• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  • "I read something in National Geographic about how, when an animal thinks it's going to die, it gets panicky and starts to act crazy. But when it knows it's going to die, it gets very very calm."
  • " Finally, I found the pictures of the falling body. I ripped the pages out of the book. I reversed the pages...When I flipped through them, it looked like the man was floating up through the sky. And if I had more pictures he would have flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured into the hole that the plane was about to come out of. We would have been safe"
  • "...is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."
  • 'Do you have any coffee?'...'It stunts my growth, and I'm afraid of death.'"
  • "Well, what I don’t get is why do we exist? I don’t mean how, but why.” I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, “We exist because we exist.” “What the?” “We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened."
  • "The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless."
  • "I should have drowned us there in the room, ended our suffering, they would have found us floating face-down in two thousand white pages, or buried under the salt of my evaporated tears…"
  • "We go on killing each other to no purpose! It is war waged by humanity against humanity, and it will only end when there’s no one left to fight."
  • "I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What’s so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What’s so great about feeling and dreaming?"
  • "That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore."
  • "Everything that’s born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they’re all on fire, and we’re all trapped. "
  • "I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we’ll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What’s real? What isn’t real? Maybe those aren’t the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on? I wish I had made things for life to depend on. What if you never stop inventing? Maybe you’re not inventing at all."
• Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger
  • "Life itself is only a vision. A dream. Nothing exists, save empty space and you. And you... are but a thought."
  • "Never mind them. People are of no value. We could make more sometime... if we need them."
  • "I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is."
• Signs
  • "People break down into two groups when they experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in Group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn't fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there's a whole lot of people in the Group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"
• Nosferatu
  • "Time is an abyss. Profound as a thousand nights... Centuries come and go... To be unable to grow old is terrible."
  • "Death is not the worst... There are things more horrible than death. Can you imagine... Enduring centuries... experiencing each day with the same futile things."
• V for Vendetta
  • "Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot... But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."
• Donnie Darko
  • First of all, Papa Smurf didn't create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel's evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village, but the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gang-bang scenario, it just couldn't happen. Smurfs are asexual. They don't even have reproductive organs under those little white pants. That's what's so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What's the point of living if you don't have a dick?
  • "Why are you wearing that stupid rabbit suit?"

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

• Girl, Interrupted
  • "Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is... Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends and by the '70s most of them were out living lives. Some I've seen, some never again, but there isn't a day my heart doesn't find them."
• Charles Bukowski
  • "You’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is."
• Trainspotting
  • "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers..... Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life..... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • "If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days. "
  • "So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state."
• Conor Oberst
  • "He says death will give us back to god, just like the setting sun, is returned to the lonesome ocean."

"I'm happy just because, I found out I am really no one."

• "And so I hope I don't sound too ungrateful

What history gave modern man A telephone to talk to strangers Machine guns and a camera lens"

• "So there was this woman and she was on an airplane and she’s flying to meet her fiancé sailing high above the largest ocean on planet earth and she was seated next to this man who, you know, she had tried to start a conversation with, but really the only thing she heard him say was to order his bloody mary.

And she’s sitting there and she’s reading this really arduous magazine article about this third world country that she couldn’t even pronounce the name of and she’s feeling very bored and very despondent and then, uh, suddenly there’s this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out and they started just falling thirty thousand feet. And the pilot’s on the microphone and he’s saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Oh My God, I’m Sorry” and apologizing and she looks at the man and she says, “Where are we going?” and he looks at her and he says, “We’re going to a party, it’s a birthday party. It’s your birthday party, happy birthday darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much”

• "Tracy, I'm going to kill your baby"

"I don't have a baby" "Yeah you do, that's why you're eating all the time"

• "When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis"
• “Postmodernism is a term created by rich, whiny, new age kids who want to justify their crappy, BS filled artwork to feel better about themselves, and to make it seem like they’re doing something useful, which, I might add, they’re not.”
• "We are latently enslaved by our own ingenuity and we have unknowingly constructed a simulated world. As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now."
• "Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”