"Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

"There we were—demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance—and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors—we're the opposite of people!"

"We're more of the love, blood and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."

"There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it."

"No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen — it's not gasps and blood and falling about — that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all — now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back — an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death."

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."

"To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner? (It is worth noting that the Danish monarchy only became hereditary in the 17th century. Before this time, the crown was elective so Hamlet may not have been the elected heir.)"

"[to Principal Cole] I don't think that you have a clue what it's like to communicate with these kids. And we are losing them to apathy, to this prescribed nonsense. They are slipping away."

"James Duval - Frank"

"Katharine Ross - Dr. Lillian Thurman"

"Noah Wyle - Prof. Kennth Monnitoff"

"Daveigh Chase - Samantha Darko"

"Holmes Osborne - Eddie Darko"

"Mary McDonnell - Rose Darko"

"Patrick Swayze - Jim Cunningham"

"Drew Barrymore - Karen Pomeroy"

"Beth Grant - Kitty Farmer"

"Jena Malone - Gretchen Ross"

"Maggie Gyllenhaal - Elizabeth Darko"

"Jake Gyllenhaal - Donnie Darko"

"They Made Me Do It."

"Cellar Door."

"The only way to unwind the future is to follow the path."

"Why are you looking at me?"

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

"Dark. Darker. Darko."

"Be Afraid of the Dark."

"What would you do if you knew the future?"

"You can never go too far."

"Life is one long insane trip. Some people just have better directions."

"Every living creature on this earth dies alone."

"I-I know I'm not the best communicator, but... whatever happens to you, be honest, tell the truth, even if they do look at you funny. They will. But what you gotta understand, Son, is that almost all of those people are full of shit. [laughs] They're all part of this great big conspiracy of bullshit. And they're scared of people like you, because those bullshitters know that you're smarter than all of them. You know what you say to people like that? Hmm? "Fuck you.""

"The children have to save themselves these days because the parents have no clue."

"Okay, now girls... I want you to concentrate. Failure is not an option. And Bethany, if you feel the need to vomit up there... just swallow it."

"What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?"

"Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood."

"If the sky were to suddenly open up... there would be no law... there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories... the choices you've made and the people you've touched. The life that has been carved out from your subconscious is the only evidence by which you will be judged... by which you must judge yourself. Because when this world ends, there will only be you and him... and no one else."

"Dear Roberta Sparrow, I've reached the end of your book and there are so many questions that I need to ask you. Sometimes I am afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I am afraid this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to."

"I've stayed alive for you. But now you have to let me go."

"Ed Harris - Richard Brown"

"Meryl Streep - Clarissa Vaughan"

"Julianne Moore - Laura Brown"

"Nicole Kidman - Virginia Woolf"

"We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so... There she is with another hour before her."

"Julia: So that's the monster."