• 
  The Bear

It's hard to hear it, so I just keep saying it. I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it. A lot of my life, I thought I was just a victim. And because my husband drank so much, this would happen or that would happen. The short term was always so awful. I thought if I just could throw out his liquor, you know, hide whatever he was on, that would fix it. We can't curb that kind of chaos until the thinking changes. Until the foundations change. Until the chemistry changes. And it's difficult. I know I played a part in his abuse. And I'm really mad at myself for that. But... But... if there's anything good that came out of it, it's that it made me realize that the best thing for me to do is just to try to keep my side of the street clean. Instead of trying to fix everything, just remove myself from any situation that is, or could become, toxic.

• 
  Saltburn

Here you are. Right in the middle of it all. Stranger fucking danger. You know what daddy's started to call you? "Spiderman". You're always skulking Weaving your spidery, web. I don't think you're a spider. I think you're a moth. I'm right, aren't I!? Quiet. Harmless. Drawn to shiny things. Batting up against the window...Just desperate to get in. Well you've done it now. You've made your holes in everything. You'll eat us from the inside out.

• 
  Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back

No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship. A a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will. Control, control, you must learn control!

• 
  Fall of the House of Usher

What a show. So much money. One of my favorite things about human beings. Starvation, poverty, disease. You could fix all that just with money and you don’t. I mean, if you took just a little bit of time off the vanity-voyages-pleasure-cruising-billionaire-space-race, hell you stop making movies and TV for one year, and you spend that money on what you really need, you could solve it all with some to spare. Humanity will shit the bed themselves. Corporate justice in this world is a punchline.

We’re a virus, I think. These people. They want an entire meal for $5 in five minutes then complain when it's made of shit and plastic. McDonald's would serve nothing but kale salad all day and all night long if that's what people fսcking ate. It's available, no one buys it. We will get around to funding AIDS research, and diabetes, and heart disease, just as soon as we figure out how to keep our geriatric dicks harder for a few more minutes. The Pentagon spent $83 million on Viagra last year. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, the fսcking Supreme Court does its part, tears the autonomy, rips the liberty away from women, shreds not just their choice but their future, their potential. We turn men into cսm fountains and women into factories, cranking out, what, an impoverished workforce, there for the labor and to spend what little they make consuming. Hmm. And what do we teach them to want? Houses they can't afford. Single-serve plastics, clothes made by starving children in third world countries, and they want it so bad that they're begging for it, they're screaming for it, they're insisting upon it. And we're the problem? These fսcking consumers. They point at you and me like we're the problem. They invented us. They begged for us, they're begging for us still. So I say, we stand tall and proud, brother.

• 
  Everything Everywhere All At Once

So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

You tell me that it's a cruel world and we're all just running around in circles. Please! Can we... can we just stop fighting? I know you are all fighting because you are scared and confused. I'm confused too. All day... I don't know what the heck is going on. But when I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything. The only thing I know... is that we have to be kind. Please. Be kind... especially when we don't know what's going on. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight. Here, all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes any sense. I will cherish these few specks of time.

You may see in her all of your greatest fears squeezed into one person. I spent most of her childhood praying she would not end up like me. But she turned out stubborn, aimless, a mess just like her mother. But now I see it's okay that she's a mess. Because just like me, the universe gave her someone kind, patient, and forgiving to make up for all she lacks. She is not unloveable.

You know why I actually built the bagel? It wasn’t to destroy everything. It was to destroy myself.

If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life goes away.

I've seen thousands of Evelyns, but never an Evelyn like you. You have so many goals you never finished, dreams you never followed. You're living your worst you. Every failure here branched off into a success for another Evelyn in another life. Most people only have a few significant life alternate life paths so close to them. But you, here, you're capable of anything because you're so bad at everything.

