“A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?”

“In order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely and purely without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions we shall ever take.”

“Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you...Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations.”

“I live my life free of compromise, and step into the shadows without complaint or regret.”

“With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty”

“How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?”

“To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself.”

“Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.”

“It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?”

“There, did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea.

“Who imprisoned me here? Who keeps me here? Who can release me? Who's controlling and constraining my life except...me?”

“I think that storytelling and creation are very close to what the center of what magic is about. I think not just for me, but for most of the cultures that have had a concept of magic, then the manipulation of language, and words, and thus of stories and fictions, has been very close to the center of it all.”

“Never despair. Never surrender.”

“Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”

“The world's a stage, & everything else is Vaudeville.”

“American love — like coke in green glass bottles...they don't make it anymore.”

“The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.”

“Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.”

“I'm the king of the 20th century. I'm the boogeyman, the villian, the black sheep of the family.”

“Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.”

“I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.”

“Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.”

“There is no coincidence. Only the illusion of coincidence.”

“While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.”

“I love you, but why must you love the law? 'Tis plain for all to see that she's a whore...that virtuous persons have no need to woo; that villains screw, then studiously ignore.”

“Nothing is insoluble. Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life.”

“Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”

“Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.”

“Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful.”

“The one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.”

“We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.”

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

“If light is outlawed, then only outlaws will be able to see where they're going.”

“Me? I'm the king of the twentieth century. I'm the bogeyman. The villain...The black sheep of the family.”

“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.”

“Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?”

“They say we have we created the man to end all wars; I say we have created a man to end all worlds.”

“A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?”

“The dusk reeks of fornication and bad consciences.”

“Once a man has seen society's black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend, like you do, that it doesn't exist.”