text:
Pay It Forward

Pay It Forward is a 2000 film about a young boy attempting to make the world a better place after his teacher gives him that chance.
 * Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Leslie Dixon, based on the novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

When someone does you a big favor, don't pay it back... PAY IT FORWARD taglines

Trevor McKinney

 * But I...I guess it's hard a hard for some people who are so used to things the way they are, even if they're bad, to change, 'cause I guess they kinda give up. And when they do, everybody kinda loses.

Arlene McKinney

 * [to Trevor], so I'm just gonna tell you the truth. [A beat.] I have a problem. [A beat.] I have a really bad problem. I gotta stop. [A beat.]

Dialogue

 * [Thorsen gives Chris Chandler the keys to his car.]
 * Chris Chandler: You want me to drive home in your car?
 * Thorsen: No, I want you to take my car. Had a lot of luck lately. I don't need it.
 * Chris Chandler: You're giving me a brand new Jaguar, and you don't want anything?
 * Thorsen: I can prove it. Give me your card.
 * [Chris gives Thorsen a business card.]
 * Thorsen: I'll be in touch.
 * Chris Chandler: Whoa, what is this? What, you want me to kill your wife or something?
 * Thorsen: No. Tempting, but no. Call it generosity between two strangers.

 * Eugene Simonet: Apparently, none of you have ever seen a new teacher before. [A beat.] I'm Mr. Simonet. Welcome to the seventh grade.  Middle school.  That hellish, shaky bridge you all must cross before you become members of that undyingly enviable high school elite.  Now, some of you might think you can't get across this bridge fast enough.  That you'd rather hold your breath, close your eyes, and not think about anything until it's all over.  Well, I'm here to tell you that that is not an option in this class.
 * [A student arrives late to class, and the students laugh.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Lateness. Tardiness.  To be late for your first class on your first day of school.  What does that indicate?
 * Late student: I'm having a bad hair day.
 * [The students laugh.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Perhaps what it indicates is a lack of respect. You see, I'm going to be here everyday for you, and so I expect you to be here for me.  On time.  No excuses. [to a student taking something out] Put that down.
 * Another student: [whispering] Wait.
 * [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Now. [A beat.] This class is social studies.  That is you and the world.  Yes, there is a world out there and even if you decide you don't want to meet it, it's still going to hit you right in the face. [A beat.] Believe me.  So, best you start thinking about the world now and what it means to you. [A beat.] What does the world mean to you? [A beat.] Come on!  A little class participation here.  Is it just this class you wanna get out of?  Your house?  Your street?  Any further any one of you wanna go than that? [A girl raises her hand.] Yes?
 * Girl: The mall. That's only like two miles away from me.
 * [The class laughs.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, let me ask you another question. How often do you think about things that happen outside of this town?  You watch the news?  Yes?  No?  All right, so, we're not global thinkers yet, but why aren't we? [He points to Trevor McKinney.]
 * Trevor McKinney: 'Cause we're 11.
 * Eugene Simonet: Good point. What's your name?
 * Trevor McKinney: Trevor.
 * Eugene Simonet: [to the class] Maybe Trevor's absolutely right. Why should we think about the world?  I mean, after all, what does the world expect of us? [He looks at Trevor for an answer.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Expect?
 * Eugene Simonet: Mm-hm. Of you.  What does the world expect of you? [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Nothing. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Nothing. [to the class] My God, boys and girls, he's absolutely right. Nothing.  I mean, here you are.  You can't drive.  You can't vote.  You can't even go to the bathroom without a pass from me.  You're stuck.  Right here in the seventh grade. [A beat.] But not forever because one day, you'll be free. [The class cheers.] All right, but what if on that day you're free, you haven't prepared, you're not ready, and then, you look around you, and you don't like what the world is?  What if the world is just a big disappointment?
 * Boy: We're screwed.
 * [The class laughs.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Unless . . . unless you take the things that you don't like about this world, and you flip them upside down right on their ass. Don't tell you parents I used that word. [The class laughs.] And you can start that today. [He pulls up the screen and reveals the assignment written on the blackboard behind it, which says, "Think of an idea to change our world - and put it into ACTION".] This is your assignment.  Extra credit.  It goes on all year long. [The students grumble.]
 * Student: Oh, man....
 * Eugene Simonet: Now, wait a minute. What, what, what's wrong with this?  What's the matter? [The girl from earlier raises her hand, and Eugene points to her.] Yes?
 * Girl: It's like so . ..
 * Eugene Simonet: So what? There must be a word to finish that sentence.  Someone help her.
 * Another girl: "Weird".
 * Eugene Simonet: "Weird".
 * Another student: "Crazy".
 * Eugene Simonet: "Crazy".
 * Different girl: "Hard".
 * Another boy: "Bummer".
 * Eugene Simonet: "Bummer". "Hard".  How about "possible"? [A beat.] It's possible. [A beat.] The realm of possibility exists where?  In each of you? [A beat.  He points to his head.] Here. [A beat.] So, you can do it. [A beat.] You can surprise us.  It's up to you.  Or, you can just sit back and let it atrophy. [A student looks at Eugene uncertainly, and Eugene sees this.] Atrophy. If there is a word you hear that you don't understand, there's a dictionary at the front of the room.  Look it up. [He starts passing out another pile of dictionaries to the class.] And there are these dictionaries, which you will carry with you at all times because in this class, we're going to learn to love words and their meanings.  Any questions?
 * Trevor McKinney: Yeah. So, you'll like you'll flunk us if we don't change the world? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, no, I wouldn't do that. [A beat.] But you might just squeak by with a C. [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: What'd you ever do to change the world?
 * Class: Whoa! [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, Trevor, I get a good night's sleep. I eat a hearty breakfast.  I show up. [He looks to the late student.] On time.  And then I pass the buck to you.

 * Arlene McKinney: Sit down, I want to talk to you.
 * Trevor McKinney: You want to lie to me.

 * Arlene McKinney: Mr. Simonet?
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes, I'm Eugene . ..
 * [He turns around and sees Arlene.]
 * Eugene Simonet: . . . uh, Simonet. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Hello.
 * Eugene Simonet: Hello. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: What is this assignment?
 * Eugene Simonet: 'Scuse me?
 * Arlene McKinney: What did you tell my son to make him bring a homeless man into my house? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Uh, I have two problems. One, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and two, I don't know who you are.
 * Arlene McKinney: Arlene McKinney. My boy is in your social studies class.  Trevor.
 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor. He's very attentive.  He's very, uh, exigent, which I like. [A beat.  He notices some confusion on Arlene's face.] Exigent.  It's challenging, testing -
 * Arlene McKinney: I know what it means. Would you like to tell me why my kid brought a bum into my house?
 * Eugene Simonet: I have no idea.
 * Arlene McKinney: Bullshit.
 * Eugene Simonet: Mrs. McKinney, I don't know how your son interpreted the assignment.
 * Arlene McKinney: How do you think he interpreted it? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, I don't know. My suggestion to you is if you wanna know, why don't you go home and talk to your son?
 * Arlene McKinney: Hey! I talked to him.
 * Eugene Simonet: Really? Then, why did you come all the way down here to ask me what the assignment is? [A beat.  He points to the board.] It's not a state secret. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Yeah? And? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: It's an assignment I give out at the beginning of every year to inspire. I don't expect them to actually change the world.
 * Arlene McKinney: You don't expect them to change the -
 * Eugene Simonet: Excuse me. It's to get them to think, not walk on water.  It's a very good assignment.
 * Arlene McKinney: You give them an assignment you don't think they can do? What kinda teacher are you?
 * Eugene Simonet: I didn't say that. You know, they make attempts.  Every now and then, they clean up a little graffiti before they lose interest -
 * Arlene McKinney: Hey! This is my kid.  You don't know him. [A beat.] You tell him he can do something, and he's gonna believe you.  And when he can't, it's gonna wipe him out.  They oughta fire your ass outta here right now.
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, they probably won't do that because I fill a very excellent quota. I'm just this side of parking in the blue zone.
 * Arlene McKinney: Oh, so you think you can do whatever you want just 'cause your face is messed up? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Mrs. McKinney, why don't you put down in writing your little and loud complaints, and I'll make sure they get put in the suggestion box. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Jesus. You are really somethin'.
 * Eugene Simonet: Thanks. I appreciate the euphemism.  I always wanted to be somethin'.