• 
  Women Talking

"It is a brash age. They are possessed of reckless urges, physical exuberance, intense curiosity that often results in injury, unbridled emotion, including deep tenderness and empathy, and not quite enough experience or brain development to fully understand or appreciate the consequences of their actions or words. They are similar to the yearlings; young, awkward, gleeful, powerful. They are tall, muscular, sexually inquisitive creatures with little impulse control, but they are children. They are children and they can be taught. I believe that with direction, firm love and patience these boys are capable of relearning their roles as males in the colony. I believe in what the great poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought were the cardinal rules of early education. “To work by love and so generate love. To habituate the mind to intellectual accuracy and truth. To excite imaginative power.” He said “Little is taught by contest or dispute, everything by sympathy and love.”

• 
  Fleabag

"I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. I want someone to tell me what to wear EVERY morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, who to love and how to tell them.

"I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong — and I know that’s why people want people like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. You just tell them what to do and what they’ll get out at the end of it, and even though I don’t believe your bullshit, and I know that scientifically nothing I do makes any difference in the end anyway, I’m still scared. Why am I still scared? So just tell me what to do. Just fucking tell me what to do, Father."

• 
  Malcolm X

"Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man. I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is no place in this world that this man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone, he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone, he's created destruction. So I charge him. I charge him with being the greatest kidnapper on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest murderer on this earth! I charge him with being the greatest robber and enslaver on this earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest swine-eater on this earth. The greatest drunkard on this earth! He can't deny the charges! You can't deny the charges! We're the living proof *of* those charges! You and I are the proof. You're not an American, you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming over here. He didn't say, "Black man, black woman, come on over and help me build America". He said, "Nigger, get down in the bottom of that boat and I'm taking you over there to help me build America". Being born here does not make you an American. I am not an American, you are not an American. You are one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of America. You and I, we've never see any democracy. We didn't see any... democracy on the-the cotton fields of Georgia, wasn't no democracy down there. We didn't see any democracy. We didn't see any democracy on the streets of Harlem or on the streets of Brooklyn or on the streets of Detroit or Chicago. Ain't no democracy down there. No, we've never seem democracy! All we've seen is hypocrisy! We don't see any American Dream. We've experienced only the American Nightmare!"

• 
  Call Me By Your Name

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!

Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But don’t kill it, and with it the joy you’ve felt.

• 
  The Kids Are Alright

I need to say something. Um, it's no big secret your mom and I are in hell right now, and, uh... Bottom line is, marriage is hard. It's really fuckin' hard. Just... just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing. It's a fucking marathon, okay? So, sometimes, you know, you're... you're together so long, that you just... You stop seeing the other person. You just see weird projections of your own junk. Um, instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails and act grubby and make stupid choices, which is what I did, and I feel sick about it because I love you guys, and I love your mom, and that's the truth. Sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most. I don't know why. I... You know, if I read more Russian novels, then... Anyway, I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I did. I hope you'll forgive me eventually.

• 
  Only Lovers Left Alive

This self obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent in surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing!!

• 
  I Am Not Your Negro

"For a very long time, America prospered. This prosperity cost millions of people their lives. Now, not even the people who are the most spectacular recipients of the benefits of this prosperity are able to endure these benefits. They can neither understand them nor do without them. Above all, they cannot imagine the price paid by their victims, or subjects, for this way of life, and so they cannot afford to know why the victims are revolting. This is the formula for a nation or a kingdom decline. James Baldwin: For no kingdom can maintain itself by force alone. Force does not work the way its advocates think in fact it does. It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of the adversary. On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of the adversary. And this revelation invests the victim with passion."

• 
  Zootopia

When I was a kid, I thought Zootopia was this perfect place where everyone got along and anyone could be anything. Turns out, real life is a little bit more complicated than a slogan on a bumper sticker. Real life is messy. We all have limitations. We all make mistakes. Which means―hey, glass half full!―we all have a lot in common. And the more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be. But we have to try. So no matter what type of person you are, from the biggest elephant to our first fox, I implore you: Try. Try to make the world a better place. Look inside yourself and recognize that change starts with you. It starts with me. It starts with all of us. - Judy Hopps

• 
  Mad Men

My name is Leonard and I don't know if there is anything that complicated about me. I've never been interesting to anybody. I work in an office. People walk right by me. I know they don't see me. And I go home and I watch my wife and my kids...they don't even look up when I sit down. Like no one cares that I'm gone. They should love me. Maybe they do but I don't even know what it is. You spend your whole life thinking you're not getting it, that people aren't giving it to you, then you realize they're trying, and you don't even know what it is.

