This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like...
That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fiel...
Ignorance. It claws, tears, and eventually destroys the threads that hold humanity together. These people all around me saying not this, not that… Their tongues untied with the rudeness they fear not to speak To those they know nothing of, nothing ...
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A ...
Oskar Schindler: They won't soon forget the name "Oskar Schindler" around here. "Oskar Schindler," they'll say, "everybody remembers him. He did something extraordinary. He did what no one else did. He came with nothing, a suitcase, and built a bankr...
Ace Rothstein: [voice-over] In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pi...
Maximus: Ancestors, I ask you for your guidance. Blessed mother, come to me with the Gods' desire for my future. Blessed father, watch over my wife and son with a ready sword. Whisper to them that I live only to hold them again, for all else is dust ...
Ariadne: Why are they all looking at me? Cobb: Because my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections start to converge on you. Ariadne: Converge? Cobb: It's the foreign nature ...
Young journalist: Everything you say is contradictory. You can't have been in one place and another at the same time. Of all those lives, which one is the right one? Nemo Nobody aged 118: Each of these lives is the right one! Every path is the right ...
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille: You want to make this leather smell good, don't you? Giuseppe Baldini: Why of course, and so it shall. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille: With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier? Giuseppe Baldini: What ever gave you the absurd idea I would...
Rosemary Woodhouse: [crying] I *won't* have an abortion! Joan Jellico, Rosemary's Girlfriend: But nobody's telling you to have an abortion! Elise Dunstan: Rosie, a pain like that is a clear sign that something is not right. We just want you to get an...
Alan Shepard: [during enema continence test] Tell me something, Mr. Gonzalez. You ever have any explosions doing this? Gonzalez: All the time. It's a mess. Alan Shepard: Tell me something else, Mr. Gonzalez. How am I doing? Gonzalez: I think you're g...
[last lines] Norma Desmond: [to newsreel camera] And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and...
Celine: I've been thinking also about something you said. Jesse: What's that? Celine: Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come through over time. Everybody says they have been the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander The Great. I ...
Cecilia Shepard: Someone else is here. Bryan Hartnell: It is a public park. Cecilia Shepard: I think he's watching us. Bryan Hartnell: Well, we're very good looking. Cecilia Shepard: Where'd he go? He went behind that tree. Bryan Hartnell: All right,...
Addison DeWitt: [voiceover] Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. M...
Ben Bradlee: Look, McGovern's dropped to nothing, Nixon's guaranteed the renomination, the Post is stuck with a story no one else wants, it'll sink the goddamn paper. Everyone says, "Get off it, Ben", and I come on very sage and I say, uh, "Well, you...
People who do not love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can not love...
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of li...
The most important thing is not to work on things that other people are working on because otherwise all you'll do is get the same result as everybody else and you won't make any discoveries, you'll just confirm what's already known. David Jewitt (27...
In her dream each of the people assembled around her looked like several others, whom she recognized, only they weren't gradually transformed from one into the other but each of them seemed to be inside the others simultaneously and one of them shone...