 * Jerry: You ever been on the street? [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: My mom took us pretty close.
 * Jerry: Well, you can't know. Not until you're looking at a dumpster.  But when you climb into that thing for the first time, and you pull those newspapers over you, that's when you know that you've messed your life up.  Somebody comes along like your son and gives me a leg up, I'll take it.  Even from a kid, I'll take it.

 * Sean: I'm gonna put up this website in Chinese. It's gonna tell all the kids in China to jump up and down at the same time. [A beat.  He heads back to his seat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: [to Sean] The goal being to knock the earth off its axis?
 * Sean: Yeah.
 * Eugene Simonet: Thank you. Sit down, Sean. [Sean sits down, and the class laughs.  Eugene addresses the class.] Well, you're ideas are as surprising as they are variegated.  Add this to your list of words to look up this evening.  But, I wanna focus one moment on one project we heard today. [A beat.] Because I've been teaching for many years, and it really is the first new idea that also requires an extreme active faith in the goodness of people.  Trevor has made an attempt to interact with the world, and that was the assignment.  And if I were an effusive person, given to easy praise, I would call that admirable.

 * Trevor McKinney: Were you just being nice?
 * Eugene Simonet: About what?
 * Trevor McKinney: About my idea. Do you think it's good, or were you just being teachery?
 * Eugene Simonet: "Teachery"?
 * Trevor McKinney: Bullshitting.
 * Eugene Simonet: Do I strike you as someone falsely nice?
 * Trevor McKinney: No. You're not even really all that nice.
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, it was a slip-up, and it will not happen again.

 * Eugene Simonet: Okay. You know, I'm gonna have to consult my spirit guides here, because you tell me that Trevor is withholding from you, but you won't tell me anything specific, and you still want me to sit here and divine why.
 * Arlene McKinney: "Divine why"? You always talk like that?
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes.
 * Arlene McKinney: You go to some big, fancy school?
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes.
 * Arlene McKinney: Think you could stop rubbing my nose in it?

 * Arlene McKinney: I gotta take a shower.
 * Trevor McKinney: No. What?
 * Arlene McKinney: I smell horrible.
 * Trevor McKinney: No you don't. No, you smell good.  You smell like, uh, roses or something.
 * Arlene McKinney: Let me just wash under my arms really quick -
 * [Trevor puts deodorant under Arlene's arms for her.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Are you sure?
 * Trevor McKinney: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure.

 * Thorsen: I thanked him and there were some very specific orifices in which I was told to shove my thanks. He told me, "Just pay it forward." Three big favors for three other people. That's it.
 * Chris Chandler: So it's like a pass-it-on thing, then. Wait a minute. You and this lowlife are in this chain of do-gooders, some kind of Mother Theresa conga line? That's a little New-Agey for you, isn't it? Sort of Tibetan? What, are you in a cult?
 * Thorsen: If you mention my name, you'll be selling your kidneys to pay for your lawsuit. Cult.
 * Chris Chandler: Hey, the guy. What was the guy's name?
 * Thorsen: [as he's walking away] Sorry, I'm late for my mass wedding.

 * Arlene McKinney: Do you look down on me?
 * Eugene Simonet: What?
 * Arlene McKinney: Do you look down on me?
 * Eugene Simonet: No.
 * Arlene McKinney: 'Cause I don't talk like you. I haven't read the stuff you read.
 * Eugene Simonet: What are you talking about? That's not pertinent, and you know it.
 * Arlene McKinney: Don't talk to me like that!
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, I'm sorry, but that's the way I talk, you know. Words are all I have.
 * Arlene McKinney: Why? Why?  'Cause you think you look like shit?  Is that it?  I don't care about your burns, Eugene, if that's even what they are.  Is that what they are?
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes.
 * Arlene McKinney: Okay, well, whatever happened to you, you look good to me. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: You look good to me, too.
 * Arlene McKinney: Okay. So? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: So, I've never been here before. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Okay. So, you're scared.  I'm scared, too.  Listen.  Bad things have happened to me, okay?  I can't take my shirt off with a guy without five beers in me, but I want that with you.  More than I'm scared, I want that.
 * [Eugene walks away from Arlene and turns to try saying something to her. He then turns off the music on his stereo.  A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: You don't see me. [A beat.] All right? My life . . . my life is familiar.  My life is . . . it's manageable.  It's manageable.  Everyday . . . I have a thing I do everyday.  It's all I've ever known.  And it's a routine and as long as I have that, as long as I have that, I'm okay.  I'm okay.  If I don't have it, I'm lost.
 * Arlene McKinney: So, is that all you want? Your goddamn manageable day?
 * Eugene Simonet: It's what I have.
 * Arlene McKinney: No, it isn't.
 * Eugene Simonet: It is what I've always had.
 * Arlene McKinney: Is it what you want?
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes, it's what I want!
 * Arlene McKinney: I don't believe you.
 * [She tries kissing Eugene, but he rejects her advances. A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Okay. If that's the best I got.
 * [She starts leaving.]
 * Eugene Simonet: It's not about you.
 * Arlene McKinney: Yes, it is! Something's been offered to you here, and you don't want it!  Maybe you're scared to get rejected.  Well, I can't reject you!  You're too quick for me!

 * Trevor McKinney: Is the world just shit? [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: No, it isn't. [A beat.] Hey, you did good work. Look at me.  I'm proud of you, Trevor.  I'm proud of you. [A beat.] And anyway, for what it's worth, I'm grading you on the effort, not the result.
 * Trevor McKinney: I don't care about the grade. [He gets up. A beat.] I just wanted to see if the world would really change.

 * [Eugene Simonet, having just spent the night with Arlene McKinney, goes to the bathroom, only to accidentally walk in on Trevor McKinney flushing the toilet. Eugene gasps.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor!
 * Trevor McKinney: It worked!
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, God!
 * [He runs back to the bedroom, closing the door, but Trevor listens behind the door. Inside the room, Arlene McKinney and Eugene are getting their clothes on.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Does he always get up this early?
 * Arlene McKinney: What?
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh my God! This is not good.  He just saw me.
 * Arlene McKinney: It's okay.
 * Eugene Simonet: It's not. I'm his teacher.
 * Trevor McKinney: Now, you have to pay it forward, too! Eugene?
 * [Eugene gets his stuff. A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: I think you should still call me Mr. Simonet.
 * [He gets his stuff and heads to the door, Arlene walking behind.]
 * Trevor McKinney: You had a sleepover, didn't you?
 * Eugene Simonet: Why don't you go back to bed?
 * Trevor McKinney: Why?
 * Eugene Simonet: It's too early for you to be up, and I've got to get to school anyway.
 * Trevor McKinney: No, it's not. It's no early.  No, it's a Sunday.
 * Eugene Simonet: It's a Sunday?
 * Trevor McKinney: Yeah.
 * Eugene Simonet: [to Arlene McKinney] It's a Sunday?
 * Arlene McKinney: It's a Sunday.
 * Trevor McKinney: So, stay. So, stay.  My mom will make you breakfast.  She makes great eggs.
 * Eugene Simonet: No, I can't. You don't understand.  I have a whole schedule that you don't know about.  And I do it every Sunday, and now, it's all gone cuckoo-ey.
 * Trevor McKinney: Well, all right. We'll bring everything here.  Come on.
 * [Eugene steps out the door.]
 * Eugene Simonet: [to Arlene McKinney] Will you please take care of him. I'll call you later, all right.
 * Arlene McKinney: All right.
 * Eugene Simonet: Bye.
 * [He leaves.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Don't be a stranger!
 * Arlene McKinney: My God, Trevor!
 * Trevor McKinney: You like him?