• 
  Revolutionary Road

This is what's unrealistic. It's unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can't stand. Coming home to a place he can't stand, to a wife who's equally unable to stand the same things. And you know what the worst part of it is? Our whole existence here is based on this great premise that we're special. That we're superior to the whole thing. But we're not. We're just like everyone else! We bought into the same, ridiculous delusion. That we have to resign from life and settle down. And we've been punishing each other for it. It's what you are that is being denied in this kind of life. If being crazy means living life as if it matters then I don't care if we're completely insane.

• 
  Eyes Wide Shut

Do you remember last summer at Cape Cod? Do you remember one night in the dining room, there was this young naval officer and he was sitting near our table with two other officers? The waiter brought him a message during dinner, at which point he left, nothing rings a bell? Well, I first saw him that morning in the lobby. He was checking into the hotel and he was following the bellboy with his luggage to the elevator. He glanced at me as he walked past, just a glance, nothing more. And I could hardly move. That afternoon Helena went to the movie with her friend and you and I made love and we made plans about our future and we talked about Helena and yet at no time was he ever out of my mind. And I thought that if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything. You, Helena, my whole fucking future, everything. And yet it was weird because at the same time, you were dearer to me than ever, and at that moment my love for you was both tender and sad. I barely slept that night. I woke up the next morning in a panic. I don’t know if I was afraid that he had left or that he might still be there. But by dinner I realized he was gone. And I was relieved.

• 
  Pariah

"Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free."

• 
  Harmontown

Cause you can feel when I'm looking at someone like they're an insect. Like I turn everything off. The abuse is in the behavior. It's in the glare. Just flaunting the fact that I don't feel anything. It's all about defensiveness. It about being threatened. If I'm a child it's about my mom coming at me. I need to defeat it. I don't know how to deal with the fact that I can be incredibly cruel. Over twenty years I begged and pleaded with every expert I can find to flip the switch and make me never do that to another human being again. I want to be the activated healthy version of myself. I want that stripped away. I want what remains to be someone who is capable of changing the world. More importantly I want to remove that part of me that can do so much damage to the most important person in my life. All of this honesty and talking..., why is that important? Knowing that you're a dick. It's usually followed by someone not being a dick anymore and growing up. We have 250 million man children figuring out what makes them a dick and celebrating it, not figuring it out and not being a dick anymore. I have to deal with the fact that I've gotten everything that I want. I have to grow up.

• 
  Gone Girl

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”

• 
  The Hours

To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

• 
  Barfly

You know somebody laid down this rule, that everybody's gotta do something. They've gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that. Sometimes, I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don't wanna do. --Bukowski

• 
  Weekend

Well, you know what it's like when you first sleep with someone you don't know? It's... you, like, become this blank canvas and it gives you an opportunity to project onto that canvas who you want to be. That's what's interesting because everybody does that. Well, what happens is while you're projecting who you want to be... this gap opens up between who you want to be and who you really are. And in that gap, it shows you what's stopping you becoming who you want to be.

• 
  Holiday

I want to know why I'm working, The answer can't just be to pay bills and pile up more money. I want to know what it's all going to mean and you can't find that out sitting behind some desk in an office. I'm going to knock off for a while -- quit. I want to save part of my life for myself. There's a catch to it, though: It's got to be part of the young part. You know: retire young, work old -- come back and work when I know what I'm working for.

• 
  In A Better World

Sometimes it feels like there's a veil between you and death. But that veil disappears when you lose someone or someone who was close to you dies and you see death clearly for a second… But later the veil returns and you carry on living. Then things will be alright again.

