"“It’s like prostitution.” “It’s a lot like prostitution, isn’t it?” “You see nothing wrong…?” “The customer’s always right.” “And you have no,” she shuddered, “ethics?” “I give the public what it wants, if that’s what you mean.”"

"The poor man has sacrificed himself for others, but he could not help resenting them from time to time."

"“Entropy’s setting in. Or so they say.” “Why should that be true?” “It’s Time—it’s all used up.” “This is metaphysical nonsense!” “Very likely.”"

"“You look ahead.” “I look around. Ahead’s here already.”"

"“Perhaps I should not say so, but it occasionally crosses my mind to wonder why, in all the mystic cosmologies, even in some of the modern so-called parasciences, our own age is always described as the age of chaos and contention. A comment, my logical side argues, on why people turn to mysticism. The past age was always better.” “Childhood is the happiest time of life except when you’re a child,” said Jerry. “I understand you. True.”"

"“You fought well and you fought for justice.” “Justice?” Hawkmoon called after him as he left the room. “Is there such a thing?” “It can be manufactured in small quantities,” Fank told him. “But we have to work hard, fight well and use great wisdom to produce just a tiny amount.”"

"It is many years since I have wielded a weapon larger than a pen, borne anything weightier than a difficult problem in philosophy."

"“And is adventure and sensation all we should seek, Meliadus?” “Aye—why not? All is chaos, there is no meaning to existence, there is only one advantage to living one’s life and that is to discover all the sensations the human mind and body is capable of feeling.”"

"Every court must have its fool, every great ideal must attract some who are motivated only by self-interest."

"And then he pursed his lips in disgust. “Doubtless that was the result of supernatural interference with our brains! How I hate the supernatural!”"

"“I think you serve a great purpose, Hawkmoon. I think your destiny is a noble one.” Hawkmoon laughed. “And yet I do not pine for a noble destiny—merely a secure one.”"

"“I have heard it said it is often safer to dwell in the lion’s lair than outside it,” Oladahn said. “Safer still to live in a land where there are no lions,” Count Brass retorted."

"Machine-devoured, all his hours were given o’er to that insidious circuitry, and old grew he, unnoticing, in the service of his engines."

"Wild days, wild riders, and the stink of warfare across the world!"

"Only Bowgentle, the philosopher-poet, his old friend, had an inkling of what he meant and even then Bowgentle believed that it reflected not on the nature of the landscape but on the particular nature of Count Brass’s mind. “You’re exhausted, disorientated,” Bowgentle would say. “The ordering mechanism of the brain is working too hard, so you see a pattern to existence that, in fact, only stems from your own weariness and disturbance...”"

"For this was the great power of the Lords of the Dark Empire, that they valued nothing on all the Earth, no human quality, nothing within or without themselves. The spreading of conquest and desolation, of terror and torment, was their staple entertainment, a means of employing their hours until their spans of life were ended. For them, warfare was merely the most satisfactory way of easing their ennui..."

"“No denial would convince you,” D’Averc smiled, “so I will not offer you one.”"

"The hardest compromise to make is when you decide to appear to compromise. Often the deception becomes the reality long before you realize it."

"I would waste my rhetoric if I tried, for men are greedy and will not see the truth for the gleam of coin."

"Do not thank me for saving your life. You do not realize yet what I have saved it for."

"“I shall not be killed!” The count smiled scornfully, as if death were something that only others suffered."

"Magic, as far as Faustaff knew, rejected reason. Religion accepted it, of course, but hardly encouraged it. Only science accepted it and encouraged it. Faustaff suddenly saw mankind’s social and psychological evolution in a clear, simple light. Science alone accepted man as he was and sought to exploit his full potential."

"Orelli smiled to himself. It was a wickedly introspective smile as if he looked into his own soul and was pleased with the evil he found there."

"“Is that what you are? An android?” “You could find out if you made love to me.” Faustaff smiled and shook his head. “Sweetheart, you’re just not my type.” “I thought any young woman was your type, doctor.” “So did I till I met you.”"

"Everything dies eventually—but that shouldn’t stop us enjoying life while it is there to be enjoyed."

"I have never had trouble with conflicting interpretations of my work. Once the story is published, it belongs to the reader."

"“An ethic is simply a system of survival,” Velusi said. “What does an ethic mean when there is no chance of survival?”"

"Fear was back and with it the old terrors, the old mental aberrations, the old superstitions, the old religions. He knew the pattern. He had studied it in the text books. He knew how little power rational argument had when faced with minds turned sick by fear. He knew how quickly a cult of the kind he had seen could proliferate and dominate a society and then split internally and become several warring sects."

"The society was the nearest thing to perfection that had ever existed; vital without being violent, stable without being stagnant. This society had resulted from a number of factors, the most important being a small population served by a sophisticated technology and an equally sophisticated administrative system. The arts were alive, there was universal literacy, the philosophies flourished."

"Alain left the cell, left Police Headquarters and stood for a long time by a splashing fountain, staring into the clear water and watching the darting goldfish swimming in the narrow confines of the pool. Did they understand just how narrow their little universe was? he wondered. They seemed happy enough, if fish could be happy. But if they weren’t happy, he reflected, neither were they sad. They had no tradition but instinct, no ritual but the quest for food and a mate. He didn’t envy them much."

"Listening to the conversation, his faith in the stupidity of human nature was fully restored."

"Why ascribe meaning to all this? The further away from the fundamentals of life we go, the more we quest for their meaning. There is no meaning. It is here. It has always been here in some state. It will always be here. That is all we can ever truly know. It is all we should want to know."

"A threat to free speech. It was marvelous how they accepted the principles of democracy and rejected them at the same time by talk of mob action!"

"Any forthcoming dispute was likely to be a battle between ignorance of one sort and ignorance of another."

"Perhaps he was old and wise, perhaps he was just old."

"I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity."

"The ultimate embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for."

"With The Dark Knight you had to strike a balance of familiarity with the audience. It is a sequel, and they want familiar elements, things they liked from the first film. But you always have to be very aware that the audience is extremely ruthless in its demand for newness, novelty and freshness. At script stage, we really tried to thrash that out—are we striking that right balance?"

"What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I’m watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I’m discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story. Other times, you’re plotting it out with diagrams and taking a very objective view. Writing, for me, is a combination of both. You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional experience for the audience."

"When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling."

"Let us confess a truth, humiliating perhaps to human pride;—a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association—in short, by prejudice."

"It is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him."

"We may think all religions beneficial, and believe of one alone that it is true."

"If an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect."

"It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays."

"So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o’er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore."

"Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear,;br>Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning."

"So when destruction lurks unseen, Which men like mice may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare."