"I truly feel pity for you both. You are grown up now! And yet you still act as children, who want to do nothing but run and play. You cannot run and play all your life, Diane!"

"Diane was my wife. I loved her, and she loved dope. So we made a good couple."

"Lord, it's my dope fiend thief of a son and his crazy little nymphomaniac wife."

"There's nothing more life-affirming than getting the shit kicked out of you."

"I knew it in my heart. You can buck the system but you can't buck the dark forces that lie hidden beneath the surface. The ones some people call superstitions."

"Well, to begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody, can talk a junkie out of using. You can talk to 'em for years but sooner or later they're gonna get ahold of something. Maybe it's not dope. Maybe it's booze, maybe it's glue, maybe it's gasoline. Maybe it's a gunshot to the head. But something. Something to relieve the pressures of their everyday life, like having to tie their shoes."

"All these kids, they're all TV babies. Watching people killing and fucking each other on the boob tube for so long it's all they know. Hell, they think it's legal. They think it's the right thing to do."

"Man, I love cops. If there were no hot shit cops like Gentry around, the competition would be so heavy there'd be nothing left to steal."

"We played a game you couldn't win... to the utmost."

"Most people don't know how they're gonna feel from one moment to the next. But a dope fiend has a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles."

"Maurice Teynac - Deputy Manager"

"Raoul Delfosse - Policeman #2"

"Jean-Claude Rémoleux - Policeman #1"

"Carl Studer - Man in Leather"

"Naydra Shore - Irmie, Joseph K.'s cousin"

"Jess Hahn - Second Assistant Inspector"

"Billy Kearns - First Assistant Inspector"

"Thomas Holtzmann - Bert the law student"

"Wolfgang Reichmann - Courtroom Guard"

"Max Haufler - Uncle Max"

"Max Buchsbaum - Examining Magistrate"

"Michael Lonsdale - Priest"

"Fernand Ledoux - Chief Clerk of the Law Court"

"Arnoldo Foà - Inspector A"

"Paola Mori - Court archivist"

"Madeleine Robinson - Mrs. Grubach"

"William Chappell - Titorelli"

"Akim Tamiroff - Bloch"

"Orson Welles - Albert Hastler, The Advocate"

"Suzanne Flon - Miss Pittl"

"Elsa Martinelli - Hilda"

"Romy Schneider - Leni"

"Jeanne Moreau - Marika Burstner"

"Anthony Perkins - Josef K."

"You're not going to try and tell me you think you can diddle your way out of a criminal charge with an adding machine!"

"All these fancy electronics, they're all right in their place, but not for anything practical."

"To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free."

"It's true, you know. Accused men are attractive. Not that being accused makes any immediate change in a man's personal appearance. But if you've got the right eye for these things, you can pick out an accused man in the largest crowd. It's just something about them, something attractive."

"You...! I make you very uncomfortable, don't I? It distresses you to find me in your company? Yes, I've been told about that! Before I thought you, you took me for a judge, or at least some official of the court! I even thought you were afraid of me, but what you're feeling is PAIN! You don't like what you see, do you? It's my mouth! You think you can tell from my mouth, that I'm condemned! That I'm going to be found guilty! GUILTY!"

"Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. May he hope to enter at a later time? That is possible, said the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He'd been taught that the law was to be accessible to every man. "Do not attempt to enter without my permission", says the guard. I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last. By the guard's permission, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits. For years, he waits. Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him "I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you left something undone." Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has come to know even the fleas on the guard's fur collar. Growing childish in old age, he begs the fleas to persuade the guard to change his mind and allow him to enter. His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law. And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. He beckons the guard. Says the guard, "You are insatiable! What is it now?" Says the man, "Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?" His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear. "Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admittance. No one else could enter this door! This door was intended only for you! And now, I'm going to close it." This tale is told during the story called "The Trial". It's been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream... a nightmare."

"Wouldn't it be a trip if Alex Trebek bought a nude painting of me?"

"Michael Beach - Jim Stone"