"The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by aranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possible use... without committing suicide."

Julian Osborne (Fred Astaire) in the film On the Beach [1:27]

"Think of the rivers of blood, spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters... of a fraction of a dot."

Carl Sagan

"A ruthless, cynical, hated publisher is killed in a plane crash, and his ghost must wander restlessly unless someone sheds a tear for him."

Plot description of the film The Scoundrel (1935)

"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world -- and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are."

Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, as quoted in the film Joy Division

"Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."

Philip K. Dick

"The darkest souls are not those which choose to exist within the hell of the abyss, but those which choose to break free from the abyss and move silently among us."

Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) in Halloween

"You cannot imagine
The unbearable finality of it
And in that one moment
I took everything that was dear to me
And transformed it
Into nothing more
Than a memory."

Nick Nolte in Hulk

   "I won't help you," Thomas said calmly. "Leave my house."
   Boone drew his automatic, but kept it flat on his right leg. "You don't really have a choice, Thomas. I just need you to accept that fact."
   "I have the freedom to say no."
   Boone sighed like a parent with a stubborn child. "Freedom is the biggest myth ever created. It's a destructive, unachievable goal that has caused a great deal of pain. Very few people can handle freedom. A society is healthy and productive when it's under control."
   "And you think that's going to happen?"
   "A new age is on its way. We're approaching a time where we will have the technology necessary to monitor and supervise vast numbers of people. In the industrial nations, the structure is already in place."
   "And you'll be in control?"
   "Oh, I'll be watched, too. Everyone will be watched. It's a very democratic system. And it's inevitable, Thomas. There's no way it can be stopped. Your sacrifice for some Harlequin is completely meaningless."
   "You're welcome to your opinion, but I will decide what gives meaning to my life."
   "You're going to help me, Thomas. There's no negotiation here. No compromise. You need to deal with the reality of the situation."
   Thomas shook his head sympathetically. "No, my friend. It's you who are out of touch with reality. You look at me and see an overweight Crow Indian with a broken garbage disposal and no money. And you think: 'Ahhh, he's just an ordinary man.' But I'm telling you that ordinary men and women will see what you're doing. And we will stand up, rip open the door, and leave your electronic cage."
   Thomas got out of the chair, stepped off the porch, and headed for the driveway. Boone swiveled around on the bench. Holding the automatic with two hands, he blew away his enemy's right kneecap. Thomas collapsed, rolled onto his back, and stopped moving.
   Still holding the gun, Boone walked over to the body. Thomas was conscious, but breathing quickly. His leg was almost severed from the knee down and dark red blood pulsed from the cut artery. As Thomas began to go into shock, he looked up at Booke and spoke slowly. "I'm not frightened of you . . ."
   An intense anger overcame Boone. He pointed his gun at Thomas's forehead as if he wanted to destroy all the other man's thoughts and memories, then his finger squeezed the trigger.
   The second gunshot semed unbearably loud, the sound waves expanding out into the world.

John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler, pp. 227-229

"In the end,
we will remember
not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends."

Martin Luther King, Jr., as quoted in One Week in April

"All men dream... but not equally.
Those who dream by night,
in the dusty recesses of their minds,
wake in the day,
to find that it was vanity.

But, the dreamers of the day,
are dangerous men.
For they may act their dream
with open eyes
to make it possible.

This... I did."

Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia

"This feeling of loss is so great that the very life in me has drained away, and sickness has overcome me. I long to find some means of reversing the passage of time and undo that decision that has cost me so dearly."

Taken from an MTV commercial in the 80s

[If you know the origin of this quote, please leave a comment! There's some information about it here.]

"You mourn, for it is proper to mourn.
But your grief serves you; you do not
become a slave to grief.

You bid the dead farewell,
and you continue."

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake; "Exiles"

"He read on. Line after line. Page after page. Not a discrepancy. What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.