• 
  Fanny & Alexander

My dear friends. I am more moved than I can say. My wisdom is simple. There are those who despise it, but I don't give a damn. Forgive me mama, I noticed you raised your right eyebrow. You think your son is talking too much. Don't worry. I will be brief. Therefore, and consequently, we Ekdahls have not come into the world to see through it. Never think that. We are not equipped for such excursions. We might just as well ignore the big things. We must live in a little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it. Suddenly death strikes. Suddenly the abyss opens. Suddenly the storm howls and disaster is upon us. All that we know! But let us not think of all the unpleasantness. We Ekdahls love our subterfuges. Rob a man of his subterfuges and he goes mad and begins lashing out. Damn it people must me intelligible. Otherwise we don't dare to love them or speak ill of them. We must be able to grasp the world and reality so we complain of their monotony with a clear conscience. Don't be sad dear splendid artists. Actors and actresses, we need you all the same. It is you who must give us our supernatural shivers, or better yet, our inner most diversions. The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all, us Ekdahls and everyone else. No one escapes, not even our children. So it shall be. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary, and not at all shameful, to take pleasure in the little world. Good food, gentle smiles, fruit trees in bloom, waltzes. My dearest friends I am done talking and you can take it as you like. The sentimental ramblings of an uneducated restaurateur or the pitiful babbling of an old man. I don't care. [picks up baby] I hold a little empress in my arms. It's tangible yet immeasurable. One day she will prove everything I just said wrong. One day she will not only rule the little world, but everything….everything.

• 
  Into the Wild

I want to tell you something. From bits and pieces of what you have told me about your family, your mother and your dad... And I know you have problems with the church too... But there is some kind of bigger thing that we can all appreciate and it sounds to me you don't mind calling it God. But when you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines through you.

Their fraudulent marriage and our father's denial of his other son was, for Chris, a murder of every day's truth. He felt his whole life turn, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow, suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris' sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence, as well.

And that an unshared happiness is not happiness...HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED. CALL EVERYTHING BY ITS RIGHT NAME. What if you saw me running into your arms...Would you see then...what I see now.

• 
  Network

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. (shouting) You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

• 
  Citizen Cane

A fellow can remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry. And as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in. And on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all. But I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I hadn't thought of that girl.

• 
  Hamlet

To be, or not to be: that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. To die, to sleep; No more; And by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to - 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub. For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come...

• 
  All The King's Men

They fooled you a thousand times like they fooled me. But this time, I'm going to fool somebody. I'm going to stay in this race. I'm on my own and I'm out for blood....

• 
  Streetcar Named Desire

A cultivated woman - a woman of breeding and intelligence - can enrich a man's life immeasurably. I have those things to offer, and time doesn't take them away. Physical beauty is passing - transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all those things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

• 
  Annie Hall

There's an old joke. Uhm, two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort. And one of 'em says: 'Boy, the food in this place is really terrible.' The other one says: 'Yeah, I know. And such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly... + I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her, and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and - but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs.

• 
  Apocalypse Now

I've seen the horror. Horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me... It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies...We'd left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't say. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms, and I remember, I...I...I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, 'My God, the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure!' And then I realized they were stronger than me because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men -- trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts who have families, who have children, who are filled with love - that they had the strength, the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill - without feeling, without passion, without judgment - without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us"); and Kurtz' final words before being ritualistically slaughtered by Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), as he was reading into a tape recorder in his quarters, faced sideways before the golden light of his inner sanctum: ("We train young men to drop fire on people but their commanders won't allow them to write 'FUCK' on their airplanes because it's obscene...The horror. The horror"

• 
  The Jerk

Well, I'm gonna go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff and I don't need you. I don't need anything -- except this, this ash tray, and that's the only thing I need is this! I don't need nothin' but this - just this ash tray, and this paddle game. The ash tray and the paddle game - and that's all I need, and this - the remote control. The ash tray, the paddle game and the remote control, that's all I need. And these matches. The ash tray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball. And this lamp. That's right. This paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too! I don't need one other thing. Not one - I need this - the paddle game and the chair and the remote control and the matches, for sure. Well, what are you looking at? What do you think I am, some kind of a jerk or something? And this. That's all I need. The ash tray, the remote control, and this paddle game, and this magazine and the chair...I don't need one other thing, except my dog (The dog growls) I don't need my dog.

