text:
Watchmen

Watchmen is a twelve-part comic book miniseries published by DC Comics in 1986-87. It has sometimes been described as a "post-modern" or "deconstructionist" take on the comic book superhero.

 * Writer: Alan Moore. Illustrator/letterer: Dave Gibbons. Colorist: John Higgins.
 * See also Watchmen (film)

Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias

 * What in my life, does not deserve celebrating?

 * My parents reached America the year I was born, 1939. Entering school, I was already exceptionally bright, my perfect scores on early test papers arousing such suspicion that I carefully achieved only average grades thereafter. What caused such precociousness? My parents were intellectually unremarkable, possessing no obvious genetic advantages. Perhaps I decided to be intelligent rather than otherwise? Perhaps we all make such decisions, though that seems a callous doctrine. By seventeen, my parents were both dead, and I faced a different decision. My inheritance offered life long idle luxury, and yet, needing nothing, I burned with the paradoxical urge to do everything. Do you understand? My intellect set me apart. Faced with difficult choices, I knew nobody whose advice might prove useful. Nobody living. The only human being with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. I idolized him. A young army commander, he'd swept along the coasts of Turkey and Phoenicia, subduing Egypt before turning his armies towards Persia. He died, thirty-three, ruling most of the civilized world. Ruling without barbarism! At Alexandria, he instituted the ancient world's greatest seat of learning. True, people died ... perhaps unnecessarily, though who can judge such things? Yet how he nearly approached his vision of a united world! I was determined to measure my success against his. Firstly, I gave away my inheritance. to demonstrate the possibility of achieving anything starting from nothing. Next, I departed for Northern Turkey, to retrace my hero's steps. I wanted to match his accomplishment, bringing an age of illumination to a benighted world. Heh. I wanted to have something to say should we meet in the hall of legends. I followed the path of Alexander's war machine along the black sea coast, imagining his armies taking port after port, blood on ancient bronze. Perhaps because of the challenge it represented: the ancient world's greatest puzzle was there, a knot that couldn't be untied. Alexander cut it in two with his sword. Lateral thinking, you see. Centuries ahead of his time. Heading south, he entered Egypt through Memphis, where they proclaimed him son of Amon, judge of the dead, whose name means "hidden one." Under rule from Alexandria, the classic culture of the great Pharaohs was restored. I followed him through Babylon, up through Kabul to Samarkhand then down the Indus, where he met the first elephants of war. Where he'd turned back to quell dissent at home, I travelled on, through China and Tibet, gathering martial wisdom as I went. Alexander returned to Babylon to die of an infection, aged thirty-three, amongst its ruined ziggurats. I saw at last his failings. He'd not united all the world, nor built a unity that would survive him. Disillusioned, but determined, to complete my odyssey, I followed his corpse to its resting place in Alexandria. The night before returning to America, I wandered into the desert and ate a ball of hashish I'd been given in Tibet. The ensuing vision transformed me. Wading through powdered history, I heard dead kings walking underground, heard fanfares through human skulls. Alexander had merely resurrected an age of Pharaohs, their wisdom, truly immortal, now inspired me. What intellectual magnificence their system encouraged.. Ptolemy seeking the universe's pivot from his light-house at Pharos, Eratosthenes, measuring the world using only shadows … their greatest secrets entrusted to their servants, buried alive with them in sand-flooded chambers. Adopting Ramses the Second's Greek name and Alexander's free-booting style, I resolved to apply antiquity's teachings to today's world. Thus began my path to conquest … conquest not of men. But of the evils that beset them. Today, that conquest becomes assured, in which your unquestioning assistance has proven invaluable. Do you comprehend the triumph which you have contributed, the secret glory that it affords? Do you understand my shame at so inadequate a reward?
 * Soliloquy to all of his subordinates, as he watches them die from the poison he has provided them.

 * I suppose I'd have had to catch the bullet, wouldn't I?
 * Delivered with a smirk, after Nite Owl asks what he would have done if his hired assassin had shot him first.

 * I don't mind being the smartest man in the world, I just wish it wasn't this one.

Daniel Dreiberg/Nite Owl II

 * Y'know, this must be how ordinary people feel. This must be how ordinary people feel around us.
 * As he and Rorschach prepare for their confrontation with Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias

 * Oh God, I probably sound so Devo right?

 * What happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?

Edward Blake/The Comedian

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

 * Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. Bang. And y'know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into god damn snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia...but you didn't lift a finger! You don't really give a damn about human beings. I've watched you. You never cared about what's her name, Janey Slater, even before you ditched her. Soon you won't be interested in Sally Jupiter's little girl, either. You're driftin' outta touch, Doc. You're turnin' into a flake. God help us all.

Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan

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

 * They call me Dr. Manhattan. They explain the name has been chosen for the ominous associations it will raise in America's enemies. The marketing boys say I need a logo. If I'm to have a symbol it shall be one I respect. [draws a symbol of a hydrogen atom on his head]

 * Everything is preordained. Even my responses.

 * I am tired of Earth, these people. I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.

 * They claim their labors are to build a heaven, yet their heaven is populated with horrors. Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. A clock without a craftsman. It's too late. Always has been, always will be...too late.

 * I am two-hundred and twenty-seven million kilometers from the sun. Its light is already ten minutes old. It will not reach Pluto for another two hours. Two hours into my future, I observe meteorites from a glass balcony, thinking about my father. Twelve seconds, into my past, I open my fingers. The photograph is falling. I am watching the stars. Halley's Comet tumbles through the solar system on its great, seventy-six year ellipse. My father admired the sky for its precision. He repaired watches. It's 1945, I sit in a Brooklyn kitchen, fascinated by an arrangement of cogs on black velvet. I am sixteen years old. It is 1985. I am on Mars. I am fifty-six years old. The photograph lies at my feet; falls from my fingers, is in my hand. I am watching the stars, admiring their complex trajectories through space and time. I am trying to give a name to the force that set them in motion.

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

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

 * Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

 * Yes. Anybody in the world. .. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home.

 * I am disappointed, Veidt. Very disappointed. Restructuring myself after the subtraction of my intrinsic field was the first trick I learned. It didn't kill Osterman... Did you think it would kill me? I've walked across the surface of the sun. I've seen events so tiny and so fast they hardly can be said to have occurred at all. But you... you're just a man. And the world's smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.

 * In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon.

Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II

 * I want you to love me. I want you to love me because we're not dead. Here..take these off. I want to see you. I want to see you and taste you and smell you. Just because I can. Oh God, it's so damn good being alive.

 * (Examining Dan's Nite Owl II utility belt.) What else have you got in there? Chocolate rations? Boy Scout knife? Army-issue contraceptives?

 * I'm through thinking about my life, looking back at all my stupid memories. It's been a dumb life, and if there is a design, it's a dumb design!

 * My mother, she eroded my adolescence, chipping me into the shape she'd have been if she hadn't had me. She pushed me into adventuring, fussing over my career, trying to live her life through me.

 * I used to be a masked avenger too, remember … I mean, I'm used to going out at three in the morning and doing something stupid.

Walter Kovacs/Rorschach

 * On Friday night, a comedian died in New York. Somebody knows why. Down there, somebody knows.

 * This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No." They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or President Truman. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers... and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.

 * Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this. But there are so many deserving of retribution ... and there is so little time.

 * Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?

 * None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me.

Dr Malcolm Long

 * "Later: The Deputy Warden just called. Apparently, Kovacs was involved in an incident today, just after he'd seen me. It happened during lunch, in the canteen...the guards intervened, dragging Kovacs away to solitary and the other man to the prison hospital. According to the deputy Warden, his burns were horrific. Hot cooking fat...I don't like to think about it. As they dragged him away, Rorschach spoke to the other inmates. He said 'None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me.' My earlier optimism was obviously unfounded. He's just getting worse."''

 * I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.

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

Dialogue

 * Police Detective: I think you take this vigilante stuff too seriously. Since the Keene Act was passed in '77 only the government-sponsored weirdos are active. They don't interfere.
 * Detective Steve Fine: Screw them. What about Rorschach? Rorschach never retired, even after him and his buddies fell out of grace. Rorschach's still out there somewhere. He's crazier than a snake's armpit and wanted on two counts of Murder One. We got a cozy little homicide here. If he gets involved, we'll be up to our butts in corpses.

 * [Rorschach informs the former Nite Owl II of the Comedian's death.]
 * Dan Dreiberg: Maybe this was a political killing?
 * Rorschach: Maybe. Or maybe someone's picking off costumed heroes.
 * Dreiberg: Um. Don't you think that's maybe a little paranoid?
 * Rorschach: That's what they're saying about me now? That I'm paranoid?
 * Rorschach: Used to come here often, back when we were partners.
 * Dreiberg: Oh. Uh, yeah... yeah, those were great times, Rorschach. Great times. Whatever happened to them?
 * Rorschach: [exiting] You quit.
 * Rorschach: [exiting] You quit.

