"The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena — the videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television."

"After all, there is nothing real outside our perception of reality, is there? You can see that, can't you?"

"Jon Seda - Jose"

"David Morse - Dr. Peters"

"Frank Gorshin - Dr. Fletcher"

"Christopher Plummer - Dr. Goines"

"Brad Pitt - Jeffrey Goines"

"Madeleine Stowe - Kathryn Railly"

"Bruce Willis - James Cole"

"Television seems to be ubiquitous in "Twelve Monkeys". Every scene has got a television screen in it doing something. It's because I think television is this awful mirror that we all look into every day, but it distorts the reflection and I hate it. It trivializes life. Rather than really enlightening us, it ends up just dragging us down to the lowest, into the boring and the tedious. And however much you try to resist it, you begin to believe the world really is that way. So we've included it in the film. And it shows commercials that are doing strange things, and cartoons, which works very nicely as a juxtaposition to some of the scenes that are going on."

"The locations I've used were old disused power stations around Philadelphia and Baltimore. Nuclear plants, factories, power stations: "cathedrals of technological progress." I've always had a problem with the belief that technology was going to solve all of our problems; so I'm drawn to shooting in those places, particularly for this film, which is about decay and about nostalgia. These great spaces were considered to be providing the solution to all of our problems, yet now they're just wasted, lying there, rotting. And that seemed very much what a lot of the film was about. About putting your faith in the wrong things."

"There was something about the idea that people putting layer upon layer to protect themselves from a potential infection, end up in a sense isolating themselves from one another. And I became obsessed with that."

"I've never seen La Jetee. If I do something based on something else I make it a principle not to read or see the original: I'll be intimidated by it, or I'll feel an awesome sense of responsibility. So I avoid that problem."

"They're coming."

"The future is history."

"Poet: Yet among the myriad microwaves, the infra-red messages, the gigabytes of ones and zeroes, we find words, byte-sized now, tinier even than science lurking in some vague electricity, but if we but listen we can hear the solitary voice of that poet telling us, "Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare; Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph or Despair: Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.""

"Dr. Peters: I think, Dr. Railly, you have given your "alarmists" a bad name. Surely there is very real and very convincing data that the planet cannot survive the excesses of the human race: proliferation of atomic devices, uncontrolled breeding habits, the rape of the environment, the pollution of land, sea, and air. In this context, isn't it obvious that "Chicken Little" represents the sane vision and that Homo Sapiens' motto, "Let's go shopping!" is the cry of the true lunatic?"

"He's been living in a meticulously constructed fantasy world, and that world is starting to disintegrate. He needs help."

"Cassandra in Greek legend, you recall, was condemned to know the future but to be disbelieved when she foretold it. Hence the agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it."

"Sorry. Uh, sorry. I, I, I got a little agitated. The thought of, uh, escape had crossed my mind, and then suddenly — suddenly — suddenly I felt like bending the fucking bars back, and ripping out the goddamn window frames and eating them — yes, eating them! Leaping, leaping, leaping! Colonics for everyone! All right! You dumbasses. I'm a mental patient. I'm supposed to act out! Wait'll you morons find out who I am! My father's gonna be really upset, and when my father gets upset, the ground SHAKES! My father is God! I worship my father!"

"You are a total nutcase, completely deranged, delusional, paranoid. Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information tray is jammed, man!"

"And when my father finds out I'm in this kind of place, he'll have them transfer me to one of those classy joints where they treat you properly, like a person, like a guest. With sheets and towels like a big hotel, with great drugs for all of us nut-case, lunatic, maniac devils."

"So if you want to watch a particular television program, say 'All My Children' or something, you go to the Charge Nurse and tell her day and time the show you want to see is on. But you have to tell her before the show is scheduled to be on. There's this guy and he's always requesting shows that had already played. Yes, no. You have to tell her before. He couldn't quite grasp the idea that the Charge Nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She couldn't turn back time, thank you, Einstein. Now he, he was nuts. He was a fruitcake, Jim!"

