Disco Elysium

"[On Communism] You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few million eggs."

"This guy's your buddy-buddy. You feel it immediately: you belong to an organization. A fraternity. Of drunks."

"You need to spread that deregulation gospel to the people. Tell them about that foreign fare tax. Preach that 98% gross burden. Preach it, preacher man! Set the brothas free. Taxes are racist."

"Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth."

"The colour of moralism is blue. The official motto of the Moralintern, or Moralist International, is: 'A blue forget-me-not; a piece of the grey sky'. Unofficial: 'For a moment, there was hope'"

"Knowledge like that isn't just obscure; it's unknowable. Dangerous theoretical facts like that are probably protected under the Coalition Government's Articles of Dominion, Title XIV, Article 7c. While an expert might be able to suss it out on their own, a layman like you has no hope."

"From crystal to smoke, an expression describing the rigid structures of capitalism turning to smoke under communism."

"Even by the standard of the Filippian kings, Old Sumptuous Filippe was known for his profligacy. […] he blew through the whole national treasury, starting the decline of one of the penultimate century's greatest superpowers: the Suzerain of Revachol. His own maladministration foreshadowed the fall of the monarchy during the Antecentennial Revolution, an end to his family line and the monarchy on the Insulindian isola. […] Stories have it that he had his bedroom converted into a treasure chamber where he stored unfathomable wealth: krugerrands, bars of gold, ornate weaponry, armour, and various chalices. He called it the Sol Aurum. It was obscene. There were whispers he slept on a huge pile of gold-dipped feathers like some obese dragon, instead of a bed like a normal person."

"Everything is calm in the eye of the racestorm. Your mind is lucid and bright. The mindbending phylogenetics appear more distant and, to be fair, a little ridiculous. The great Race Mystery has cleared up."

"You cannot open all the doors. You have to integrate this into your character. Some doors will forever remain closed. Even if every single other door will open at one time or another, maybe to a key, or maybe to some sort of tool meant for opening doors... But this one will never accede to such commands. A realization crucial to personal growth. Crucial."

"Your shit is apart, and it's rather unbecoming of a cop and a human being. It's supposed to be the opposite of that: together. Compressed in a small area. To achieve a solid level of shit-compression, squeeze your butt-cheeks together for 30 minutes. Do something similar with the two hemispheres of your brain. Talk to people, maybe that will help."

"Bizarre scientific news from Revachol West today, where a police officer's shit has been observed at a pressure of around 495 giga-decimals. These metallic hydrogen levels of shit-togetherness were thought to exist only at the center of collapsing stars, not law officials. It remains to be seen how long the shit-singularity lasts."

"Maybe you should stop obsessing about your own -- and other people's -- sexuality? Feels like it’s about time to do that. You’ve thought about this for eight hours?! Not only should you stop, you should tell Kim you've stopped obsessing about other people's sexuality too. I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Unless you already got him killed because you were obsessing about your sexuality. (There’s no way of telling from within your brain, but for your own sake: please say you didn’t.)"

"Nudity is shameful. No officer of the law should ever be caught sans pantalones."

"Yeah, it's another copotype -- the worst one. The most savage and brutal. The Art Cop. Nothing is good enough for him. Everything is shit. You have to employ an armada of adjectives to depict and demean the mediocrity of the works and visual institutions around you. Really flex that critical muscle. Until the vocabulary for PUNISHING mediocrity becomes second nature."

"0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world."

"First, if you have a side-bitch ideology cooking somewhere, don't sweat it. Fightin' indirect taxation for the Gossamer State is compatible with all creeds. It's cool like that. You're a cool anarchist now. Unless you don't want to be an anarchist. Whatever! Stuff this meal ticket in your eye-socket and let's see if we can steal some love back from the robber barons at the customs agency and the banditos at The Insulindian Financial Oversight and Competition Committee."

"His eyes are milky white and blind to the world, protruding comically from their sockets. There is no one home, just sub-aquatic terrors there."

"- That isn't just a five-pointed star -- it's an inverted white pentagram cradled in a wreath of antlers. The iconography of communism, in other words."

"The star-and-antlers was developed in the sixth decade of the last century and quickly adopted by Mazov and the communards during the Revolution […] The wreath of antlers represents a natural crown. It was about building a society that could exist in accord with the natural world -- and at the same time above it. [Why is the star upside down?] To symbolize the toppling of the old order. [Why white?] Because white is the colour of peace."

"Revachol is the disgraced former capital of the world, divided into zones of control under foreign occupation -- half a century after a failed world revolution. She is central to our moment in time."

"The Revacholian State will be a serene place. (You should get a drink.) A beautiful, serene place of mystery and peace. It will not be a place for women to infect with their frailty and hysterics. Or where the Semenese will be allowed to wear their pants around their ankles. All of that will go. (Once you get a drink.) The socialist professors at the École Supérieure will be fired, the editors of Trompe le Monde will have to beg in the streets. You'll pour your beer into their begging hats and laugh. (You should get a beer.)"

"People think Communism was some crazy idea that had its comeuppance 40 years ago. A fever that shook the world, never to return again. They were right. Until he woke up today – a spiritual corpse responsive only to the call of Commodore Red, prostitutes, and Kras Mazov. For him, Communism is still a thing. He will single-handedly raise the Commune of '02 from the oceanic trench where it has been resting, covered in ghosts and seaweed! He is the Big Communism Builder. Come, witness his attempt to rebuild Communism in the year '51!"