 * [Dan and The Comedian, in the midst of a riot]
 * Dan Dreiberg: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?.
 * The Comedian: [brandishing tear gas grenade launcher] It came true. You're lookin' at it. Now c'mon... let's really put these jokers through some changes.

 * Ozymandias: You know, for a guy who calls himself The Comedian, I can never tell when you're joking.
 * The Comedian: Watchmen. That's the real joke. Didn't work 15 years ago, sure as hell ain't gonna work now just 'cause you wanna play cowboys and Indians.
 * Nite-Owl: Maybe we should agree on no drinking at meetings. [The Comedian laughs and drinks] Look, Rorschach and I have made real headway on the gang problem by working together.
 * Rorschach: With a group this size, it seems like a publicity stunt. I'm not in it for the ink.
 * Ozymandias: We can do so much more. We can save this world. With the right leadership.
 * The Comedian: And that'd be you, right, Ozzy? I mean, hell, you're the smartest man on the planet.
 * Ozymandias: It doesn't take a genius to see that this world has problems.
 * The Comedian: Yeah, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for you to handle. You people, you hear Moloch's back in town, get your panties all in a bunch. You think catching him matters?
 * Rorschach: Justice matters.
 * The Comedian: Justice. Justice is coming to all of us. No matter what the fuck we do. You know, mankind's been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time, now, we finally got the power to finish the job. Ain't nothin' gonna matter once those nukes start flying, we'll all be dust. And Ozymandias here- will be the smartest man on the cinder.

 * [Retired crimefighters reminisce about the good old days.]
 * Laurie Juspeczyk: Hey, you remember that guy? The one who pretended to be a supervillain so he could get beaten up?
 * Dan Dreiberg: Oh, You mean Captain Carnage. Ha ha ha! He was one for the books.
 * Laurie: You're telling me! I remember, I caught him coming out of this jeweller's. I didn't know what his racket was. I start hitting him and I think "Jeez! He's breathing funny! Does he have asthma?"
 * Dan: Ha Ha Ha. He tried that with me, only I'd heard about him, so I just walked away. He follows me down the street in broad daylight, right? He's saying "Punish me! Punish me!" I'm saying "No! Get lost!"
 * Laurie: Ha Ha Ha. What ever happened to him?
 * Dan: Well, he pulled it on Rorschach, and Rorschach dropped him down an elevator shaft.
 * [Beat]
 * Laurie: [laughing] Oh, God, I'm sorry, that isn't funny,.
 * Dan: Ha, ha, ha! No, I guess it's not... It's a little funny...
 * Laurie: Uh-huh. Ahuhuhuh... Jeez, y'know, that felt good. There don't seem to be that many laughs around these days.
 * Dan: Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead.

 * Dr. Malcolm Long: Walter, is what happened to Kitty Genovese really proof that the whole of mankind is rotten? I think you've been conditioned with a negative worldview. There are good people, too, like...
 * Rorschach: Like you?
 * Dr. Malcolm Long: Me? Oh, well, I wouldn't say that. I...
 * Rorschach: No. You just think it. Think you're 'good people'. Why are you spending so much time with me, Doctor?
 * Dr. Malcolm Long: Uh...well, because I care about you, and because I want to make you well...
 * Rorschach: Other people, down in cells. Behavior more extreme than mine. You don't spend any time with them...but then, they're not famous. Won't get your name in the journals. You don't want to make me well. Just want to know what makes me sick. You'll find out. Have patience, Doctor. You'll find out.

 * Larry: [reaching into the bars of Rorschach's cell] You lousy little bastard! I'll tear your goddamned heart out! You're dead, you unnerstand? Dead! We got a jail full of guys out here who hate your guts. What in hell do you got?
 * Rorschach: [grabbing his arms] Your hands. My perspective.

 * Dr. Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.
 * Laurie Juspeczyk: But... if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
 * Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

 * Laurie Juspeczyk: Is that what you are? The most powerful thing in the universe and you're just a puppet following a script?
 * Doctor Manhattan: We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

 * Doctor Manhattan: You sound bitter. You're a strange man, Blake. You have strange attitudes to life and war.
 * The Comedian: Strange? Listen... once you figure out what a joke everything is, being the Comedian's the only thing that makes sense.
 * Doctor Manhattan: The charred villages, the boys with necklaces of human ears... these are part of the joke?
 * The Comedian: Hey... I never said it was a good joke! I'm just playing along with the gag...

 * Ozymandias: The energy breakthrough I was working on just came to fruition. All these years, Jon was helping me replicate his power, unaware of how I planned to use it. You see, the Comedian was right. Humanity's savage nature will inevitably lead to global annihilation. So in order to save this planet, I had to trick it, with the greatest practical joke in human history.
 * Nite-Owl: Killing millions!
 * Ozymandias: To save billions. A necessary crime.
 * Rorschach: You know we can't let you do that.
 * Ozymandias: "Do that," Rorschach? I'm not a comic-book villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I triggered it thirty-five minutes ago.

 * Dr. Manhattan: What's that? Another ultimate weapon?
 * Ozymandias: You could say that. [activates a set of television screens showing Richard Nixon making a speech]
 * Richard Nixon: -under attack. Millions of lives were suddenly ended in an act of evil perpetrated by Dr. Manhattan himself. Since the attacks, I have been in constant contact with the Premier of the USSR. Putting aside our vast differences, we have both pledged to unite against this common enemy. With the rest of the world, we will prevail. This is a day we shall never forget. And yet we go forward to defend the human race, and all that is good and just in our world. Thank you. God bless us all.
 * Ozymandias: Do you see? Two superpowers retreating from war. I've saved the Earth from Hell. We both have. This is as much your victory as it is mine. Now we can return. Do what we were meant to.
 * Rorschach: We were meant to exact justice!
 * Ozymandias: Will they? By exposing me, you would sacrifice the peace so many died for today.
 * Nite-Owl: Peace based on a lie.
 * Ozymandias: But peace! Nonetheless.
 * Dr. Manhattan: He's right. Exposing Adrian would only doom the world to nuclear destruction again.
 * Silk Spectre: No. We can't do this.
 * Dr. Manhattan: On Mars, you taught me the value of life. If we hope to preserve it here, we must remain silent.
 * [...]
 * Nite-Owl: Rorschach...? Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise!
 * Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

 * Adrian Veidt: I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.
 * Dr. Manhattan: 'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

Fictional publications

 * The publications here exist only in the fictional Watchmen universe unless otherwise noted.

 * I never said, "The superman exists, and he's American." What I said was,"God exists, and he's American." If that statement starts to chill you after a couple of moments' consideration, then don't be alarmed. A feeling of intense and crushing religious terror at the concept indicates only that you are still sane.
 * Dr. Milton Glass, Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers

 * No, I don't mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one.
 * Adrian Veidt, interview in Nova Express

 * [Responding to question on how much of putting on a superhero costume is a "sex thing".] No, I don't… Well, let me say this, for me, it was never a sex thing. It was a money thing. And I think for some people it was a fame thing, and for a tiny few, God bless 'em, I think it was a goodness thing. I mean, I'm not saying it wasn't a sex thing for some people, but, no, no, I wouldn't say that's what motivated the majority…
 * Sally Jupiter, interview in Probe.

title: Watchmen


text:
Divorce

Divorce or dissolution of marriage is the ending of a marriage before the death of either spouse.

Quotes

 * While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
 * Adam and Lilith in Alphabet of Sirach.

 * Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce … That would be sad. If two people were married and they were really and they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times.
 * Louis C.K., "The Annotated Wisdom of Louis C.K.", Splitsider, (02/2013).

 * When love ceases, when in erotic love, in friendship, in short, when in the loving relationship between two people something comes between them so that love ceases, then the two, as we human beings speak, break up. Love was a bond, was in a good sense between them; then when something comes between then, love is displaced, it ceases; the connection between them is broken, and the break enters divisively between them. Therefore it comes to a break. Christianity, however, does not know this use of language, does not understand it, refuses to understand it. When one says it comes to a break, this is because one is of the opinion that in love there is only a relationship between two, rather than that it is a relationship among three, as has been shown. … So what does Christianity do? Its earnestness promptly concentrates eternity’s attention upon the single individual, upon each single one of the two. This is, as the two in love relate themselves to each other, they relate themselves, each one of them separately to love. Now if it does not go at all easily with the break. Before it comes to the break, before one of them comes to the point of breaking his or her love in relation to the other, that one must first fall away from love. This is the important point; therefore Christianity does not speak about the couple’s breaking with each other but only about what the single individual is always able to do-to fall away from love.
 * Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love 1847 Hong 1995 p. 303-304.