• 
  The Muppet Movie

[Kermit talking to himself] I brought 'em all out here into the middle of nowhere. It's all my fault. Still... whether you promised them something or not, you gotta remember they wanted to come. But that's because they believed in me. No, they believed in the dream. Well, so do I, but-- You do? Yeah! Of course I do. Well then? Well, then...I guess I was wrong when I said I never promised anyone. I promised me.

• 
  The Empire Strikes Back

Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say? (Luke: "Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.") No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned. (Luke: "All right, I'll give it a try.") No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try. (Luke fails: "I can't. It's too big.") Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmph! And well you should not, for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere! Yes, even between the land and the ship. (Luke: "You want the impossible." (Yoda levitates the ship and sets it on dry land) Mmm. (Luke: "I don't, I don't believe it") That is why you fail.

• 
  Wallstreet

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed - for lack of a better word - is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind. And Greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

• 
  Dangerous Liaisons

When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew then that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest to me, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork onto the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelist to see what I could get away with, and in the end it all came down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

• 
  Accidental Tourist

The business traveler should bring only what fits in a carry-on bag. Checking your luggage is asking for trouble. Add several travel-size packets of detergent so you won't fall into the hands of unfamiliar laundries. There are very few necessities in this world which do not come in travel-size packets. One suit is plenty if you take along travel-size packets of spot remover. The suit should be medium-gray. Gray not only hides the dirt but is handy for sudden funerals. Always bring a book as protection against strangers. Magazines don't last and newspapers from elsewhere remind you you don't belong. But don't take more than one book. It is a common mistake to overestimate one's potential free time and consequently over-pack. In travel, as in most of life, less is invariably more. And most importantly, never take along anything on your journey so valuable or dear that its loss would devastate you.

• 
  Drugstore Cowboy

Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm itch that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion. It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the whole world sympathized and took on a soft, lofty appeal. Everything was grand then. Your worst enemy -- he wasn't so bad. The ants in the grass -- they were just, you know, doin' their thing. Everything took on the rosy hue of unlimited success. You could do no wrong, and as long as it lasted, life was beautiful.

• 
  Jacob's Ladder

The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul...So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearin' your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freein' you from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all. So don't worry, okay? 'K? Relax...relax. Relax.

• 
  JFK

Tennyson wrote, 'Authority forgets a dying king'. This was never more true than for John F. Kennedy, whose murder was probably one the most terrible moments in the history of our country. We, the people, the jury system sitting in judgment on Clay Shaw, represent the hope of humanity against government power. In discharging your duty, in bringing the first conviction in this house of cards against Clay Shaw, 'ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' Do not forget your dying king. Show this world that this is still a government 'of the people, for the people, and by the people'. Nothing as long as you live will ever be more important.

• 
  Philadelphia

She's saying how, during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house. And her mother died, saving her. 'I look... The place that cradled me is burning!' Do you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? Now, in come the strings, and it changes everything. The music - it fills with a hope, and it'll change again, listen. 'I bring sorrow to those who love me.' Oh, that single cello! 'It was during this sorrow that Love came to me.' A voice filled with harmony, that said: 'Live still, I am Life! Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am Oblivion. I am the god that comes down from the heavens to the Earth and makes of the Earth a Heaven. I am Love! I am Love!