 * Arlene McKinney: I want you to understand.
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, it's not necessary. Really.  No explanation required.
 * Arlene McKinney: Wait. Please don't talk to me like that.  We had 13 years in, Eugene.  He's sober now.  We've never been sober together.
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, I wish you luck.
 * Arlene McKinney: I - I feel like I gotta give him a chance.
 * Eugene Simonet: A chance. A chance for what?
 * Arlene McKinney: To change. To try to make up for lost time.
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, what? To take Trevor to some ball games?  Do some real daddy things with him?
 * Arlene McKinney: Yeah. He promised to try.  What do you want me to do?
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, I don't know. Be smart.
 * Arlene McKinney: He's his father, Eugene.
 * Eugene Simonet: He impregnated you, Arlene. In what other way has he been a father to Trevor?  Unless knocking somebody around is a new family value.
 * Arlene McKinney: What are you talking about? He never touched Trevor.
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, that's right. Only you.  He only took it out on you.  That's so much better. [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: What did Trevor tell you?
 * Eugene Simonet: Enough. [A beat.] Christ, Arlene, secrets like that shouldn't be kept. What good does it do Trevor?
 * Arlene McKinney: You weren't there. Ricky never meant to hit me.  We were drunk.
 * Eugene Simonet: Christ! What is it with women like you?  Is that really something you tell yourself?  "Oh, it's okay.  He beat me.  Trevor's okay"?  Trevor has locked himself in a bathroom, and he can't breathe, and he's - and he's hoping and praying that it will stop!
 * Arlene McKinney: Trevor never went through that.
 * Eugene Simonet: How do you know what Trevor went through? How do you know?  How do you know the next time, after you, he doesn't come for Trevor?  I know what I'm talking about, Arlene!  My father got on his knees and begged my mother, and my mother, she always took him back.  I never understood it.  She'd cover the bruises and the cuts, and she'd take him back.  Because he begged, and he cried.  And now, you ask me what happened after he came back.
 * Arlene McKinney: No.
 * Eugene Simonet: No! Go on!  You said you wanted to know what happened to me!  Now, ask me!
 * Arlene McKinney: I don't like this.
 * Eugene Simonet: Did he hurt you, Eugene? Ask me! [A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: Did he hurt you?
 * Eugene Simonet: Not for long. By 13, I was gone.  I ran away.  But, I missed her.  So, I had to go back and see her.  And so one night, I did.  Now, ask me what happened that night.  What happened that night you came back, Eugene?
 * Arlene McKinney: What happened?
 * Eugene Simonet: He was there. Drunk as usual.  Only this time, I wasn't the same.  I was 16 years old, and I was no longer afraid of him.  And when I looked him in the eye and told him if he ever touched her again, I would kill him, he knew.  He knew that he would never exist for me again. [A beat.] And I'm standing in front of the house, I'm telling her, I'm screaming for her to come out.  I'm telling her she doesn't have to - she doesn't have to take it anymore.  She really doesn't.  She can come with me now.  I don't even see it coming.  He hits me in the side of the head with a two-by-four, and I'm bleeding from my ear.  And then he's dragging me.  He's dragging me behind the house and into the garage and then he's gone.  A minute.  Five minutes.  I don't know.  And then he's back, and he's wetting me down.  He's wetting me down, and I don't understand.  I don't understand why water should smell so bad.  I don't understand.  And then I see it.  I see . . . this . . . gas can.  This red gas can from his truck. [He cries.  A beat.] And he looks at me one last time, and he lights a match. [A beat.] And the last thing I remember, and I'll never forget it, were his eyes.  His eyes, because they were filled with this . . . immense . . . satisfaction.
 * [Arlene is crying, too. A beat.]
 * Arlene McKinney: I'm so sorry.
 * Eugene Simonet: Don't. Don't!  Don't!  Don't tell me how sorry you are for me! [A beat.] Just tell me how you're going to stop it happening to Trevor!
 * Arlene McKinney: He would never do that.
 * Eugene Simonet: Oh, Jesus, Arlene. He doesn't have to.  All he has to do is not love him.

 * Chris Chandler: Jesus.

 * Arlene McKinney: Get out!
 * [She runs into Trevor McKinney's room and locks the door.]
 * Ricky McKinney: Huh? You know, I liked you a whole lot better when you had a few drinks in you!
 * [He pounds the door.]
 * Ricky McKinney: You want me out of the house? I'm out!
 * Arlene McKinney: [to Trevor McKinney] Sorry. [A beat.] I think I made a mistake.
 * [She laughs. A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Everybody makes mistakes.

 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor, what is it? [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Are you still gonna pay it forward? [A beat.] You could say you don't have to. [Eugene gets up. A beat.] 'Cause it didn't work out. [A beat.] But I thought you still might.
 * [Eugene erases the blackboard and turns to Trevor. A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor, I would like more than anything than to do that for you. [A beat.] And when I find something worthy of paying it forward -
 * Trevor McKinney: I know somebody who needs something. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor, you have to let me find this on my own -
 * Trevor McKinney: You know who it is. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Look. [A beat.] You don't understand everything. All right?  So, you do not know what you're asking.
 * Trevor McKinney: Give her another chance. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: I will pay it forward. I promise you that. [A beat.] But I cannot do that. [He sits down in a desk near Trevor.  A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: But that's why this is the one. [A beat.] Because it's supposed to be something hard. [A beat.] If you help my mom, even if you're still mad at her, if you helped her in a way nobody else could -
 * Eugene Simonet: Did she asks you to come and talk to me about this?
 * Trevor McKinney: No, she thinks you'll never forgive her, but I still think you could. [A beat.] If you wanted to do something really huge . . . for someone . . . or for a project . . . for me. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Trevor, she made a choice.
 * Trevor McKinney: She said she made a mistake.
 * Eugene Simonet: Well, that's the beauty of hindsight. [Trevor gets up. A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: You don't care. [A beat.]
 * Eugene Simonet: Yes, I do. [A beat.] I will always care. About you, always. [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: Yeah.
 * [He places his assignment on the desk in which Eugene is sitting. A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: You're my teacher. [A beat] They pay you to.

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Chris Chandler: Hi, I'm Chris Chandler, and I'm joined today by a very unusual seventh grader, Trevor McKinney. Trevor, you must be pretty proud of yourself.
 * Trevor McKinney: No.
 * [He laughs.]
 * Chris Chandler: So, you're not proud at all? [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: I don't know. I guess.
 * Chris Chandler: Come on. You start a movement like Pay It Forward.  You're not proud?
 * Trevor McKinney: I guess. I mean, I - I got an A in Social Studies, but, uh, that was just for the effort.  I mean, stuff I did, it didn't really work out.
 * Chris Chandler: You're here.
 * Trevor McKinney: Yeah, but . . . I don't know. I tried real hard, but . . . nothing really happened. [A beat.] My mom's stuff worked.  She talked to my grandma.  Kinda made up with her.  It was really hard for her.  It was great for me, 'cause my grandma came to my birthday party.  And I had really missed her. [A beat.] And that's why Pay It Forward went all those places. 'Cause my mom.  'Cause she was so brave.  My stuff, I . . . I don't know.  I think some people are too scared or something to think that things can be different.  And - I mean, the world's - the world's not exactly . . . shit. [A beat.] I guess it's hard for some people who are so used to things the way they are, even if they are, to change.  And they kinda give up. [A beat.] When they do, everybody kinda . . . kinda lose.

