“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.”

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.”

“Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.”

“Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”

“The past can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

“Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.”

“Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.”

“My mother said I broke her heart...but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us...but within that inch we are free.”

“All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.”

“Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”

“I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. we must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.”

“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.”

“Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”

“None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.”

“No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.”

“God is in the rain.”

“Love your rage, not your cage.”

“They say that life's a game, & then they take the board away.”

“The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But, that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside.”

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.”

“Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”

“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”

“It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one.”

“There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.”

“We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.”

“So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.”

“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”

“Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.”

“But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”

“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”

“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”

“Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”

“Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.”

“There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.”

“The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.”

“In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.”

“Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.”

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.”

“Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that.”

“You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it.”

“We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.”

“I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.”

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

“Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.”

“As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.”

“Everybody has their story to tell.”