• 
  Trainspotting

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a f--king big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchased in a range of f--king fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f--k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sittin' on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f--king junk food into your mouth. Choose rottin' away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, f--ked-up brats that you've spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life...But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers, all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person, but that's gonna change, I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing, and I'm cleanin' up and I'm movin' on, going straight and choosin' life. I'm lookin' forward to it already. I'm going to be just like you: the job, the family, the f--king big television, the washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electrical tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure-wear, luggage, three-piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing the gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

• 
  Good Will Hunting

So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, 'once more into the breach, dear friends.' But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, and watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of Hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sittin' up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause that only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius, Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my f--kin' life apart. You're an orphan, right? You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally, I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some f--kin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that, do you, sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

• 
  American Beauty

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time. For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout Camp, watching falling stars. (Gunshot) And yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street. (Gunshot) Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird. And Janie, and Janie. And Carolyn. I guess I could be really pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry… you will someday.

It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

• 
  Adaptation

Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat, I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time, like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more and prove myself. What if I learned Russian or something, or took up an instrument. I could speak Chinese. I would be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.

• 
  Beautiful Mind

Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional -- and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you [referring to his wife, Alicia]. You are the reason I am.

• 
  One Hour Photo

I process these photos as if they were my own...Family photos depict smiling faces. Births. Weddings. Holidays. Children's birthday parties. People take pictures of the happy moments in their lives. Someone looking through our photo album would conclude that we had led a joyous, leisurely existence, free of tragedy. Nobody ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget...I'm sure my customers never think about it, but these snapshots are their little stands against the flow of Time. The shutter's clicked, the flash goes off, and they've stopped Time, just for the blink of an eye. And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: 'I was here. I existed. I was young. I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture'...

• 
  Love Actually

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

• 
  Good Night, Good Luck

We will not walk in fear one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine. And remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak and to defend the causes that were, for the moment, unpopular...The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear -- he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. This might just do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse, a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous ideas. But the elaborate structure of networks, advertising agencies, and sponsors will not be shaken or altered. It is my desire if not my duty to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television, and if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it.

Our history will be what we make of it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks, they will there find, recorded in black and white and in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information - our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses, and recognize that television, in the main, is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture, too late.

• 
  There Will Be Blood

Are you an angry man, Henry?...Are you envious? Do you get envious?...I have a competition in me. I-I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.... There are times when I-I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money (so) I can get away from everyone... I see the worst in people, Henry. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built up my hatreds over the years, little by little. Having you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these, uhm, people. Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen. Because I'm smarter than you. I'm older...I'm not a false prophet, you sniveling boy! I am the Third Revelation! I am the Third Revelation! I told you I would eat you...I told you I would eat you up!

• 
  The Wrestler

You know, if you live hard and you play hard, and you burn the candle at both ends, you pay the price for it. You know, in this life you can lose everything that you love, everything that loves you. Now, I don't hear as good as I used to, and I forget stuff, and I ain't as pretty as I used to be. But goddamn it, I'm still standing here and I'm The Ram. You know, as time goes by, as time goes by, they say: "He's washed up. He's finished. He's a loser. He's all through." But you know what? The only one who are gonna tell me when I'm through doing my thing is you people here!

• 
  Glengarry Glen Ross

That's the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time. When you die you're going to regret the things you don't do. You think you're queer? I'm going to tell you something: we're all queer. You think you're a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You cheat on your wife? You did it, live with it. You fuck little girls, so be it. There's an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won't live in it. That's me.

• 
  Se7en

On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a conversation. He made small talk, a lonely man talking about the weather and other things. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating, but my head hurt from his banality. I almost didn't notice it had happened, but I suddenly threw up all over him. He was not pleased, and I couldn't stop laughing.

• 
  Taxi Driver

I think you're a lonely person. I drive by this place a lot and I see you here. I see a lot of people around you. And I see all these phones and all this stuff on your desk. It means nothing. Then when I came inside and I met you, I saw in your eyes and I saw the way you carried yourself that you're not a happy person. And I think you need something. And if you want to call it a friend, you can call it a friend.

• 
  Fight Club

Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler.