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Eugene Simonet : Arlene . . . I don't wanna be one of those people he's talking about. And I've become one.  I don't wanna spend another second of wasted air.  Please don't let me stay trapped in here forever.
 * Arlene McKinney: I won't.
 * Eugene Simonet: I don't wanna spend another second without you.

<hr width="50%"/>
 * Trevor McKinney: It's hard. You can't plan it.  You have . . . you have to watch people more.  You know, sort of, sorta keep an eye on 'em.  To protect 'em, 'cause . . . they can't always see what they need. [A beat.] It's - it's like your big chance to fix something that's not like your bike. [A beat.] You can fix a person.
 * Chris Chandler: Is that what you want for your birthday? Everybody to pay it forward?
 * Trevor McKinney: I can't ask for that.
 * Chris Chandler: Sure, you can. Why not? [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: It wouldn't work.
 * Chris Chandler: Why? [A beat.]
 * Trevor McKinney: I already blew out my candles.

Taglines

 * When someone does you a big favor, don't pay it back...Pay It Forward
 * Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.
 * Have you heard?
 * Sometimes the simplest idea can make the biggest difference.
 * It all starts with you.
 * Some favors you are not allowed to pay back.
 * Is it possible for one idea to change the world?
 * Three imperfect people. One perfect idea.

Cast

 * Kevin Spacey - Eugene Simonet
 * Helen Hunt - Arlene McKinney
 * Haley Joel Osment - Trevor McKinney
 * Jay Mohr - Chris Chandler
 * Jim Caviezel - Jerry
 * Jon Bon Jovi - Ricky McKinney
 * Angie Dickinson - Grace
 * David Ramsey - Sidney Parker

title: Pay It Forward


text:
User talk:168.10.137.2

~ Kalki 15:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Incidents of deliberate vandalism have resulted in this IP address being temporarily blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 18:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:168.10.137.2


text:
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (born 4 August, 1960) was the President of the Government (Prime Minister) of Spain from 2004 to 2011. He the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), to victory in the the general election on March 14, 2004 and a subsequent victory in 2008. He was replaced as leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba on 4 February 2012.

As Opposition Leader

 * "I'm going to give you a peaceful Basque Country"
 * Note: To Eduardo Madina, after an ETA assasination attempt
 * "The main priority of the Socialist Party is education".
 * Note: January, 13th 2003
 * "With a Socialist government, there will not be a national surplus whilst there continues to be inequality."
 * Note: Oct. 2003, when Cristóbal Montoro, then Home Affairs Minister, announced that there was a surplus in the public purse.
 * Source: El Mundo, Rodríguez Zapatero reprocha a Rajoy que no afronte el debate presupuestario como líder del PP (Spanish)

2004

 * "I don't want to be a great leader. I would rather be a good democrat."
 * Note: Interview with "Time" Magazine, September 19th, 2004
 * Font: Time: "I Don't Want To Be A Great Leader"
 * "Gender equality is more successful than armed force"
 * Interview with "Time" Magazine, September 22th, 2004

2005

 * "If we live together, together we must decide."
 * Note: Start of an speech in the Congress of Deputies against Ibarretxe's plan. February 1st, 2005
 * "Castilian Spanish speaking Spain is big, but is bigger in addition with Catalonian speaking Spain, Galician speaking Spain and Basque speaking Spain. Democratic Spain, Constitutional Spain, can not be separated from diversity and the respect to the citizenship"
 * Note: Speech in the French National Assembly. March, 2005
 * "How can a governing party propose to its people a referendum that won't be binding? Is that a serious political programme? No it is not. It's the final option that will end up with upset, at a dead end, reflecting the last 4 years of the Ibarretxe Plan"
 * Note: April 2005, regarding Juan José Ibarretxe's plan to propose a referendum regarding whether to approve his plan to reform the aunomomy of the Basque Country.
 * Source: El Correo, Saturday 9th April 2005, p. 23
 * "My grandfather asked in his will that whenever it became possible, his name should be cleared so that he would no longer be denounced as a 'traitor to patriotism'. My grandfather has had a great effect on me during my life."
 * "The transition to democracy was based on a base of harmony and little remembrance." (It was good that the Transition) "[...] was like that, because at the time the wounds were still open. That problem affected an entire generation of Spaniards. However, the generation that I come from is drawn to politics in a context of democracy and liberty, and now it's only fair that the sacrifices that many people made are recognised and that people know exactly what happened to their relatives, because it's their right [...] this right doesn't involve looking back with a grudge, but completely the opposite: it means looking back with serenity, to find out the truth [...] it means building a stronger country, a country that can look at all of its citizens with absolute serenity, so that they feel recognised in our project of contemporary democracy".
 * Interview in 2005 in the book "Zapatero and the Citizens' World" by Calamai and Garzia.

 * "I am highly at ease and calm because we have a fairly republican king."
 * "For me, a republican is someone who defends public institutions and democratic values, someone who is a defender of public life, someone who repsects the principles of liberty, so in that sense we are very calm and at ease."

 * Note: 14th April 2005, during a commemoration to the Second Republic.
 * Sources: ABC: Rajoy critica el «alarde intelectual» de Zapatero de llamar republicano al Rey (Spanish),

Libertad Digital: Zapatero dice que está "muy a gusto y muy tranquilo" porque "tenemos un Rey bastante republicano" (Spanish)

 * "Less smoking and more reading."
 * Note: 23rd April 2005.

 * "Discouraging smoking and drinking is a left ideal."
 * 3rd September 2005, in a meeting of the PSOE federal committee whilst tabling a motion to increase tax on alcohol and cigarettes to finance health spending.
 * Source: Psoe.es (Spanish)

 * "In my opinion, patriotism is liberty."
 * Note: 6th October 2005, during a discussion on Catalan and Spanish nationalism and the inclusion of the term nation-state in the Statute of Catalonia.
 * Source: Libertad Digital: Zapatero, la patria-libertad, el españolismo y la "fórmula" para la nación catalana (Spanish)

 * "Reachable goals are worth the struggle." (30th Nov., 2005)

 * "The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it. It doesn't matter how many differences there may be, Habermas pointed out, everyone shares some principles. No culture tolerates the exploitation of human beings. No religion permits the murder of innocent people. No civilisation accepts violence or terror."
 * [...]
 * "Peace is not a natural state of man, as the great pacifist Gandhi told us. But man can create it. If we have broken down walls that seemed unbreakable, we will not passively agree that more profound differences should their place."
 * Note: 5th Dec. 2005
 * Sources: Transcripción completa del discurso en la web de la ONU. Many extracts taken from the press, e.g. Cadena Ser.

 * "We are the envy of Europe and in a few years time we are going to be one of the top countries in the world."
 * Nota: 19th Dec. 2005

2006

 * "The Spain of today looks at the Second Republic with great appreciation and above all with satisfaction and pride for what we have been able to do in this constitutional age".
 * Congress of Deputies, 1st May 2006

 * "Peace needs and takes time, it needs and takes caution, it needs and takes patience after 30 years of terrorism and violence."
 * Note: Presidential press release after ETA's 2006 ceasefire declaration, September 2006.
 * Sources: Efe Agency, PSOE PSOE and the general press.

 * "Today things are better than a year ago. But within a year things will be even better."
 * Note: Presidential press release on 29th December 2006, one day before an ETA bomb attack at Madrid airport, resulting in 2 deaths.
 * Source: el Mundo.