 * Incompatibility. And besides, I think she hated me.
 * Oscar Levant, on why his first marriage ended in divorce, in A Smattering of Ignorance (1940); as quoted in "Oscar Levant, A Musical Know-It-All, Writes Book About Music And Himself," Life (February 5, 1940), p. 55.

 * A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me."
 * Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus, sec. 29.

 * [Reading a letter on T.V.] Dear Mrs. Doubtfire; Two months ago, my mom and dad decided to separate. Now they live in different houses. My brother Andrew says that we aren't a real family any more. Is this true? Did I lose my family? Is there anything I could do to get my parents back together? Sincerely, Katie McCormick." Oh, my dear Katie. You know, some parents get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time and they can become better people. Much better mommies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't, dear. And if they don't... don't blame yourself. Just because they don't love each other doesn't mean that they don't love you. There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. Some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. Some live in separate homes and neighborhoods, in different areas of the country. They may not see each other for days, weeks, months or even years at a time. But if there's love, dear, those are the ties that bind. And you'll have a family in your heart forever. All my love to you, poppet. You're going to be all right. Bye-bye.
 * Mrs. Doubtfire, played by Robin Williams, screenplay by Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon.

 * The fact that the majority of marriages in the United States end in divorce is widely known. In 1997, over 1.16 million divorces were granted in the United States – a rate of 4.3 per 1000 (National Center for Health Statistics, 1998). From the 1960s to the 1980s, the divorce rate increased by well over 200%. Although this increase leveled off in the 1990s, the failure of marriages in U.S. society continues to be a pervasive social problem (e.g. Hoffman & Duncan, 1988). This phenomenon has sparked what is sure to be a lengthy quest to discover the causes of divorce and the factors that contribute to its prevalence (e.g., Gottman, 1994).
 * Chris Segrin, Robin L. Nabi, “Does Television Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Marriage?”, Journal of Communication 52(2): June 2002, p. 247.

 * Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers.
 * William Shatner and David Fisher, Up Till Now: The Autobiography, pg. 136.

 * For his pleasure he got married. On his thinking it over he got divorced.
 * Sumerian proverb, Collection II at,.

 * Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.
 * Robin Williams, "Robin Williams: 'Divorce is like ripping a man’s genitals out through his wallet’", Judith Woods, The Telegraph, (12 Aug 2014).

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

title: Divorce


text:
Thom Yorke

Thomas Edward Yorke (born October 7, 1968 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England) is a musician and the lead singer of the English rock band Radiohead.

Sourced

 * Q: Does commercial success matter to you?

 * "It matters. It's as much as you can ask for. The rest is bullshit."

 * Q: Success is part of what you want when you start writing?

 * "Jonny goes on and on about this. Anybody who claims they write for *themselves is a liar. Everyone has an audience in mind. The only reason any artist would carry on is in the faith that one day somebody would see or hear their work." source

 * "The video of 'Paranoid Android' has been censored by MTV. They took all nipples out of the cartoon, but they had no problem with the scene in which a man cuts off his own arms and legs." source

 * "What worries me more than anything else is the whole notion that I'm who people focus on, like it's of significance, you know? People look at me and think that it's a complete existence. What really fucks me up in the head is that basically I'm supposed to be endorsing this sort of pop star, 'Wow, lucky bastard, he's got it all' existence. What frightens me is the idea that what Radiohead does is basically packaged back to people in the form of entertainment, to play in their car stereos on their way to work.

 * And that's not why I started this but then I should shut the fuck up because it's pop music and it's not anything more than that. But I got into music, because I naively thought that pop music was basically the only viable art form left, because the art world is run by a few very extremely, um, privileged people and is ultimately corrupt and barren of any context. And I thought that the pop music industry was different and I was fucking wrong, because I went to the Brits and I saw it everywhere and it's the same thing. It's a lot of women who couldn't fit in their cocktail dresses and lots of men in black ties who essentially didn't want to be there, but were. And I was there and we were all committing the same offence. All my favourite artists are people who never seem to be involved in the industry and I found myself getting involved in it, and I felt really ashamed to be there."

 * "I don't think young people are as demoralized as the media and government would like us to think. The obvious sign of that is how strong and how close personal connections are and how much people are able to build a life for themselves, despite all this stuff that's been thrown at them."

 * Q: Radiohead fans tend to be extremely devoted to the band - they seem to connect with your music and ideals. What do you see as the major aspects of your music which people connect with so well?
 * A: To be really truthful I don't see it myself. When we play something new, we don't know how people will react. If I show an idea to the rest of the band I'm terrified if they will respond or not. They are the same. It always amazes me how complex this remains. There was a time when we could make the correct moves and the required response. And that was the time when the shine started to fade. Do people connect with our ideals? I dont know, surely encouraging people to make informed decisions is more useful? ignorance is the biggest problem isnt it? we are no purer than anyone else, no smarter. Equally we are not little rag dolls you play with but say nothing and go back in the box when you're finished with us." source

 * "The sad thing is, if an issue is laughed at and patronised by mainstream media, then it's up against it big-time. I read some journalist recently lecturing the anti-globalisation lobby, saying, 'This is the way capitalism works, all capitalism is exploitation and to make it try and do something else, it's never gonna happen.' And it's like, yeah, but where does that leave us? This is somehow God's will? All this? It's God's will that we sit in traffic? It's God's will that millions of people are gonna die this year because of some outmoded economic policies? No, it's not! It's like some deranged sacrificial altar, the high priests of the global economy holding up these millions of children each year, like (Arms aloft) 'We wish to please you! Oh Gods of free trade!' It's like... give us all a fucking break! If there is a Devil at work, then he rests in institutions and not in individuals. Because the beauty of institutions is that any individual can abdicate responsibility. The assumption that we're all utterly powerless, that's the Devil at work."

 * "I wouldn't be involved with it [pop music] if I wasn't aware that it was going to be a product. I always wanted whatever I did to end up in the high street, no matter what it was, because to me, there isn't anywhere else to go. It's pointless." source

 * "We're at a time when we are being presented with undeniable changes in the global climate and fundamental issues that affect every single one of us, and it's the time we're listening to the most hokey shite on the radio and watching vacuous bullshit celebrities being vacuous bullshit celebrities and desperately trying to forget about everything. Which is fine, you know, but personally speaking, I can't do that." source

 * "It annoys me how pretty my voice is...that sounds incredibly immodest, but it annoys me how polite it can sound when perhaps what I'm singing is deeply acidic." - source

 * "There's nothing more boring than a rock'n'roll star, someone who has been on the road for 10 years, expecting attention wherever he goes, drinking himself stupid, who is obnoxious, incoherent, uncreative and has a massive ego. There's nothing more pointless." - source

 * (on his inability to read music) "If someone lays the notes on a page in front of me, it's meaningless...because to me you can't express the rhythms properly like that. It's a very ineffective way of doing it, so I've never really bothered picking it up." source

 * (about people's image of him) "I think that has a lot to do with the expression that's on my face. People are born with certain faces, like my father was born with a face that people want to hit. (laughs) source

 * wish us all a safe journey if you still like us and you're not one of those people i have managed to offend by doing nothing source

 * "I haven't done enough. I don't have solar panels on my house yet. I haven't sorted out the heating, my car's not a Prius, I f---ing fly all the time for my job and I hate it but at the moment I haven't really got a choice, you know, and all these things. The job I'm in is a job that wastes energy left, right and centre. It's madness." source

 * "It's like a supply and demand thing. It's like 'Well, this is what they want me to do, this is what they want to hear. So I'll do more of this, cuz this is great... and they love me.' Suddenly people start giving you money as well. So then you've got money and you get used to this lifestyle. And you don't wanna take any risks 'cause they've got you by the balls, and you've got all these little things that you've bought, or you're attached to. And you start spending all this money... And that's how they get ya!" - source

 * "I didn't really come into it expecting to make songs. It started just with random bits and pieces. I guess I thought there would be vocals, but I was thinking in terms of using little vocal shreds, and of making them part of the tapestry, not the main thing. But as soon as we had gone through the initial sketches, it became obvious that they could be quite direct. Nigel basically dragged me kicking and screaming toward the concept of them being actual songs." - source
 * On making The Eraser.

 * "You think I have the responsibilty... I have the responsibility to give the fans a good time! (nods at camera, then pauses)... that just sounds... kinky."

