What kind of oriental hocus-pocus is going on around here? A circus with no wagons, no animals, no cages? A crazy old magician? What's it all about?"

"My dear lady, the role of skeptic becomes you not. There are things in the world not even the experience of a lifetime spent in Abalone could conceive of."

"You worry too much. You worry about how I brought my circus to Abalone with wagons. You worry about the future of your town. Or, if the sun will rise a year from today. The answer is to such matters, remain closed behind a curtain. Then, time says, presto! And out they come."

"Now, Mr. Cunningham, do you suppose this garrulous intruder may be a... a swindler, perhaps, an assassin, a charlatan plotting some curious disaster for your town? Such characters exist, but they are secretive rather than mysterious. I, sir, am a major mystery."

"Whatever men do not understand they find unconvincing."

"Every time you pick up a grain of sand you hold a universe in the palm of your hand."

"This is the circus of Dr. Lao. We show you things that you don't know. Oh, we spare no pains and we spare no dough. Oh, we want to give you one hell of a show! And youth may come and age may go, But no more circuses like this show."

"Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is?"

"I'd fuck me. [Watching television documentary on his puppeteering when he's in John Malkovich's body.]"

"Charlie Sheen — Charlie"

"Mary Kay Place — Floris (Lester's secretary/receptionist)"

"Orson Bean — Dr. Lester"

"John Malkovich — John Horatio Malkovich"

"Catherine Keener — Maxine"

"Cameron Diaz — Lotte Schwartz"

"John Cusack — Craig Schwartz"

"Be All That Someone Else Can Be."

"Ever Wanted To Be Someone Else?"

"Ever wanted to be someone else? Now you can."

"Dr. Lester: Forever doomed to watch the world through someone else's eyes."

"You're nuts to let a girl go that calls you Lotte, I tell you that as a friend."

"Hot lesbian witches! Think about it! It's fucking genius!"

"Maybe she's using you to channel some dead lesbian lover."

"Truth is for suckers, Johnny Boy."

"It's my head, Schwartz! It's my head!"

"That portal is mine, and it must be sealed forever for the love of God!"

"I have been to the dark side. I have seen a world that no man should see."

"Don't stand in the way of my actualization as a man."

"Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate."

"Help! He's locking me in a cage!"

"Sounds great. Who the fuck is John Malkovich?"

"Behind the stubble and the too-prominent brow and the male-pattern baldness... I sensed your feminine longing. And it just slew me."

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have two people look at you, with total lust and devotion, through the same pair of eyes?"

"Maxine. Maxine. I love you, Maxine. Oh, look away. Look away [Looking through Emily's eyes at the end]"