 * "Given that a few days ago we had a terrible accident, a tragic terrorist attack in Barajas, in Madrid, I would like to propose to you that we show our complete condemnation, our most intense revulsion, and that we show profound solidarity with the victims."
 * Note: In reference to the ETA bombing at Madrid airport, El Confidencial (Spanish). That same day, Zapatero said that calling the attack an 'accident' had been a slip of the tongue, but it was seized by the press and provoked anger, for example the slogan "Killing people is not an accident" used in the protests of March, 2007.

2007

 * "I would like to admit the clear error I made in front of all Spanish citizens".
 * Note: January 2007, apologising for his announcement on 29th December 2006, "in a year things will be even better"/
 * Source: El País: Minuto a minuto del debate sobre política antiterrorista en el Congreso (Spanish).

 * The US doesn't understand South America."
 * "The longer they put off admitting defeat and crticising themselves, the longer it will take for them to earn the confidence of their citizens."
 * "If there is corruption, it's because the political parties are weak."
 * Source: Entrevista (Spanish), interview with Baltasar Garzón, 25th Jan 2007.

 * "Every time a teacher leaves her classroom in Paris to put up osters of Ségolène France is illuminated."
 * "Ségolène represents personal energy, good spirits and optimism, the determination to preside, the vocation to get things done instead of talking about it; as we have done in Spain."
 * "Today, the grandeur of a country is measured by the extent to which it defends and extends its citizens' rights through its impulse towards total equality, by its capacity to create energy that contributes towards cultural, social and economic growth. That is how a country becomes strong, by making its citizens more powerful."
 * Note: In a meeting of the French Socialist Party in Toulouse at the end of the electoral campaign for the first round of presidential voting, to help Ségolène Royal, 19th April 2007.
 * Source: La Rioja (Spanish).

 * "To every insult we receive we will offer a proposal, to every defamatory remark, an idea, and to every exaggeration, a smile."
 * Note: Meeting in the Vistalegre Palace, Madrid, 23rd April 2007.
 * Source: Nota de prensa Zapatero: "Responderemos a cada insulto con una propuesta, a cada descalificación con una idea" en la web oficial del PSOE, Ya: Zapatero al PSOE: "A cada insulto, una propuesta, a cada descalificación, una idea y a cada exageración una sonrisa"

 * "During the next legislature, we will aim for full employment in Spain."
 * Debate on the State of the Nation, 3rd July 2007
 * Source:

 * "There isn't any wall, however high, however wide or however big, whatever it is made from, that can bar you from achieving a better life. There isn't any wall or pit that is in front of you to stop you from achieving a future of wellbeing."
 * Note: Dinner speech at which Zapatero was the guest of honour, hosted by Felipe Calderón in the National Palace, Mexico City.
 * Source: Transcripción oficial en la web de la Presidencia de México

 * "The PP has spent 3 years thinking about the election (in 2008), but I think that one has to give them some advice: to prepare themselves to carry on thinking, but about the election in 2012."
 * Meeting on the 14th August 2007 in Jerez, predicting another PSOE victory in the 2008 elections.
 * Source:ABC

 * Drawing a comparison to football, it could be said that the Spanish economy has, during this legislature, into the Champions League of the world economy, however bad that may seem to some."
 * 11th Sept. 2007, during a speech by the PSOE in the Congress of Deputies.
 * Source: Zapatero: "El Gobierno ha situado a España en la Champions League de las economías del mundo" Cadena SER.

 * "You can be completely opposed to an ideological position, and I'm certainly not close to Aznar's ideas, however he was elected by the Spanish people and I demand that respect."
 * To Hugo Chavez, who had accused Aznar of being a racist and a fascist in the 17th Iberoamerican Summit.
 * Source: El Mundo: El Rey se enfrenta a gritos con Chávez en defensa de Aznar: ¿Por qué no te callas? (Spanish)

2008

 * "In democracy, nobody is above anybody else apart from he who is elected by the people."
 * 24th Feb. 2008

 * "Goodnight, and good luck."
 * Closing remark to the Presidential debate with Mariano Rajoy in the 2008 election campaign.

 * "I think that it would do us good to have some tension [...]. From this weekend, I'm going to start to overdramatise things a little."
 * Said to the presenter of 'Cuatro', Iñaki Gabilondo, at the end of an interview, and referring to the 2008 general election. His words were captured by microphones when Zapatero presumed that he was no longer on air.
 * Source: ''"A partir de este fin de semana, voy a dramatizar un poco"

 * "As such, we have signed an agreement to stimulate, to favour, to fuck...to help this type of tourism."
 * A slip of the tongue for Zapatero at a joint press conference with Dmitri Medvedev, saying 'follar', to fuck, instead of 'apoyar', to help.
 * Source: 20 Minutos: El lapsus de Zapatero: "Un acuerdo para estimular, para favorecer, 'para follar'..."

 * "Although the recession is strong and although hard times await us in the next 2 or 3 months, Spain will continue to grow in the second quarter of 2009."
 * Source: Diciembre 2008. Prensa

 * "I'm not the right person to talk about this. It doesn't seem right to me (the price paid by Real Madrid for footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, but I understand the social significance of football."

 * "It's likely that the worst of the economic crisis is behind us."
 * 29th April 2009
 * Source:

 * "The Spanish economy is not going to return to growth immediately."

 * "The earth belongs to nobody except the wind."
 * At the 15th Climate Change Summit, Copenhagen, 17th December 2009.
 * Source:

 * "We are lucky that a crisis of this magnitude only comes around once every 80 years."
 * In an interview with Spanish national television.
 * Source: Zapatero evita respaldar a De la Vega y asume que habrá crisis de Gobierno

 * "We must have a distinct vision of what employment and unemployment are. A person who is training or educating themselves is working for their country. That is what we have discovered in this recession, that training, education and innovation are fundamental.", Oslo Forum, September 2010.

 * "The photo is the most important thing."
 * Interview with Mohamed VI in the headquarters of the UN, September 2010.
 * Source:

Quotes about

 * The record clearly shows that jihadists see the run-up to an election and the months just afterward as an opportune time to act. Everyone remembers the Bin Laden video that was released days before the 2004 presidential election and the Madrid train-station bombings that occurred 72 hours before Spain’s national elections in March of that year. When the conservative government of José María Aznar mistakenly attributed the attacks to Basque separatists, the public punished his party, which was felt to be pretending that its unpopular support for the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. The socialists, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had been trailing in the polls, but after the government’s blunder, they thumped the conservatives by a five-point margin.   Those are only the best-known jihadist interventions. Alongside them should be added the first bombing of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, a little more than a month after Bill Clinton took office, and the attack on the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, three weeks before that year’s Bush-Gore matchup. Last year, radicals attempted multiple car bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, three days after Gordon Brown’s June 27 installation as Britain’s prime minister. And let’s not forget the murder of Benazir Bhutto while she was campaigning in Pakistan or the September 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, which preceded the Australian elections by a month.
 * Daniel Benjamin, “Why Do Terrorists Love To Strike Around Elections?”, Brookings.edu, (October 22, 2008)

title: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero


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User talk:75.69.225.212

~ Kalki 17:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

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User talk:67.103.220.86

~ Kalki 17:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

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User talk:209.142.72.114

- InvisibleSun 18:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:209.142.72.114


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User talk:204.169.30.3

~ Kalki 19:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Incidents of deliberate vandalism have resulted in this IP address being temporarily blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 21:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:204.169.30.3


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User talk:66.235.180.189

- InvisibleSun 19:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

~ UDScott 20:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

- InvisibleSun 08:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Incidents of deliberate vandalism have resulted in this IP address being temporarily blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 21:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:66.235.180.189


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Talk:Hamlet

 * i spent some time with the troops in poland 1999-2001, i was translator for them when they were stationed waitin4deployment;

i remember my unit had shakespear's roles when we had some break, we argued about certain things... Hamlet is very small community that is the original meaning, then again play Hamlet deals with avenging hamlet's dad. Czerwone Gitary would be Polish Beatles. Mickiewicz would be Polish Shakespear. Edgar Allan Poe would be american Shakespear. I have huge collection of edgar allan poe, original manuscripts, you name it. I even gave some to museums. Pan Tadeusz, by Mickiewicz would be the Polish Hamlet!
 * in hebrew Mickiewicz צריך, צריך לזכור יותר!