 * "My big problem with corporate structure is this bizarre sense of loyalty you're supposed to feel -- towards what is basically a virus. It grows or dies, like any virus. And you use it for your own selfish ends." - source
 * On the record industry.

 * "The difference between me and Bono is that he's quite happy to go and flatter people to get what he wants and he's very good at it, but I just can't do it. I'd probably end up punching them in the face rather than shaking their hand, so it's best that I stay out of their way. I can't engage with that level of bullshit. Which is a shame, really, and in a way it would help if I could, but I just can't. I admire the fact that Bono can, and can walk away from it smelling of roses." - source

 * "The thing that worries me about the computer age is the fact that people know so much about you. It's an incredible invasion of privacy. And no matter where you are in the world people can monitor you if you're using your credit card. I heard this weird rumor on the Internet about how the military is funding this great big research project and basically, they believe that in the future, the balance of power won't be determined by who has the most nuclear weapons, but by who has all the information. I'm not afraid of being taken over by computers though, because the thing is, computers cannot resist. You can always smash 'em up, and they're totally defenseless. All we need are more people with hammers." - source

 * "It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are."
 * On celebrities supporting efforts to curtail climate change. source

 * "Initially when it came up I tried to be pragmatic. But Blair has no environmental credentials as far as I'm concerned. I came out of that whole period just thinking, I don't want to get involved directly, it's poison. I'll just shout my mouth off from the sidelines." - source
 * On rejecting the opportunity to meet Tony Blair for a campaign to lobby government to help stop climate change.

 * "I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape."

 * "I grew up under Thatcher. I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless. Then gradually over the years it occurred to me that this was actually a very convenient myth for the state."

 * "Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it." source

 * "People sometimes say we take things too seriously, but it’s the only way you’ll get anywhere. We’re not going to sit around and wait and just be happy if something turns up. We are ambitious. You have to be." (in his first-ever interview, 1991) source

 * "They're dangerous people, and what's really frightening is that they don't know it, they don't see themselves as dangerous... they see the danger elsewhere. The danger is always elsewhere. How convenient." source

 * "So far, this is disco." - Live performance of Everything in Its Right Place (YouTube video)

Pablo Honey (1993)

 * When you were here before, Couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel, Your skin makes me cry. You float like a feather In a beautiful world. I wish I was special; You're so fuckin' special But I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doing here I don't belong here
 * Creep

 * I don't care if it hurts. I wanna have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. I want you to notice When I'm not around. You're so fuckin' special;>br>I wish I was special.
 * Creep

 * I'm not a vegetable, I will not control myself.
 * Vegetable

Everything I touch, turns to stone.
 * I am fused, just in case I blow out. I am glued, just in case I crack out.
 * "Blow Out"

The Bends (1995)

 * I want to live, breathe, I want to be part of the human race,
 * The Bends

 * Drying up in conversation, You will be the one who cannot talk, All your insides fall to pieces, You just sit there wishing you could still make love.
 * High and Dry

 * Her green plastic watering can For a fake Chinese rubber plant In the fake plastic earth.
 * Fake Plastic Trees

On girls in the eighties, But gravity always wins.
 * He used to do surgery
 * Fake Plastic Trees
 * She looks like the real thing, She tastes like the real thing, My fake plastic love. But I can't help the feeling, I could blow through the ceiling If I just turned and ran.
 * Fake Plastic Trees

 * You do it to yourself, you do, And that's why it really hurts, Is you do it to yourself, just you, You and no-one else, You do it to yourself.
 * Just

 * Rows of houses, all bearing down on me, I can feel their blue hands touching me, All these things into position, All these things we'll one day swallow whole. And fade out again, And fade out...
 * Street Spirit (Fade Out)

 * Immerse your soul in love
 * Street Spirit (Fade Out)

OK Computer (1997)

 * In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe
 * In a fast German car I'm amazed that I survived An airbag saved my life
 * "Airbag"

 * Ambition makes you look pretty ugly Kicking and squealing gucci little piggy
 * God loves his children
 * "Paranoid Android"

You watch your feet, for cracks in the pavement
 * I live in a town, where you can't smell a thing
 * "Subterranean Homesick Alien"

 * Far up above, aliens hover Making home movies for the folks back home Of all these weird creatures that lock up their spirits Drill holes in themselves and live for their secrets
 * "Subterranean Homesick Alien"

 * And you can laugh A spineless laugh We hope your rules and wisdom choke you And now we are one In everlasting peace We hope that you choke, that you choke
 * "Exit Music (For a Film)"

 * Karma police I've given all I can It's not enough I've given all I can But we're still on the payroll
 * For a minute there I lost myself
 * "Karma Police"

 * At a better pace Slower and more calculated No chance of escape
 * "Fitter Happier"

 * Dont get sentimental, It always ends up drivel.
 * "Let Down"

 * When I go forwards, you go backwards And somewhere we will meet
 * "Electioneering"

 * I'll take a quiet life And a handshake of carbon monoxide And no alarms and no surprises
 * "No Surprises"

 * The head of state Has called for me by name But I don't have time for him It's gonna be a glorious day I feel my luck could change
 * "Lucky"

Kid A (2000)

 * Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
 * What was that you tried to say?
 * "Everything In Its Right Place"

 * Everyone has got the fear It's holding on Holding on
 * "The National Anthem"

 * That there That's not me I go Where I please I walk through walls I float down the Liffey
 * I'm not here This isn't happening
 * "How to Disappear Completely

 * We're not scare-mongering This is really happening
 * "Idioteque"

 * Cut the kids in half
 * "Morning Bell"

Amnesiac (2001)

 * Jumped in the river, what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me A moonful of stars and astral cars And all the figures I used to see All my lovers were there with me All my past and futures And we all went to heaven in a little row boat There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
 * "Pyramid Song"
 * So knives out Catch the mouse Squash his head Put him in the pot
 * Knives Out

 * While you make pretty speeches I'm being cut to shreds You feed me to the lions A delicate balance
 * "Like Spinning Plates"

Hail to the Thief (2003)

 * It's the devil's way now There is no way out You can scream and you can shout It is too late now
 * "2+2=5"

 * In pitch dark I go walkin' in your landscape Broken branches trip me as I speak Just 'cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there
 * We are accidents waiting Waiting to happen
 * "There There"

 * And I'm sorry for us The dinosaurs roam the earth The sky turns green
 * "Where I End and You Begin"

 * Are you hungry? Are you sick? Are you begging for a break? Are you sweet? Are you fresh? Are you strung up by the wrists?
 * "We Suck Young Blood"

 * Murderers, you're murderers We are not the same as you
 * "The Gloaming"

 * I keep the wolf from the door But he calls me up Calls me on the phone Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up Steal all my children If I don't pay the ransom And I'll never see 'em again If I squeal to the cops
 * "A Wolf at the Door"

The Eraser (2006)

 * The more you try to erase me The more, the more The more that I appear
 * "The Eraser"

 * Time is running out for us But you just move the hands upon the clock You throw coins in the wishing well For us You just move your hands upon the wall
 * "The Clock"

 * One little leak becomes a lake, Says the tiny voice in my earpiece
 * "And It Rained All Night"

 * You cannot kickstart a dead horse
 * "Black Swan"

 * Don't walk the plank like I did You will be dispensed with When you've become Inconvenient
 * I can't take their pressure No one cares if you live or die They just want me gone They want me gone
 * Did I fall or was I pushed? Did I fall or was I pushed? And where's the blood?
 * "Harrowdown Hill"

In Rainbows (2007)
How come I end up where I went wrong?
 * How come I end up where I started?
 * 15 Step

What happened?
 * You used to be alright
 * 15 Step

I'm trapped in this body and can't get out
 * I have no idea what I am talking about
 * Bodysnachers

 * Don't get any big ideas, They're not gonna happen.
 * Nude

 * You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.
 * Nude

 * I'm an animal trapped in your hot car.
 * All I Need

 * I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover.
 * House of Cards

 * You are my centre when I spin away.
 * Videotape

The King of Limbs (2011)
A universal sigh
 * Open your mouth wide
 * Bloom

 * You've got some nerve, coming here
 * Morning Mr. Magpie

 * I'm such a tease and you're such a flirt
 * Little by Little

A drug that'll kill you
 * Routines and schedules
 * Little by Little

A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

 * Avoid all eye contact Do not react Shoot the messengers This is a low-flying panic attack
 * Burn the Witch

 * Different types of love are possible
 * Desert Island Disk

 * We are of the earth, To her we do return
 * The Numbers

 * I'm not living, I'm just killing time
 * True Love Waits

Quotes about Thom Yorke
-Dave Matthews
 * " Yorke's lyrics make me want to give up. I could never in my wildest dreams find something as beautiful as they find for a single song — let alone album after album."

title: Thom Yorke


text:
Epistemology

Epistemology is derived from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech) is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge.