"There's the television. It's all right there — all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally ill. Fact, Jim, fact — if you don't buy things: toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers..."

"Telephone call? Telephone call? That's communication with the outside world. Doctor's discretion. Nuh-uh. Look, hey — if all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, a plague of madness. In fact, very few, very few of us here are actually mentally ill. I'm not saying you're not mentally ill, for all I know, you're crazy as a loon. But that's not why you're here. That's not why you're here. That's not why you're here! You're here because of the system."

"Games, games. Here's some games. Games you wanna get out. Ha! See, more games. Games, they vegitize you. If you play the games, you're voluntarily taking a tranquilizer...Drugs! What'd they give you? Thorazine? Haldol? How much? Learn your drugs — know your doses. It's elementary..."

"All I see are dead people."

"It's just like what's happening with us, like the past. The movie never changes. It can't change; but every time you see it, it seems different because you're different. You see different things."

"Oh, wouldn't it be great if I was crazy? Then the world would be okay."

"What is it about tower blocks and shopping trolleys, huh?"

"Stuart McQuarrie - Sergeant Farrelle"

"Christopher Eccleston - Major Henry West"

"Megan Burns - Hannah"

"Brendan Gleeson - Frank"

"Noah Huntley - Mark"

"Naomie Harris - Selena"

"Cillian Murphy - Jim"

"One of the problems with filming in Britain is that there's this slightly depressing air of familiarity and scale, but we wanted to make it something mythic and give it a mythical size. We didn't have enough money to pay for carnage on a city-wide scale, but the idea of an emptied London gave us the iconic image we needed."

"Yes. It's this idea of a psychological virus. Like road rage, that moment when the red mist descends, if you magnify that a thousand times and experience it to the exclusion of everything else, imagine what that kind of power would be like. That was our monster. If you really think about that, it's very, very scary indeed."

"Return to normality"

""...people killing people." -Our rage is destroying humanity; whether on a large or small scale, slowly but surely."

"His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't."

"Day 1: Exposure - Day 3: Infection - Day 8: Epidemic - Day 20: Evacuation - Day 28: Devastation"

"Be Thankful For Everything, For Soon There Will Be Nothing..."

"The Days Are Numbered"

"Farrell: ...Marge walks onto this ship. Smithers says, "Women and seamen don't mix." And Mr. Burns says, "We all know what you think, Smithers." And that was my favorite ever joke in The Simpsons. And see, that's what they’re doing, a few hundred miles from here across the channel -- across the Atlantic. They’re eating dinner and they’re watching the fucking Simpsons! They’re sleeping in their beds next to their wives...! But we’re here, chained to a fucking radiator because the OC HAS GONE INSANE! Starting the world again when the rest of the fucking world hasn’t even stopped! Just imagine it. Just think about it! How could infection cross the oceans? How could it cross the mountains and the rivers? Th- They-- They stopped it! And right now TVs are playing and planes are flying in the sky and the rest of the world is continuing as fucking normal. Think. Actually think about it. What would you do with a diseased little island? They quarantined us. "There is no infection, it's just people killing people." He's insane!"

"Jim's Parents' Note: In endless love, we left you sleeping. Now we're sleeping with you. Don't wake up."

"Piece of Grafitti: The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh"

"[last words] Wait... NO!"

"I remember my dad had all this cash. He thought maybe we could buy our way onto a plane, even though cash was completely useless. Ten thousand other people had the same idea. The crowd was surging. I lost my grip on my sister's hand. I remember the ground felt very soft, and I saw I was standing on people. People who had fallen. Like a carpet. There were infected in the crowd- it spread fast. You couldn't get away, you could only climb, climb over more people. So I did that. So I climbed, I climbed on top of more people. I got up on top of this kiosk. Looking down you couldn't tell which faces were infected and which weren't. Then I saw my dad. Not my mum or my sister. My dad. I saw his face... Selena's right. You should be grateful."