Porpentine vs Porcupine

 * 'Odd that he should have said porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt, as so often happens with ghosts.' I was reminded of this brilliant line from Wodehouse when reading this article. Please, please, no one change it. :) --121.216.3.197 15:31, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I have added the archaic variant porpentine — but retained porcupine, as this actually is the variant used in most modern publications. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 15:42, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

An Omission Most Foul?
Is there any reason that the "Murder most foul" line isn't included?

If there is no response after some time, I'll add it. 71.36.164.128 16:46, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

 * I've just added it. Thanks for pointing it out. ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

title: Talk:Hamlet


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User talk:75.64.243.73

~ UDScott 20:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The quotes that were listed were all false quotes that were simply mocking Kobe Bryant by saying things like "I am the greatest ever, I hate Michael Jordan", etc. None were sourced and all were fake. I was trying to delete the things that someone obviously put there as a joke. I'm sorry, I didn't know the rules.

title: User talk:75.64.243.73


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Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Template:Cfm

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: Delete.  Cbrown1023  talk  15:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Cfm
Based on the description, "Cfm" stands for "categories for merger". This is an unused, unneeded template imported from Wikipedia by an editor unaware of our practices here. Worse, it's so inappropriate, it's amazing. Consider: In my opinion, the last thing any backlogged system needs is the introduction of yet another learning curve for a complicated set of specialized templates to make it harder (essentially the argument against Fabartus's template infrastructure). Delete. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * We don't even have a page for discussing article mergers, let alone category mergers. We use categories to collect merge candidates and don't yet have any forum outside article talk pages, and we're incredibly backlogged there as it is.
 * Wikipedia doesn't even use this terminology anymore. Its terms are "Wikipedia:Proposed mergers" and "Wikipedia:Categories for discussion". "WP:CFM" is just a redirect.
 * Wikipedia's merger discussions are also horribly backlogged (that is, those who people remember to nominate rather than just tag for merger). Templates hardly seem to be helping them.
 * Vote closed: 22:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per (long and detailed) nom.  Cbrown1023  talk  22:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, yeah — it really was overkill. In my defense, I was nominating this after spending nearly half an hour wandering through Fabartus's former and remaining templates here before punting further nominations to another day, and I really wanted to drive a stake through the heart of a template. Sorry, folks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. - InvisibleSun 11:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. ~ UDScott 14:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't like to name category with abbraviations. It would be logical or useful to have such category but I strongly claim we should have a such under full description like "category:categories for merger". And MediaWiki doesn't allow rename categories by move, so this category should not survive. --Aphaia 14:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete we don't have a "Categories for discussion" policy, and we are not bound by Wikipedia's policies. Koweja 18:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete at present. It wouldn't surprise me if the Wiki eventually gets big enough to need this sort of thing, but not yet.--Poetlister 22:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. —LrdChaos (talk) 17:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete unwanted. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 09:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - useless. MatthewFenton 12:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.


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Philip Pullman

 CBE (born October 19, 1946) is an English writer. He is the best-selling author of His Dark Materials, a trilogy of fantasy novels, and a number of other books.

Quotes

 * I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, in psychological terms. I deal with matters that might normally be encountered in works of realism, such as adolescence, sexuality, and so on; and they are the main subject matter of the story — the fantasy (which, of course, is there: no-one but a fool would think I meant there is no fantasy in the books at all) is there to support and embody them, not for its own sake.
 * Interview at Achuka Children's Books

 * I'm trying to write a book about what it means to be human, to grow up, to suffer and learn. My quarrel with much (not all) fantasy is it has this marvellous toolbox and does nothing with it except construct shoot-em-up games. Why shouldn't a work of fantasy be as truthful and profound about becoming an adult human being as the work of George Eliot or Jane Austen? Well, there are a few fantasies that are. One of them is Paradise Lost.
 * Interview at Achuka Children's Books

 * I knew I was telling a story that would be gripping enough to take readers with it, and I have a high enough opinion of my readers to expect them to take a little difficulty in their stride. My readers are intelligent: I don't write for stupid people. Now mark this carefully, because otherwise I shall be misquoted and vilified again — we are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads. Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually adventurous.
 * Interview at Achuka Children's Books

 * On an unseasonably, uncomfortably, unnaturally warm day in mid-October I sit here trying not to think about global warming. But it's difficult. Is this fear going to pass away like the other fears I remember — nuclear war, overpopulation leading to mass starvation, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain? Well, those problems haven't gone away exactly. The new one just seems bigger than all the rest.
 * Entry at Philip-Pullman.com (October 2006)

 * They’re often bracketed together, Tolkien and Lewis, which I suppose is fair because they were great friends — both Oxford writers and scholars, both Christians. Tolkien’s work has very little of interest in it to a reader of literature, in my opinion. When I think of literature — Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad — the great novelists found their subject matter in human nature, emotion, in the ways we relate to each other. If that’s what Tolkien’s up to, he’s left out half of it. The books are wholly male-oriented. The entire question of sexual relationships is omitted.
 * Slate interview, 2015

 * His (C. S. Lewis's) work is not frivolous in the way that Tolkien is frivolous, though it seems odd to call a novel of great intricacy and enormous popularity frivolous. I just don’t like the conclusions Lewis comes to, after all that analysis, the way he shuts children out from heaven, or whatever it is, on the grounds that the one girl is interested in boys. She’s a teenager! Ah, it’s terrible: Sex — can’t have that. And yet I respect Lewis more than I do Tolkien.
 * Slate interview, 2015

His Dark Materials

 * The title of this trilogy is derived from lines in Paradise Lost by John Milton, which are used in the front piece of Northern Lights:
 * Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds, Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while, Pondering his voyage...

Northern Lights (1995)

 * Titled The Golden Compass for North American release.

 * Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.
 * First line, introducing Lyra Belacqua (also known as Lyra Silvertongue), in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

 * Her dæmon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the darkness of the hall.
 * Introducing Pantalaimon, also called Pan, in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

 * How can I just go and sit in the library or somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, knowing what's going to happen? I don't intend to do that, I promise you.
 * Lyra, in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

 * "That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?" "It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust." Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.
 * Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

 * As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.
 * The Master of Jordan College to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

 * Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing. She can be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded, she would have been safe for a little longer. I would have liked to spare her a journey to the North.
 * The Master to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

 * “That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”
 * The Librarian to the Master, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

 * "Lyra, I'm going to give you something, and you must promise to keep it private. Will you swear to that?" "Yes," Lyra said. He crossed to the desk and took from a drawer a small package wrapped in black velvet. When he unfolded the cloth, Lyra saw something like a large watch or a small clock: a thick disk of gold and crystal. It might have been a compass or something of the sort. "What is it?" she said. "It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. It would be better if Mrs. Coulter didn't know about it. Your uncle — " "But what does it do?" "It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it's getting lighter — hurry back to your room before anyone sees you."
 * The Master and Lyra, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer

 * It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive... Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.
 * Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer

 * "But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?" "Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."
 * Lyra and the seaman Jerry, in Ch. 10 : The Consul and the Bear

 * In Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.
 * Ch. 13 : Fencing

 * Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.
 * Ch. 15 : The Dæmon Cages

 * “We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.”
 * Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

 * “That is how it seems....But we can’t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”
 * Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

 * “She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”
 * Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

 * You cannot change what you are, only what you do.
 * Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

 * Think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn’t be imagined without it.
 * Ch. 21 : Lord Asriel's Welcome