Quotes

 * Since the word "knowledge" occurs in my general title... I am going to be talking about epistemology, although I prefer to use the eighteenth-century, indeed, medieval phrase, "natural philosophy." ...that enterprise of the human mind which attempts to trace lawfulness to nature, dead and living, but which is not directed to specific inquiries into how this or that law works. Philosophy in the sense in which I practice it, natural philosophy, is concerned with lawfulness rather than with laws and the general nature of laws rather than with the specific structure of this or that law.
 * Jacob Bronowski, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)

 * The central place of epistemology in modern philosophy is no accident... Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things which he tries to understand.
 * Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

 * Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. Today with an information "superhighway" now looming on the horizon, we are told that a lack of access to information will doom people to a life of meaninglessness — and poverty. As we look around and observe modern industrial society, however, there is no question that information, in and of itself, is useless and that as more data is generated, ethical and moral decisions are taking on a fantasy dimension in which a "lack of evidence to indict" is the moral equivalent of the good deed.
 * Vine Deloria Jr., Foreword to Words of Power: Voices from Indian America (1994)

 * Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me.  I am—I exist: this is certain.
 * René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)

 * No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.
 * René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1684) in Key Philosophical Writings (1997) pp. 29-30.

 * Cogito, ergo sum.
 * I think, therefore I am.
 * René Descartes, Principia philosophiae (1644)

 * Is it easier to know what our culture’s epistemic norms are in terms of which it is to be determined whether or not giraffes are taller than ants than it is to know that giraffes are taller than ants? Is our knowledge concerning the identity of those norms to be construed on a realist model, or must we rather consult our culture’s epistemic norms in order to use them to figure out the identity of those norms? If the former, why is it that we can have objective knowledge concerning the identity of our culture’s epistemic norms when we can’t have it with regard to the relative height of giraffes and ants? And if the latter, how is an infinite regress to be avoided?
 * David Detmer, criticizing Richard Rorty’s pragmatism in Challenging Postmodernism (New York: 2003), p. 130

 * Can science ever be immune from experiments conceived out of prejudices and stereotypes, conscious or not? (Which is not to suggest that it cannot in discrete areas identify and locate verifiable phenemonena in nature.) I await the study that says lesbians have a region of the hypothalamus that resembles straight men and I would not be surprised if, at this very moment, some scientist somewhere is studying brains of deceased Asians to see if they have an enlarged "math region" of the brain.
 * Kay Diaz, Z (Dec. 1992)

 * How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there no more valuable work in his specialty? I hear many of my colleagues saying, and I sense it from many more, that they feel this way. I cannot share this sentiment. When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching, that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not merely their quick-wittedness, I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology. They happily began discussions about the goals and methods of science, and they showed unequivocally, through their tenacity in defending their views, that the subject seemed important to them. Indeed, one should not be surprised at this.
 * Albert Einstein, “Ernst Mach,” Physikalische Zeitschrift (1916) 17, pp. 101-102, a memorial notice for Ernst Mach, as quoted by Don Howard, "Albert Einstein on the Relationship between Philosophy and Physics."

 * Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.
 * Jürgen Habermas Knowledge and human Interests (1971) p. 4.

 * Both social and biosocial factors are necessary to interpret crosscultural studies, with the general proviso that one's research interest determines which elements, in what combinations, are significant for the provision of understanding.
 * Gilbert Herdt, "Bisexuality and the Causes of Homosexuality: The Case of the Sambia" (1998)

 * The fruitfulness of knowledge indeed plays a role in its claim to truth, but the fruitfulness in question is to be understood as intrinsic to the science and not as usefulness for ulterior purposes.
 * Max Horkheimer, "Notes on Science and the Crisis," Critical Theory: Selected Essays (1995) p. 3.

 * Science may be in the interest of the ruling class, after all, but it is still responsive to epistemic norms, and so anyone with epistemic interests has reason to accept science. Ideologies, by contrast, have their genesis explained solely by their capacity to further the interests of the ruling class.
 * Brian Leiter, “Morality Critics,” The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (2007)

 * A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.
 * Karl Mannheim Ideology and Utopia (1929)

 * If man has learned to see and know what really is, he will act in accordance with truth, Epistemology is in itself ethics, and ethics is epistemology.
 * Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964)

 * I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress—as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), Section 2

 * Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest our knowledge is negative.
 * Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy (1927)

 * Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.
 * Bertrand Russell Unpopular Essays (1950)

 * The genius of culture is to create an ontological system so compelling that what is inside and outside of a person are viewed as of a piece, no seams and patches noticeable.
 * Richard Shweder, "Cultural psyschology-What is it?" Cultural Psychology (1990)

 * Hegel’s lack of charity toward the instrument metaphor is not arbitrary. It represents his disenchantment with the assumption that knowledge is power and that method is the means to this end. ... Descartes’ conception of method, like Bacon’s, is linked to this idea of knowledge as an instrument of power. ... The same could be said of Locke. Hegel can rightly claim that the instrument metaphor pervades the epistemological tradition he is seeking to transcend.
 * Merold Westphal, History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology (1979), pp. 3-4

 * A further turn is to be found in some "unmasking" accounts of natural science, which aim to show that its pretensions to deliver the truth are unfounded, because of social forces that control its activities. Unlike the case of history, these do not use truths of the same kind; they do not apply science to the criticism of science. They apply the social sciences, and typically depend on the remarkable assumption that the sociology of knowledge is in a better position to deliver truth about science than science is to deliver truth about the world.
 * Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (2002)

title: Epistemology


text:
Talk:Watchmen

Some indication should be provided on this page as to whether these quotes are from the movie, or the graphic novel. ~ Kalki 16:55, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, there's no movie (as of yet). DragonflySixtyseven, 20.30, 2 Apr 2005.

The movie project appears to have been put on hold indefinitely. Most sources doubt it will ever be made. --RPickman 02:34, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put a spoiler warning (the last quotes explains a lot), maybe it could be placed later though. --172.187.179.159 19:06, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't get it. Only maybe one of the good quotes from Watchmen is in here. What exactly are quotes selected by on here? 166.70.2.21 23:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you think there are better quotes, then add them, it's that simple.

Cleanup tag
The needed cleanup includes a sorting of quotes in the order they appear, not sorted by character. The quotes should also be sourced - e.g. define which of the 12 issues it appears in. ~ UDScott 14:24, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This page is currently organized like it was a film page, however unlike with time code, which is often omitted as a requirement in many of the citation guidelines I've seen (presumably do to the prior technical hurdles involved in screen capturing), knowing the page numbers (and issues) would really be helpful considering this is a work increasingly found in university classrooms with the expectation that students correctly cite it as a source. Other superhero characters spanning multiple publications have their own pages organizing their quotes, but until recently this was a limited series so doing that here seems excessive. Having quotes organized by character is neither how it is done with other comics or with other English novels. Including sections for fictional publications raises some issues as well, is there another example of a page where that is done? CensoredScribe (talk) 17:51, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Overpiping?
There are a large amount of seemingly random words in this page that have been piped to Wikiquote articles. For example, Comedian's "Once you realize what a joke everything is..." quote has the word "joke" piped. Or Jon's "I am tired of Earth, these people. I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives." has "Earth" and "People" piped, and " Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time" has "Time" and "Jewel" piped.

Basically what I want to know is if there's a reason for most of these or if someone just came along someday and started giving a bunch of random words links to their definition pages?