"You can see it so clearly. In a dark alley behind a boite de nuit, a young couple is having sex on a shopping cart. Their eyes are bloodshot and their brains fried. They are in the throes of narcomania On the top floor of an office building, a young exec takes a drag from a short spliff and his eyes roll to the back of his skull. He too is a narcomaniac. Someone needs to take a stand. The world needs a Narc. The world needs you. (Don't worry, you can still drink and smoke, those aren't real drugs.)"

"Halt! Put down the pipe, scumbag! The Narc is on the scene and he's gonna tell it to you straight. Drugs are for losers. They fry your brain and rewire your circuits to self-destruct. And they make you masturbate too. Have a drink instead. Have two. Have three bottles of wine, it's impossible to masturbate after three bottles of wine. And remember, friends don't let friends get high...or be sober. Peace out, little brother."

"The butts you saw had a silhouette of a boy wearing a kofia hat -- a tobacco picker. This boy is the Tioumoutiri brand logo. Contemporary Revacholians prefer Drouin (a local blend from the southern islands) or Astra, a legendary cigarette from Graad. Tioumoutiri is favoured by older men who like its old fashioned paper filter tips, insane amount of tar and the sweet smells of colonialism and halva."

"Heartache is powerful, but democracy is subtle. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?"

"A grey rain falls on Martinaise. The city soaks in it, cold and dripping. Waves hit the concrete breakers. The homeless huddle by the fires behind the fences. There, among the shacks, is your home. Stay. Have a drink. Forever."

"You see yourself from above. You’re passed out on the blue tiles of the hostel room floor. Even from this distance you can see your eyelids flutter -- at the mention of what? A great white object, letting out its sweet smell, like a Lily of the Valley. The little man’s forgotten its name, but he still remembers the feeling. And look, he moves! The feeling animates him. He instinctively reaches out for the feeling's best friend -- a bottle of Commodore Red. He puts on his disco clothes and gets smaller and smaller... and the little guy gets smaller and smaller as you rise above the doll house world. You see him out in the snow, on the streets, in the shop on the corner, and, finally, in a matchbox house. Sitting by the window, white flowers on the windowsill. You can smell them from up here: it's awful. A white mourning. A modern death. Divorce, or something similar. All you can do is put more distance between you and him, make him smaller. Make him less you."

"[About the player] It was him. He is the infernal engine. He never stops. He only gets worse."

"You're the son of the World again. Harrister -- a ceaseless agent picking up litter and old newspapers, collecting your little bubble gum wrappers and idiotic picture post cards. Meaningless, meaningless keepsakes."

"You really dropped the ball, Harry. Four point six billion people -- and you failed every single one of them. You really fucked up."

"Detective, each of us has our part to play in the world. My part is to solve crimes. I am under no illusion that my role isn't a minor one, in the scheme of things... but I embrace it because it's my role, and it's yours too, detective, whether you accept it or not!"

"What do they believe in? They are Dolorians. They believe they continue the humanist project set forth by Her Innocence Dolores Dei four centuries ago. Others say they're just technocrats."

"The manufacturing and sale of automatic rifles was curtailed after the Revolution. The destructive power of such tools proved to be... too much. We do need to retain some humanity in this world."

"Perhaps you can climb them. We're not climbing anything. I'm 43 years old -- and I plan to live to see 70."

"Every school of thought and government has failed in this city -- but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."

"You don't get to choose your posse, they choose you. Mine are idiots, but they're mine."

"I love Revachol, though. I hope she loves me too."

"The word PISSF****T [sic] epitomizes the struggle taking place in the world, things being defined as they seem, not as they are. And -- I guess -- it's also about communal spirit, the future, and truly appreciating our differences. Also, you've got to admit, it catches the eye. And since the grand piper is slowly but steadily moving towards basing the economy on it -- attention -- it is imperative that the medium itself convey the message."

"The moral of our encounter is: I am a relatively median lifeform -- while it is you who are total, extreme madness. A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet. The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetricals do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all."

"I went unnoticed by the first settlers and the land surveyors of the suzerain. Also by the soldiers of the Revolution and the officials of the occupation. Even the Semenese islanders who came here first, but did not stay, have not seen me."

"The pale is the most dominant geological feature of the world, detective -- the separative tissue between the isolas. It is the interisolary mass."

"[describing the discovery of Insulinde, where Revachol is located] For a time the crew thought they were experiencing a hallucination. The mast-hand proclaimed 'L´Insulinde! L´Insulinde!' -- the signal to wake up. But they could not. They were sane and conscious, as islands began to appear on the horizon... There are 78,000 uninhabited islands in the Insulindian archipelago, officer. The freckled face of god."

"The nations who colonized this isola called theirs Mundi. The World. It was all they knew, all they thought would be. That there would be something more was a gamble. Akin to another world -- or life after death."

"The pale was thought to be impregnable, perpetual. […] Irene La Navigateur, the Queen of Suresne, sent eight expeditions, one after the other, into the mass at the edge of the world. Five of the crews did not return. Two did, but had lost their minds."

"Achromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other -- or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness."

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead..."

"YOUR BODY BETRAYS YOUR DEGENRACY."

"OFFSHOOTS OF THE SEMENESE PEOPLE INVENTED DISCO WHILE HAVING SEX UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF COCAINE. IT IS A SHAME UPON MY RACE - BUT WHAT IS DONE IS DONE."