 * Human beings can’t see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra. That’s original sin.
 * Ch. 21 : Lord Asriel's Welcome

 * “I wish...” she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.
 * Ch. 23 : The Bridge to the Stars

The Subtle Knife (1997)

 * Lord Asriel is just a man, with human power, no more than that. But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.
 * Thorold, in Ch. 2 : The Witches

 * Without their tiger gods, the tribe declined into fear and melancholy and begged her to allow them to worship her instead, only to be rejected with contempt; for what good would their worship do her? she asked. It had done nothing for the tigers.
 * Ch. 2 : The Witches

 * “Sisters,” she began, “let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history—and that’s not long by our lives, but it’s many, many of theirs—it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out. Some of you have seen what they did at Bolvangar. And that was horrible, but it is not the only such place, not the only such practice. Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan’t feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, obliterate, destroy every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.
 * Ch. 2 : The Witches

 * Do not lie to the Scholar.
 * The alethiometer to Lyra, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS. Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a woman's voice said, "Come in."
 * Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.
 * Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that's the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it — to make gravity work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them. ... We think it's some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect.
 * Dr. Mary Malone, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * It was all very well, the alethiometer telling her to be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct lies.
 * Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It’s impossible, and if it isn’t impossible, it’s irrelevant, and if it isn’t either of those things, it’s embarrassing.
 * Ch. 4 : Trepanning

 * I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway somewhere. I guess it's not too far from Summertown, where I dropped Lizzie, or Lyra, this morning. And that through the doorway is another world, one with no grownups in it. Right so far? Well, you see, the man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's hiding in that other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He has reason to be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone tower with angels carved around the doorway. The Torre degli Angeli.
 * Sir Charles to Lyra and Will, in Ch. 7 : The Rolls-Royce

 * Who is this man who's got the knife?
 * Will, in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * I hold the subtle knife on behalf of the Guild.
 * Giacomo Paradisi in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was. So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it.
 * Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him holding the knife; he stared with a sickly anger and then turned and fled.
 * Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * "Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the knife, it is yours." "I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with it." "You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are the bearer now." "I thought you said you was," said Lyra. "My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell..."
 * Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * "This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi, touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the world. Look." And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off. "The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up and listen."
 * Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

 * The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics — what we call experimental theology — is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.
 * Sir Charles to Mrs. Coulter in Ch. 9 : Theft

 * The Master of Jordan College is a foolish old man. Why he gave it to her I can't imagine; you need several years of intensive study to make any sense of it at all.
 * Mrs. Coulter, on Lyra having the alethiometer, in Ch. 9 : Theft

 * People here cannot conceive of worlds where dæmons are a silent voice in the mind and no more. Can you imagine my astonishment, in turn, at learning that part of my own nature was female, and bird-formed, and beautiful?
 * Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 10 : The Shaman

 * He showed me that to rebel was right and just, when you considered what the agents of the Authority did in His name.... And I thought of the Bolvangar children, and the other terrible mutilitations I have seen in our own southlands; and he told me of many more hideous cruelties dealt out in the Authority’s name—of how they capture witches, in some worlds, and burn them alive, sisters. Yes, witches like ourselves... He opened my eyes. He showed me things I had never seen, cruelties and horrors all committed in the name of the Authority, all designed to destroy the joys and the truthfulness of life.
 * Ruta Skadi in Ch. 13 : Æsahættr

 * What Asriel's done has shaken everything up, Mr. Scoresby, shaken it more profoundly than it's ever been shaken before. These doorways and windows that I spoke of — they open in unexpected places now. It's hard to navigate, but this wind is a fair one.
 * Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

 * Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.
 * Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

 * Seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.
 * Lee Scoresby to Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

 * “For a human being, nothing comes naturally,” said Grumman. “We have to learn everything we do.”
 * Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

 * "You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?" "Yes," said Grumman. "And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same." "And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?" "The greatest wisdom I know." "Tell me again what your purpose is. You're going to find the bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?" "Tell him what his task is." "And that's a task that includes protecting Lyra," the aeronaut reminded him. "It will protect all of us."
 * Lee Scoresby and Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

 * On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher. So on they climbed.
 * Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

 * Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare, ignoring the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reaching a state in which movement alone was good and stillness bad, so that he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And since the failure of the witches' spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some curse greater than their own powers.
 * Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

 * If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task that's greater than you can imagine. A child ... How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be. ... There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time. ..." He stopped to take in several rattling breaths. "The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have anything like the knife; but now ..." "I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — " "Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."
 * Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

 * "You fought for the knife?" "Yes, but — " "Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature." Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again. "There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit." "And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the knife, and me to tell you about it."
 * Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

 * She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to die of it. Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth. Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.
 * Dying thoughts of Lena Feldt as a Spectre "eats the life out of her", Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

The Amber Spyglass (2000)

 * Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.
 * Ch. 2 : Balthamos and Baruch

 * So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren’t human, but they were people, she told herself; it’s not them, they’re us.
 * Ch. 10 : Wheels

 * “Doesn’t it scare you, having your death close by all the time?” said Lyra. “Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.”
 * Ch. 19 : Lyra and her Death

 * If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things.
 * Ch. 23 : No Way Out

 * Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.
 * Ch. 23 : No Way Out

 * Your dæmon can only live its full life in the world it was born in. Elsewhere it will eventually sicken and die. We can travel, if there are openings into other worlds, but we can only live in our own. Lord Asriel’s great enterprise will fail in the end for the same reason: we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
 * Ch. 26 : The Abyss

 * The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone through into their poor starved eyes.
 * Ch. 26 : The Abyss

 * You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn’t argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can’t choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I'm free.
 * Ch. 31 : Authority's End

 * One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close. Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say: "Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories." That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone. All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
 * Ch. 32 : Morning

 * They lay back, well fed and comfortable in the flower-scented night, and listened to Mary tell her story. She began just before she first met Lyra, telling them about the work she was doing at the Dark Matter Research group, and the funding crisis. How much time she’d had to spend asking for money, and how little time there’d been left for research! But Lyra’s coming had changed everything, and so quickly: within a matter of days she’d left her world altogether. "I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program — that’s a set of instructions — to let the Shadows talk to me through the computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and — well…" "If you were a scientist," said Will, "I don’t suppose that was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in angels." "Ah, but I knew about them. I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all."
 * Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

 * "When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?" "No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
 * Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

 * Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. “Well, there is now,” she said aloud, and again, louder: “There is now!”
 * Mary in Ch. 34 : There is Now

 * She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.
 * Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

 * The lizard dragged the priest’s body back to her nest, and her children feasted very well. As for the rifle, it lay in the grass where Father Gomez had laid it down, quietly turning to rust.
 * Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

 * But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyra’s had moved them a single inch.
 * Ch. 37 : The Dunes

 * “What work have I got to do, then?” said Will, but went on at once, “No, on second thought, don’t tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it’ll feel as if I didn’t have a choice, and if I don’t do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.” “Then you have already taken the first steps toward wisdom,” said Xaphania.
 * Ch. 37 : The Dunes

 * "I remember. He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place." "He said we had to build something…" "That’s why we needed our full life, Pan... we wouldn’t have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…"
 * Lyra to Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden

 * "And then what?" said her Dæmon sleepily "build what?" "The Republic of Heaven."
 * Lyra and Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden (closing words)

 * I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching a novel is 'Read like a butterfly, write like a bee', and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers.
 * Acknowledgements, p. 549

Surefish interview (2002)

 * "A dark agenda?" (November 2002)

 * I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth. But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.

 * When you look at organised religion of whatever sort — whether it's Christianity in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism — wherever you see organised religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression. It's almost a universal law.