I removed them, but Kalki doesn't seem to agree. Respectfully requesting discussion to take place here before readding the links. Please keep in mind WP:OWN and WP:OVERLINK when discussing. Coreycubed (talk) 19:19, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Such discussion has taken place quite a few times, and always the consensus seems to be that, for the most part, adding links to pages for various themes to various quotes is a good idea, which permits and promotes greater exposure to the many diverse ideas on subjects, and could prompt more involvement in our project of acquiring further quotes on ALL of these diverse ideas. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 19:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * And I will also point out once again that Wikiquote is NOT Wikipedia — and many of the aims and objectives of the projects, and the ways links can be used can be quite different. That policy is probably a good one for an encyclopedia of facts, where links are often confined to relatively narrow ranges relating to some specific classes of information, but our project is one which is a compendium of quotations about ideas of far more general application — and the more links between diverse ideas, the better. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 19:29, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I've been on an editing break for quite a while, can you provide links to an example of some of those discussions? Especially ones involving editors other than yourself. Looking at your edit history, it seems this article has been watched by you like a hawk for at least two years, and your user page says all I need to know about your feelings on wikilinking. Coreycubed (talk) 19:26, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * (as an aside, if we discuss this topic and consensus hasn't changed or I drop off of the conversation after a while, you're welcome to edit it however you see fit and I apologize for intruding!) Coreycubed (talk) 19:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I do not watch merely this article, but continue to watch the project as a whole, to the extent I have the time. As I have always been one of the most active editors on this project, and usually do address the issue when it arises, discussions "involving editors other than" myself might be indeed be hard to come by — but there are such discussions involving me and others who are new or who have long edited here, which have occurred, usually months apart, and despite a very few people who are prone to seek to narrow the options available for the linking of ideas, the consensus in nearly any case of wider discussion is to permit and promote such links as means of further exposure to ideas and options for involvement here. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 19:36, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * As the state of this article, which is probably a fairly well visited and observed one here, had retained all these links since March 2013 with YOUR edits being the FIRST in all that time of ANY attempt at removing them, I believe that the implicit accusation that they have been retained only because I watch this article "like a hawk", is somewhat lame, and your insistence that I accede to your will to remove them and reduce the links available to others for further explorations is even more lame. Thus I am restoring them. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 19:47, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Here is one brief discussion in which Kalki did not participate. This sort of linking has greatly increased since that time, and there was a somewhat wider discussion at the Village Pump (in which Kalki participated) that did not arrive at a consensus. Some users are quite restrained in adding these links and some, in my opinion, have gone totally overboard. There is no official guideline for this so, as tends to happen when the issue can be considered a matter of degree or quantity, outcomes are typically determined by whoever is most determined and persistent. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Thermodynamic Miracles possible misquote?
"...seen from the another's vantage point..." []

There appears to be an extra "the" here, but it seems like this is quoted in several places this way. Is there something I'm misunderstanding about "the" in this use case?

title: Talk:Watchmen


text:
Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester is a 2000 film, about a teenager, Jamal Wallace, played by Rob Brown, who is accepted into a prestigious private high school. He also befriends a reclusive writer, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery.

 * Written by Mike Rich. Directed by Gus Van Sant.

In an ordinary place, he found the one person to make his life extraordinary.

William Forrester

 * [to Jamal] What you write in this apartment stays in this apartment. No exceptions.
 * The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.
 * No thinking — that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!
 * My name is...William Forrester. [put on glasses] Excuse me. [drinking a water; pointing to a 'writers's wall of fame picture] I'm that one.
 * Bolt the door, if you're coming in.
 * Why is it that the words that we write for ourselves are always so much better than the words we write for others?
 * Punch the keys, for God's sake!
 * Yes! YES! You're the man now, dog!
 * [Jamal opens the letter] Dear Jamal, Someone I once knew wrote that we walk away from our dreams afraid that we may fail or worse yet, afraid we may succeed. You need to know that while I knew so very early that you would realize your dreams, I never imagined I would once again realize my own. Seasons change young man, and while I may have waited until the winter of my life, to see the things I've seen this past year, there is no doubt I would have waited too long, had it not been for you.

Jamal Wallace

 * I'll take poor assumptions for $800, Alex
 * Man, You William, You too scared man....

Terell Wallace

 * They always let you get but so far... before they take everything away from you.

Dialogue

 * Jamal: Women will sleep with you if you write a book?
 * Forrester: Women will sleep with you if you write a bad book.

 * Jamal: I ain't seen nothin' change.
 * Forrester: You 'ain't seen nothin'? What the hell kind of sentence is that?!

 * Jamal: You ever enter one of those?
 * Forrester: Writing contest?
 * Jamal: Yeah.
 * Forrester: Once, long time ago.
 * Jamal: Did you win?
 * Forrester: Well of course I won!
 * Jamal: Like money or somethin’?
 * Forrester: The Pulitzer.

eskereet
 * Jamal: I came back to see, if you could help me out with my writing.
 * Forrester: Here's one: 5,000 words on why you'll stay the fuck out of my home!

 * Forrester: In some cultures it's good luck to be wearing something inside-out.
 * Jamal: And you believe that?
 * Forrester: No, but it's like praying: what do you risk?

 * Forrester: Paragraph three starts...with a conjunction, "and." You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.
 * Jamal: Sure you can.
 * Forrester: No, it's a firm rule.
 * Jamal: No, it was a firm rule. Sometimes using a conjunction at the start of a sentence makes it stand out. And that may be what the writer's trying to do.
 * Forrester: And what is the risk?
 * Jamal: Well the risk is doing it too much. It's a distraction. And it could give your piece a run-on feeling. But for the most part, the rule on using "and" or "but" at the start of a sentence is pretty shaky. Even though it's still taught by too many professors. Some of the best writers have ignored that rule for years, including you.

 * Forrester: No conventional greetings today?
 * Jamal: Why have me rewrite something you published?
 * Forrester: Be careful where you take this.
 * Jamal: Why didn't you tell me some magazine ran it?
 * Forrester: Why the hell should it matter?
 * Jamal: You should have told me.
 * Forrester: What did you do with it?
 * Jamal: I turned it in. I turned it in. I had to show them something.
 * Forrester: You promised me anything we wrote in here would stay in here.
 * Jamal: I know. I know. I know! I just thought...
 * Forrester: Shut up. What are they telling you?
 * Jamal: I go on probation unless I write a letter saying I was wrong.
 * Forrester: Then write the letter.
 * Jamal: Look, I already told you I'm not reading or writing anything.
 * Forrester: If you got him, he gets you. Write the letter.
 * Jamal: And then, you'd let him do that? Is this supposed to be some kind of another lesson? I'm getting tired of all of these lessons. Whenever every time I come here. And the title of your essay is right at the top of my paper. What's the lesson in that?
 * Forrester: I'm not the one who turned it in.
 * Jamal: Then you talked all that trash when all you had to say was: "Jamal, keep this one in here because it already got printed in the New Yorker." That's all you had to say. Maybe I could use a little help.
 * Forrester: No, that's not an option.
 * Jamal: You don't even have to go anywhere.
 * Forrester: I said, that's not an option.
 * Jamal: I'm sorry, man. I'm getting used to people not helping out with me.
 * Forrester: Oh, Christ. Not that self-pity father bullshit.
 * Jamal: What did you say? Man, fuck you, William! You wanna know what the real bullshit is? How about...you letting me taking it on this one 'cause you're too damn scared to head out that door and do something for somebody else. You're too damn scared, man! That's the only damn reason.
 * Forrester: You don't know a goddamn thing about reasons. There are no reasons! Reasons why some of us live and why some of us don't! Well, fortunately for you, you have decades to figure that out.
 * Jamal: Yeah! And what's the reason in having a file cabinet full of writing and keeping the shit locked so nobody can ever read it, huh? What is that, man? I'm done with this shit.

 * Forrester: I have a homeland that I have not seen for too long.
 * Jamal: Oh, you mean Ireland?
 * Forrester: No! Scotland, for God's sakes!
 * Jamal: I'm messing with you, man! You should have been write.

 * [While Jamal is typing on Forrester's typewriter]
 * Forrester: Punch the keys, for God's sake!
 * [Jamal begins to hit the keys harder]
 * Forrester: Yes... Yes! You're the man now, dog!

It should be noted that this particular line has become a popular internet meme, leading to the creation of sites such as YTMND.

 * Jamal: We've been talking about your book at school.
 * Forrester: People have been talking about it for years. They just haven't been saying anything.
 * Jamal: I think I got it down, though. I figure you were writing about how life never works out.
 * Forrester: Really? You had to read a book to figure that out?

 * Forrester: About those free-throws...Did you miss them? Or did you "miss" them?
 * Jamal: [Smirks] Not exactly a soup question, now is it?

title: Finding Forrester


text:
Dark City (1998 film)

Dark City is a 1998 science fiction film set in a city of perpetual night, whose inhabitants are repeatedly given new, artificial memories by mysterious beings called the Strangers.
 * Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S. Goyer.

A world where the night never ends. Where man has no past. And humanity has no future. taglines

John Murdoch

 * Maybe I have lost my mind, but whoever I am, I'm still me and I'm not a killer.
 * Hey, you happen to know the way to Shell Beach?
 * Daylight. When was the last time you remember seeing it? And I'm not talking about some distant, half-forgotten childhood memory. I mean like yesterday? Last week? When? Can you come up with a single memory? You can't, can you? You know something? I don't think the sun even exists in this place, because I've been up for hours and hours and hours and the night never ends here.

Dr. Daniel P. Schreber

 * Tonight's requirements are: family photo albums, nine personal diaries, love letters, assorted childhood photographs, ID's and social security cards. [examining a sample of memory serum] These do bring back memories. This one is still warm. What is it? The recollections of a great lover? A catalog of conquests? We will soon find out. You wouldn't appreciate that, would you, Mr. Whatever your name is? Not the sort of conquests you would ever understand. Let's see: a touch of unhappy childhood; ah, a dash of teenage rebellion; and last, but not least, a tragic death in the family.
 * Weren't you looking for the human soul? That's the purpose of your little zoo, isn't it? That's why you keep changing people and things around every night. Maybe you have finally found what you are looking for, and it's going to bite you on your—
 * First there was darkness. Then came the strangers. They abducted us and brought us here. This city, everyone in it, is their experiment. They mix and match our memories as they see fit, trying to divine what makes us unique. One day, a man might be an inspector; the next, someone entirely different. When they want to study a murderer, for instance, they simply imprint one of their citizens with a new personality — arrange a family for him, friends, an entire history, even a lost wallet. Then they observe the results. Will a man, given the history of a killer, continue in that vein? Or are we, in fact, more than the mere sum of our memories?
 * When they first brought us here, they extracted what was in us so they could store the information, remix it like so much paint, and give us back new memories of their choosing. But they still needed an artist to help them. I understood the intricacies of the human mind better than they ever could, so they allowed me to keep my skills as a scientist because they needed them, but they made me delete everything else. Can you imagine what it is like being forced to erase your own past?
 * Now remember what I told you: Never talk to strangers.

Inspector Frank Bumstead

 * So, Husselbeck, what kind of killer do you think stops to save a dying fish?
 * Nothing like a little healthy paranoia.
 * No one ever listens to me.

Mr. Hand

 * On occasion the imprinting does not take. They behave erratically when they awaken. We find them wandering like lost children.
 * There's work to be done.
 * We fashioned this city on stolen memories: different eras, different pasts all rolled into one. Each night, we revise it, refine it, in order to learn.
 * You've seen what we are. We use your dead as vessels.
 * You see, I have become the monster you were intended to be.

Det. Eddie Walenski

 * See, I've been trying to remember things — clearly remember things from my past — but the more I try to think back, the more it all starts to unravel. None of it seems real. It's like I've just been dreaming this life, and when I finally wake up I'll be somebody else: somebody totally different.
 * They steal people's memories, you know? Then they swap them around between us. I've seen them do it! Back and forth, back and forth, until no one knows who they are anymore.

Mr. Book

 * He is powerful, yes — dangerous — but he can also lead us to what we seek: what the doctor calls the soul. It is time for our experiment to move into a final phase.
 * Shut it down! Shut it down forever!

Dialogue

 * [At a murder scene]
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: What's that make so far, Husselbeck? Six hookers in all?
 * Husselbeck: I believe so, sir.
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: Give the man an "A" for effort.

 * Husselbeck: Well, everything Detective Walenski committed to paper should be here, so...
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: The only thing that should be committed is Walenski.

 * John Murdoch: What you do seems kind of dangerous right now. I mean, how do you know I'm not the killer?
 * May: You don't seem like the killer type. Why? You feeling any urges I should know about?

 * Mr. Wall: No more Mr. Quick. Mr. Quick, dead, yes.
 * Stranger: Poor, poor Mr. Quick.

 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: I've met quite a few murderers in the course of my work. Murdoch doesn't strike me as one.
 * Dr. Daniel P. Schreber: Perhaps you are not accustomed to digging deep enough.
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: Well, I do know when someone is lying to me, Doctor.
 * Dr. Daniel P. Schreber: Forgive me, Inspector, but you are not a clinician. Judging personalities happens to be my business.
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: Well, maybe you could give me a few pointers.
 * Dr. Daniel P. Schreber: Certainly. Let's take you, for instance. You are a fastidious man, driven. Consumed by details. I would say your life is rather lonely.

 * Dr. Daniel P. Schreber: I have a weak heart, you know.
 * Mr. Hand: Your weakness is not, we think, an affair of the heart.

 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: You saw something, didn't you, Eddie? Something to do with the case?
 * Det. Eddie Walenski: There is no case! There never was! It's all just a big joke! It's a joke!

 * [Mr. Hand has been imprinted with Murdoch's memories]
 * Mr. Book: Is it done?
 * Mr. Hand: Oh, yes, Mr. Book. I have John Murdoch in mind.

 * Mr. Hand: We're very lucky, when you think about it.
 * Emma Murdoch: I'm sorry?
 * Mr. Hand: To be able to revisit those places which have meant so very much to us.
 * Emma Murdoch: I thought it was more that we were haunted by them.
 * Mr. Hand: Perhaps. But imagine a life alien to yours, in which your memories were not your own but those shared by every other of your kind. Imagine the torment of such an existence: no experiences to call your own. If it was all you knew, maybe it would be a comfort.

 * Emma Murdoch: What brings you here?
 * Mr. Hand: I met my wife at this place.
 * Emma Murdoch: It's where I first met my husband.
 * Mr. Hand: Small world.

 * Emma Murdoch: I love you, John. You can't fake something like that.
 * John Murdoch: No, you can't.

 * Desk Sergeant: How can we help you, sir?
 * Mr. Hand: You can sleep!

 * Dr. Daniel P. Schreber: Inspector, he is more disturbed than we thought.
 * Inspector Frank Bumstead: I may not be the judge of personality that you are, Doctor, but you're the one who looks disturbed to me.

 * Mr. Wall: We will give you some more pretty things soon, Anna.
 * Emma Murdoch: I'm not Anna.
 * Mr. Wall: You will be soon, yes.

 * Mr. Hand: I'm dying, John. Your imprint is not agreeable with my kind. But I wanted to know what it was like — how you feel.
 * John Murdoch: You know how I was supposed to feel. That person isn't me. Never was. You wanted to know what it was about us that made us human. Well, you're not going to find it...[taps head] in here. You went looking in the wrong place.

About Dark City (1998 film)