• 
  Requiem for a Dream

I'm somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they'll all like me. I'll tell them about you, and your father, how good he was to us. Remember? It's a reason to get up in the morning. It's a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It's a reason to smile. It makes tomorrow all right. What have I got Harry, hm? Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I'm alone. Your father's gone, you're gone. I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I'm lonely. I'm old.

• 
  Magnolia

This is the regret that you make. This is the... regret that you make and the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something. Gimme a cigarette. Know that you should do better. I loved Lily. I cheated on her. She was my wife for twenty-three years. And I have a son. And she has cancer. And I'm not there, and he's forced to take care of her. He's fourteen years old. To... to take care of his mother... and watch her die on him. A little kid, and I'm not there. And she does die. I loved her so. And she knew what I did. She knew all the fucking stupid things I'd done. But the love... was stronger than anything you can think of. The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret! Oh, and I'll die. Now I'll die, and I'll tell you what... the biggest regret of my life... I let my love go. What did I do? I'm sixty-five years old. And I'm ashamed. A million years ago... the fucking regret and guilt, these things, don't ever let anyone ever say to you you shouldn't regret anything. Don't do that. Don't! You regret what you fucking want! Use that. Use that. Use that regret for anything, any way you want. You can use it, OK? Oh, God. This is a long way to go with no punch. A little moral story, I say... Love. Love. Love. This fucking life... oh, it's so fucking hard. So long. Life ain't short, it's long. It's long, goddamn it. Goddamn. What did I do?

• 
  Synecdoche, New York

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.

• 
  Punch Drunk Love

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I left you at the hospital. I called a phone-sex line... I called a phone-sex line before I met you, and four blond brothers came after me and they hurt you, and I'm sorry. Then I had to leave again because I wanted to make sure you never got hurt again. And I have a lot of puddings, and in six to eight weeks it can be redeemed. So if you could just give me that much time, I think I can get enough mileage to go with you wherever you go if you have to travel for your work. Because I don't ever want to be anywhere without you. So could you just let me redeem the mileage?

• 
  Unbreaklable

Now that we know who you are... I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense. In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero, and most time's they're friends, like you and me. I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr. Glass.

• 
  Through a Glass Darkly

We draw a magic circle and shut out everything that doesn't agree with our secret games. Each time life breaks the circle, the games turn grey and ridiculous. Then we draw a new circle and build a new defense.

I don't know if love proves God's existence, or love is God Himself. [son responds: Father spoke to me]

• 
  A Single Man

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

• 
  Notes on a Scandal

People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it's like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

• 
  V for Vendetta

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

• 
  Harold and Maude

Vice, Virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much *life.* Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live life fully.

• 
  Wings of Desire

It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. I'd like, at each step, each gust of wind, to be able to say "Now." Now and now" and no longer "forever" and "for eternity." To sit at an empty place at a card table and be greeted, even by a nod. Every time we participated, it was a pretense. Wrestling with one, allowing a hip to be put out in pretense, catching a fish in pretense, in pretense sitting at tables, drinking and eating in pretense. Having lambs roasted and wine served in the tents out there in the desert, only in pretense. No, I don't have to beget a child or plant a tree but it would be rather nice coming home after a long day to feed the cat, like Philip Marlowe, to have a fever and blackended fingers from the newspaper, to be excited not only by the mind but, at last, by a meal, by the line of a neck by an ear. To lie! Through one's teeth. As you're walking, to feel your bones moving along. At last to guess, instead of always knowing. To be able to say "ah" and "oh" and "hey" instead of "yea" and "amen." Cassiel: Yeah, to be able, once in a while, to enthuse for evil. To draw all the demons of the earth from passers-by and to chase them out into the world. To be a savage.

Now it's serious. At last it's becoming serious. So I've grown older. Was I the only one who wasn't serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I'm finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I'm at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don't know if there's destiny but there's a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town - the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We're representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone's game. I am ready. Now it's your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There's no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it's you.

• 
  Six Degrees of Separation

And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you'll tell for years to come: "Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house." "Oh! Tell the one about that boy." And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we're doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?

• 
  The Virgin Suicides

We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.