 * 'Magisterium' and 'oblation' are church terms, they are terms of church organisation. These are administrative things. These are bureaucratic things. How can an attack on those be construed as an attack on God? These are human things which human beings have constructed in order to wield power. That's not a contentious thing to say. That is simply true. These are forms of political organisation and no more than that.

 * Now here are these children who have gone through great adventures and learned wonderful things and would therefore be in a position to do great things to help other people. But they're taken away. He doesn't let them. For the sake of taking them off to a perpetual school holiday or something, he kills them all in a train crash. I think that's ghastly. It's a horrible message.
 * On The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

 * A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself. All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can't live without those things because it's too bleak, it's too bare and we don't need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven. This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.

Lyra's Oxford (2003)

 * This book contains a story and several other things. The other things might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven't appeared yet. It's not easy to tell.

 * All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue. Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read. The story in this book is partly about that very process.

 * Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think (2006)

 * Chapter: Every Indication of Inadvertant Solitude I think it's fair to guess that most of Richard Dawkins' many readers are not using The Selfish Gene and its successors as textbooks to help them pass science exams. That he is a highly distinguished scientist is not in question, but many scientists have achieved great distinction - and indeed written textbooks - without once writing a popular best-seller.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2010)

 * Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.
 *

Pullman's website

 * If you're going to make a living at this business - more importantly, if you're going to write anything that will last - you have to realise that a lot of the time, you're going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs.
 * From the Q&A section (found July 2010)

title: Philip Pullman


text:
User talk:BruceWayne45

Welcome
Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
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By the way, Mr. Wayne, I noticed your edit to Batman (comics). I've heard a rumor that you may have a personal connection to this superhero. Please be careful when editing this article to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. ;-) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:BruceWayne45


text:
User talk:72.70.162.22

Grey's Anatomy
Please do not reverse the formatting edits I made to Grey's Anatomy. They are the correct way to identify characters - the first time they are quoted in an episode, the wiki link to their character page on Wikipedia is added. Thanks. ~ UDScott 21:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:72.70.162.22


text:
Better Off Dead (film)

Better Off Dead is a 1985 film about a teen learning how to move on after his long time girlfriend dumps him for the captain of the ski team. It is set in the 80's in northern California.
 * Directed and written by Savage Steve Holland.

Insanity doesn't run in the family, it gallops taglines

Lane Myer

 * Gee, I'm really sorry your mom blew up, Ricky. Doctor says she'll be okay, but she won't be able to eat any spicy foods for awhile.
 * She only speaks French, Roy. She doesn't speak imbecile.
 * I gotta go, the Christmas tree is on fire. [hangs up the phone.]
 * Two brothers... One speaks no English, the other learned English from watching The Wide World of Sports. So you tell me... Which is better, speaking no English at all, or speaking Howard Cosell?

Charles de Mar

 * I've been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I'm no dummy. I know high school girls.
 * Greendale is a bodaciously small town, Lane. A fly speck on the map - a rest stop on the way to the ski slope. I can't even get real drugs here!
 * Suicide is never the answer, little trooper.
 * The K-12 dude. You make a gnarly run like that and girls will get sterile just looking at you.
 * This is pure snow. It's everywhere! Have you any idea what the street value of this mountain is?
 * [giving skiing instructions] Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.

Monique Junot

 * I think all you need is a small taste of success, and you will find it suits you.

Other

 * Jenny Myer: [ladling an unidentifiable gelatinous substance onto dinner plates] I got the recipe from a magazine. The mail got wet in the rain, so some of the pages ran together, but what I couldn't read I just... improvised with my own little... creative ideas. It's got raisins in it. You like raisins.
 * Barney Rubble: [on TV] Hey there, Lane. I know this is a little awkward, me being a cartoon and all, I was just wondering how you'd feel if I took out Beth? [laughs]
 * Tree Trimmer: [After Lane falls into a dump truck when trying to commit suicide off of a bridge] Man, that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that.

Dialogue

 * Jenny Myer: How was your day?
 * Lane Myer: Beth just dumped me.
 * Jenny Myer: Oh, that's nice.

 * Lane Myer: Johnny...
 * Johnny: Four weeks, twenty papers, that's two dollars. Plus tip.
 * Lane Myer: Gee Johnny, I don't have a dime.
 * Johnny: Didn't ask for a dime. Two dollars.
 * Lane Myer: Well... it's funny see... my mom, had to leave early to take my brother to school and my dad to work cuz...
 * Johnny: Two dollars... cash.
 * Lane Myer: See... the problem here is that... my little brother, this morning, got his arm caught in the microwave, and uh... my grandmother dropped acid and she freaked out, and hijacked a school bus full of... penguins, so it's kind of a family crisis... so come back later? Great.

 * Monique Junot: I thought if Casanova and I in there had nothing to say to each other, he'd get bored -- go away. Instead he uses it as a chance to put his testicles all over me!
 * Lane Myer: Sorry, what?
 * Monique Junot: Uh, how you say... octopus... testicles.
 * Lane Myer: No, tentacles. N-T. There's a big difference.

 * Lane Myer: I have a great fear of tools. I once made a birdhouse in woodshop and the fair housing committee condemned it. I can't.
 * Monique Junot: "I cannot do it" is your middle name.

 * Yee Sook Ree: [imitating Howard Cosell] Truly a sight to behold. A man beaten. The once great champ, now, a study in mopishness. No longer the victory hungry stallion we've raced so many times before, but a pathetic, washed up, aged ex-champion.
 * Lane Myer: Alright let's go!
 * [Crashes]

 * Charles De Mar: Wait, wait a minute... [starts to snort snow off his top hat] Oh. Oh! Ugh! Outrageous! I think I just froze the left half of my brain! Look! I can't move my right arm!
 * Lane Myer: This isn't funny, Charles! If I don't have a dream, I have nothing!
 * Charles De Mar: Ah, come on! It's Christmas Eve! I could be home right now, drinking this monster eggnog my brother makes with lighter fluid.

Taglines

 * You've blown up your neighbor's mom. Your seven-year-old brother has better luck with women than you do. Your girlfriend has a new boyfriend. Relax, your never "better off dead".
 * Insanity doesn't run in the family, it gallops
 * Teenage life has never been darker...or funnier...
 * I want my two dollars!

Cast

 * John Cusack - Lane Myer
 * Curtis Armstrong - Charles de Mar
 * David Ogden Stiers - Al Meyer
 * Kim Darby - Jenny Meyer
 * Demian Slade - Johnny Gasparini
 * Scooter Stevens - Badger Meyer
 * Diane Franklin - Monique Junot
 * Laura Waterbury - Mrs. Smith
 * Daniel Schneider - Ricky Smith

Voices

 * Rich Little - Yee Sook Ree, Barney Rubble, Principal on Loudspeaker

title: Better Off Dead (film)


text:
User talk:Chrisbaker

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
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 * Be bold.

title: User talk:Chrisbaker


text:
User talk:Ammskid14

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

title: User talk:Ammskid14


text:
User talk:Koolone~enwikiquote

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Koolone. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Koolone~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:51, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Koolone~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:OttomanReference~enwikiquote

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called OttomanReference. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name OttomanReference~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:OttomanReference~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:Chihao~enwikiquote

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Chihao. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Chihao~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:44, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Chihao~enwikiquote


text:
User talk:Hjbasilisk

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

title: User talk:Hjbasilisk


text:
User talk:Anouche

Hi. Welcome to English Wikiquote. Enjoy!  Cbrown1023  talk  22:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote.
 * Also see What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support.
 * To ask for help or to talk with another editor, visit our Village pump.
 * To browse Wikiquote, take a look at our browsing start page.
 * Before creating new articles, consult our guide. You may practice how to edit a page at Sandbox.
 * Please remember to use edit summaries when editing pages.
 * When posting to a discussion, please sign with a date by writing four tildes (~~) and saving.
 * Be bold.

title: User talk:Anouche