 * Like Hong Kong action directors reinventing the western, Australia's current crop of filmmakers are happily absorbing the received wisdom of Hollywood and boomeranging it back at us. Recalibrated film noir. The costume epic as psycho drama. Road movies with no maps. There's no end to the modifications and mutations. Sometimes, of course, the boomerang catches you in the neck. In "Dark City," Down Under director Alex Proyas revisits some of the territory he created for "The Crow," a tale of murder and revenge based on James O'Barr's comic-art novel, which gothicized the city and made the set design as much a character in the film as the late Brandon Lee's unhappy character. With "Dark City," we're in a similar landscape, but this time the set design is paramount. The hero, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), awakens in a bathtub and doesn't know where he is. Neither do we. Murdoch seems to be registered at the Hotel Raymond Chandler, the city itself seems to lie somewhere between Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Tim Burton's Gotham City. There's a scene at an automat. Is it the '40s? No, there's a '61 Falcon idling beside a '90s Citroen. Jessica Rabbit look-alike Jennifer Connelly, playing Murdoch's estranged wife, Emma, is a torch singer in a bygone boi^te. Kiefer Sutherland, as Dr. Daniel Schreber, looks like the kid from "A Christmas Story" all grown up and gone bad. He speaks in an asthmatic staccato and walks with a limp borrowed from Everett Sloane in "Lady From Shanghai." William Hurt, as bemused as ever, is Detective Bumstead, a refugee from pulp fiction.
 * If you had to guess, you might say that Proyas came out of the world of comic art himself, rather than music videos and advertising. "Dark City" is constructed like panels in a Batman book, each picture striving for maximum dread. But Proyas' roots are clear enough: A shot of the city suspended in space seems to be almost a direct lift from a British Airways ad of a few years back; the scenes of the Strangers assembled in their grotto recalls another commercial I seem to have seen, perhaps during some relatively recent Olympic coverage, which had a Big Brother theme and might have been made for Nike. Proyas made Nike commercials, according to his bio. Maybe he's paying homage to himself.
 * John Anderson, "Atmosphere Smothers 'Dark City'", (February 27, 1998).
 * "Dark City" by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor "Metropolis" in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Both are parables in which a dangerous weapon attacks the order of things: a free human who can see what really is, and question it. "Dark City" contains a threat more terrible than any of the horrors in "Metropolis," because the rulers of the city can control the memories of its citizens; if we are the sum of all that has happened to us, then what are we when nothing has happened to us?
 * In "Dark City" (1998), all of the human memories are newly fabricated when the hands of the clock reach 12. This is defined as "midnight," but the term is deceptive, because there is no noon. "First came darkness, then came the Strangers," we are told in the opening narration. In the beginning, there was no light. John Murdoch, the hero, asks Bumstead, the police detective: "When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?" Bumstead is surprised by the question. "You know something?" Murdoch asks him. "I don't think the sun even exists in this place. I've been up for hours and hours, and the night never ends here."
 * Roger Ebert, "Dark City", Chicago Sun-Times, (November 6, 2005).
 * The movie's premise—that what we call reality might simply be a fantasy imposed by an omniscient mad scientist—is unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously drug-addled mind. The world it envisions is a stylized, claustrophobic, fantasy of Depression-era New York City existing in perpetual night. Here the residents have unknowingly become the scientific playthings of a race of gray-faced fascistic aliens, the Strangers, whose voyeuristic obsession with human feeling recalls the sexual obsession experienced by those hyper-mental veiny-browed coneheads who fed off human fantasies in the pilot episode of Star Trek.
 * The invaders operate from secret catacombs in the heart of the city. Among their powers is an ability to put all the residents to sleep at the same time. While unconscious, they become subjects in an elaborate experiment involving injections through the forehead that mix and match people's memories. It is all a search for (get this!) the human soul. The Strangers also have the telekinetic ability to move objects, and during these blackouts in which time appears to stop, they rearrange the city's architecture. In the movie's most visually striking sequences, buildings shift, and the entire metropolis heaves into a different configuration.
 * Stephen Holden, "You Are Getting Sleepy: Who Are You, Anyway?", (Feb. 27, 1998).
 * This is essentially an old film noir amnesiac yarn, set in a hostile urban environment defined by late ’40s noir (“Dark City” could easily have served as the title for just about any noir ever made). But tale is shot through with a futuristic element that vastly increases the visual opportunities beyond dark shadows on slick city streets. Very appropriately for a picture about a desperate search through a labyrinth of time, memory and sinister manipulation, it takes a while for viewers to get their bearings. What is clear is that the Strangers, lean, bald, vampirelike men who dress in wide-brimmed hats and floor-length black coats and possess the ability to transform reality to their own purposes, have come to Earth to find a cure for their accursed mortality. So advanced are they that they can, through a process known as Tuning, will the world to a complete standstill, and can change the shape, size and very essence of material objects.
 * Visually, there is a great deal going on. Once you get over the startling resemblance of the threatening, perennially nocturnal city to the setting of “The Crow,” the differences start asserting themselves. Entirely created in the new Fox Film Studios in Sydney, the eponymous metropolis rendered with great imagination by production designers George Liddle and Patrick Tatopolous has the general feel and even the specific street sign style of ’40s New York, with Liz Keogh’s costume designs generally fitting that era as well. But the cars sometimes belong to more modern times, the low ceilings and cramped rooms evoke German Expressionism, and the superhuman powers of the Strangers endow everything with futuristic possibilities. Within the deterministic framework of the piece, performances are solid. The distinctively handsome Sewell is mainly obliged to express the desperate bewilderment and determination of a paranoid victim, and does so better than many others have done with similarly circumscribed roles. As the detective, Hurt fits with great ease into the attitude and look of the picture, while Sutherland has some fun with what can only be called the Peter Lorre role. Connelly fills the bill as the wife with whom the beleaguered hero tries to reconnect, and Richard O’Brien and Ian Richardson are the most prominent of the memorably fashioned Strangers.
 * Todd McCarthy, "Dark City", Variety, (February 19, 1998).
 * I'm a big fan of Alex Proyas' work, although this is really only his second movie (his first being The Crow). His work is truly visionary, and he has an impressive sense of style that permeates the entire movie, from the painstakingly crafted sets to the crafty editing of shots to communicate the tone of the scene. A very '40s film noir look dominates this film, with pools of light and dark competing for space on the screen, all with a feeling of gloom draped across the entire scene. The architecture is also noteworthy. It's as though someone took the Gotham City of Batman: The Animated Series and actually built it. It's claustrophobic, it's gritty, it's confusing, it's soul numbing, and it's great imagery.
 * Christopher Monfette, "Dark City Directors Cut Blu Ray Review", IGN, (31 JUL 2008).
 * I started off with this idea of a detective who was on a case that didn't make any logical sense and because he was an incredibly logical man he started going nuts. He thought he was going insane because the facts were just not adding up and they were pointing to some larger mystery that his brain just couldn't deal with.
 * I remember exactly when I got the idea. I was standing on the set of "The Crow" and we had built this roof-top set because we didn't have a great budget we just build these one-third scale buildings that we moved around on wheels so after we did a shot, we'd move them all around so we could make the background look different so we could shoot different scenes and you wouldn't see the same building in the background all the time. I remember standing there on the set and watching these buildings just move, because you couldn't see the guys moving them, so all you could see was just the building sliding across the set. And I just remember thinking that was really cool and I'd have to use that in some way. So I stuck it into this movie.
 * Well, the first draft had a fairly bleak end to the film, where the bad guys won at the end, but I just didn't like it. As I explored the story more and more it was about the individual's triumph in this world where individuality is being suppressed. Once I got into that mode there was no question that Murdoch had to win in the end and kind of wrest the power away from the strangers.
 * Alex Proyas "VISIONS OF 'STRANGERS' DANCE IN HIS HEAD: 30 minutes with 'Dark City' writer-director Alex Proyas", Spliced Wire, (February 13, 1998).

 * Dark City, like its predecessor, is a stunningly visual smorgasbord of tenebrous eye-candy, all creeping shadows and urban malaise. Proyas' ability to make a twilight cityscape look menacing is like no one else's. But apart from the sensory input he throws at you, Dark City is a curiously unengaging experience. It's like the CD-ROM games Myst or Riven blown up to huge cinematic proportions while the critical ideas driving the play are left behind. For all its dark splendor, nothing much happens to make you squirm or gasp or weep, as in The Crow. It flatlines before it ever begins. The story seems ripped from one of Kafka's lesser nightmares: Everyman John Murdoch (Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with blood seeping from his forehead. Suffering from amnesia, he doesn't know who or where he is, or what's going on (in this manner he functions as the viewer's surrogate throughout the film), but he soon runs into the mysterious Dr. Schreber (Sutherland), a paranoid, possibly dangerous physician newly graduated from the Peter Lorre School of Tics and Twitches. Schreber informs him that the city's inhabitants are the victims of some ongoing cosmic experiment being conducted by a race of black-clad, fedora-topped aliens called “The Strangers,” who hope to unlock the secrets of humanity by mixing and matching people's memories. The city, it seems, is entirely a construct of these film noir bad guys, who have the ability to alter reality at will (a power Murdoch himself has picked up as well). Proyas also throws in the only American actress to ever adequately survive a Dario Argento film – Jennifer Connelly – as Murdoch's estranged wife, and William Hurt (suitably vague) as a Forties-style gumshoe out to solve a series of citywide serial killings. Actually, the whole film has a post-WWII feel to it, thanks in part to George Liddle's spectacular production design and Dariusz Wolski's gorgeous cinematography, but the actual time period is anyone's guess. So is much of the plot, though Proyas, who also penned the script, does his best to make things adhere to some internal logic I never quite figured out. Dark City looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream.
 * Marc Savlov, "Dark City", Austin Chronicle, (02/27/1998).
 * "Dark City" grabs your eyeballs and squeezes. The new sci-fi thriller by director Alex Proyas rewrites movie rules, making its stand on visuals alone. It is hypnotic, haunting and, to be sure, dark. It is among the most memorable cinematic ventures in recent years. Maybe there's nothing wrong with a movie that is simply sensational to look at.
 * The plot is weak, and the self- conscious script tries too hard to be knowing and sexually suggestive. Judging from the dialogue alone, "Dark City" is a clumsy melodrama. But the film's twisting of reality and its daring look—layered and off-kilter grays, greens and blacks—make it click. The big-hatted Strangers, for example, simply dematerialize as they walk through brick walls. The viewer knows it's just a special effect, but Proyas weights these now-you-see-'em, now-you-don't figures with unpredictability. They're superhuman and cruelly detached from the film's stupefied human characters.
 * Peter Stack, ""The `Dark' Side / Stunning visuals overshadow thriller's muddled plot"", San Francisco Chronicle, (February 27, 1998).

Taglines

 * They built the city to see what makes us tick. Last night one of us went off.
 * Forget the Sun. Forget Time. Forget Your Memories.
 * A world where the night never ends. Where man has no past. And humanity has no future.
 * You are not who you think you are.

Cast

 * Rufus Sewell - John Murdoch
 * William Hurt - Inspector Frank Bumstead
 * Kiefer Sutherland - Dr. Daniel P. Schreber
 * Jennifer Connelly - Emma Murdoch/Anna
 * Richard O'Brien - Mr. Hand
 * Ian Richardson - Mr. Book
 * Bruce Spence - Mr. Wall
 * Colin Friels - Detective Eddie Walenski
 * Melissa George - May

title: Dark City (1998 film)