"[[Frank is lying in bed recovering from fever in hospital and a doctor sitting near him has farted] And then Dr. Campbell came in and held my hand. It was then that I knew I was going to get better because a doctor would never fart in the presence of a dying boy."

"[Commenting on traditional Irish dancing] If my mates saw me making a pure eejit out of myself at the Irish dancing, I'd be disgrace forever. I want to be Fred Astaire. Irish dancers look like they have steel rods stuck up their arses."

"In the name of the father, the son and the holy toast."

"If I were in America, I could say "I love you, dad", the way they do in the films. But in Limerick they'd laugh at you. In Limerick you are only allowed to say you love God, and babies, and horses that win. Anything else is softness in the head."

"[Ship is sailing out of New York City] We must've been the only Irish family to be saying good bye to the statue of liberty rather than hello."

"You have penetrated me. There is no escape. You are within me. Come into my centre... Come into the centre of the crystal."

"John Alderton - Friend"

"Sara Kestelman - May"

"Refraction of light. Infinite."

"Charlotte Rampling - Consuella"

"Sean Connery - Zed"

"Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death."

"I have seen the future and it doesn't work."

"Sleep was necessary for man when his waking and unconscious lives were separated. As eternals achieved total consciousness, sleep became obsolete, and second level meditation took its place."

"Beyond 1984, Beyond 2001, Beyond Love, Beyond Death."

"For the finale of my 1974 film Zardoz, I wanted to shoot a scene of Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling in which they age and die. This involved shooting with a fixed camera, so that we could take them out, age their clothes and faces, put them back in, shoot them a bit more, then take them out and age them further, until eventually they were skeletons that, in turn, crumbled away. This process took an entire day. Then, the camera assistant unloaded the camera and accidentally exposed the film to the light. This meant we had to spend another whole day shooting it. I also had to restrain Connery from killing the assistant – who soon afterwards changed his name and moved to Los Angeles. I spied him in a cafe in LA one day. “Is Sean in town?” he asked, with a quivering voice."

"Um, it was the 70’s, and I was doing a lot of drugs. Frankly, even I’m not entirely sure what parts of the movie are about."

"[A] genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators ... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful Deliverance."

"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue — rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero. I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events that you see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? [chuckles] Is God in show business, too?"

"We seal ourselves herewith into this place of learning. Death is banished for ever. I direct that the Tabernacle erase from us all memories of its construction, so we can never destroy it if we should ever crave for death. Here, man and the sum of his knowledge will never die, but go forward to perfection."

"It's an ark. A ship. A spaceship. All this technology was for travel to the distant stars."

"[after Zed shoots the crystal] You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You... are alone."