Then his mind's eye looked up and caught his own image and realized where he was and what he was seeing and . . . I don't know what really happened . . . but now the slippage that Phaedrus had felt earlier, the internal parting of his mind, suddenly gathered momentum, as do the rocks at the top of a mountain. Before he could stop it, the sudden accumulated mass of awareness began to grow and grow into an avalanche of thought and awareness out of control; with each additional growth of the downward tearing mass loosening hundreds of times its volume, and then that mass uprooting hundreds of times it volume more, and then hundreds of times that; on and on, wider and broader; until there was nothing left to stand.

No more anything.

It all gave way from under him."

Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I know the end before the story's been told.
It's not that complicated, but you're gonna need a bullet proof soul

Sade's Bullet Proof Soul

Look at all you lucky people, look of all the things you do
Look at all you happy people, wish I could be like you.
Look at all your smiling faces, think of all the things you've done
Look at all you happy people, and I've lost my only one.

Chris Isaak's Go Walking Down There

"My mother was terrified of any secular influences entering our lives. My father is illiterate and every day my mother used to read to us from the King James Bible and only six books were allowed in the house. The Bible was one, and the other five were books about the Bible.

Although in our house books weren't allowed, because I had a job on the market stool I began to buy books with the money that I was earning and smuggle them in secretly and hide them under the bed. Now anybody with a single bed, standard size, and a collection of paperbacks, standard size, will know that 77 per layer can be accommodated under the mattress. And this is what I did. And over time, my bed began to rise visibly. And it was rather like The Princess & The Pea.

And one night when I was sleeping closer to the ceiling than to the floor, my mother came in, because she had a suspicious nature. And she saw a corner of the book poking out from under the counter pen. And she tugged at it, and this was a disastrous choice, because it was by D.H. Lawrence and it was WOMEN IN LOVE. She knew that Lawrence was a Satanist and a pornographer, because my mother was an intelligent woman. She had simply barricaded books out of her life, and they had to be barricaded out of our lives. And when challenged with her defense, she always used to say, "Well, the trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it until it's too late." How true.

The books came tumbling down and me on the top of them onto the floor. Mrs. Winterson gathered up the piles of books, and she threw them out of my bedroom window and into the back yard. And then she went and got the paraffin stove, emptied the contents onto the pile of books and set fire to them.

And I learned then that whatever is on the outside can be taken away. Whatever it is that you think of as precious can be destroyed by somebody else. That none of it is safe. That there is always a moment when the things that we love, the things where we put our trust can be taken away, unless they're on the inside. And that's why I still memorize text, because if it's on the inside, they can't take it away from you, because nobody knows what's there."

Jeanette Winterson, as featured on Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason

Last night I felt
Real arms around me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm

The Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

"I never feel like I've done enough, because I'm alive."

Mary Gordon, author, on Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason

Pride can stand a thousand trials,
The strong will never fall
But watching stars without you,
My soul cried.

Des'ree's Kissing You

I am the blues
I am the blues
The whole world knows
I've been mistreated and misused

I'm the moans of suffering women
I'm the groans of dying men
I'm the last one to the start
And the first one to the end

I'm a thousand generations
Of poverty and starvation
I'm the dog
Of the United Nations
I am the blues
I am the blues

I'm the last one hired
And I'm the first one fired
I'm the only man
That has never been satisfied
I am the blues
I am the blues

Willie Dixon's I Am the Blues

The era of procrastination, of half-measures of soothing and baffling expedients of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

Winston Churchill, as quoted in An Inconvenient Truth

You don't want to hurt me,
But see how deep the bullet lies.
Unaware I'm tearing you asunder.
Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts.

Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill

I am no longer bound to this mortal coil;
I have become a creature of the night:
A vampire.

Spike (James Marsters), in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode "Lies My Parents Told Me"

"Out to sea.
Out to sea.
And in the weightlessness of the deep,
where dreams are fulfilled,
Two wills come together to fulfill a wish,
Your gaze and my gaze
like an echo repeating wordlessly,
Farther out, farther out,
Beyond the other side of everything,
through blood and bones.
But I always wake up
and I always want to be dead,
Your hair forever caressing my lips."

Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) in The Sea Inside