No matter how complex these people were, how expansive their existences before these tales began, everything important about them, their motivations, their beliefs, their desires, could be ascertained and understood in the span of two hours and an intermission. It was so simple.

He's so nasty, treatin' her rough! Smackin' her around and always talkin' so tough! You need blood, and he's got more than enough! I need blood, and he's got more than enough!

The ones I hate the most in the world are the guys who still have lives to live, but they don’t make any effort to live them! Then, my type is the type you hate the most.

Dig through the graveyard, rub the bones against my face. It gets real nice around the graveyard once you've acquired the taste.

Four years and I’m hollowing out.

I can smell the forest god's blessing on you. If you knew anything you'd wash until it came off with your skin.

Your niece regards me with an eye of favour. That eye my daughter lent her: 'tis most true. And I do with an eye of love requite her. The sight whereof I think you had from me, from Claudio and the prince: but what's your will? Your answer, sir, is enigmatical.

You've got a friend in Beelzebub, a mixture of friendship and lust. Letters you've penned to Beelzebub have brought civilizations to dust.

When she's especially emotional, she likes to repeat relevant words a couple times, as if to assert their reality.

To think he went through all this trouble for the sake of a single hero. It’s almost admirable in its absurdity. What a disappointment you turned out to be. But look at you now, halfway to becoming a monster. You are unworthy of my patronage.

Sad as a painted clown, a beautiful boy in an ugly town. But when your circus closes down, don't walk away from me.

Let us be circumspect, surrounded as we are. Let us be courteous, since we cannot be wise.

The sirens in The Odyssey sang The Odyssey, for there is nothing more seductive, more terrible, than the story of our own life, the one we do not want to hear and will do anything to listen to.

The anguish of Achilles bleeding out face-down in the Trojan dirt.

amiably absurd, extravagantly and pointlessly beautiful

DAMASOS the Trojan Running at a man thinking kill kill In years to come someone will find his helmet Shaped like a real head

Kids understand that real crabs don’t sing like the ones in The Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and they start asking dumb questions like ‘How does Superman fly? Who pumps the Batmobile’s tires?’ It’s a fucking made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!

I wish that you didn’t think you had to be lonely. I’m right here, I’m right there in the mountains, you can’t miss ‘em. I wish you’d asked me to stay the night, I would have.

I will do what I must to see this mistake consigned to history once and for all… even if it means begging for your aid. The fates will enjoy the irony, even as I endure the ignominy.

My dear Doctor, I often imagine what your first visit to Cardassia might be like. When first we met, I pictured us strolling through the capital, finding shade under the ancient trees. A pleasant fantasy, and one that sustained me considerably during the early years of my exile.

I ain't saying that I loved you first. But I loved you best.

You can tell me all your secrets till you're blue in the face. You can stare into my eyes, but I'll be off in a daze.

Woe to the love-affair which should have risked itself beside him!

Recently arrived and camping apart from everyone, with weapons clean and laid down like cutlery (this is horrible, this is some kind of bloodfeast), twelve anonymous Thracians were killed in their sleep, before their ghosts had time to keep hold of their names. It was so sudden.

You are after those words you can own and ways of putting them in phrases and lines that are yours by right of obsessive musical deed.

In your bed, as you slept, and I held my breath.

They see religious experience as a kind of horror movie: experiencing embodiments of the divine that evoke feelings of terror.

Tell me about the outside world. What part of it that I do not understand hurt you?

Our lives will never again be in such close proximity. It will always be a moving away from each other, from this point on. Which is to say, to love a sibling is to anchor your life to a series of sanctioned departures.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

He tried to get away from his own ending, he ran out his last moments in fear of the next ones, but this is it now. This is the mud of Troy.

pasty, fiendish, and sensitive

For Ariel’s “I Want” ballad, the directors had asked for a love paean about the prince, but Ashman (always so attuned to what really drove his characters) felt that it would be a stronger choice for Ariel to be fascinated with the world above; to desperately want to explore.

SPOCK (gently) On my world the nights are very long. My people know there is always time enough for everything. You could come with me for a rest. You would feel comfortable there. KIRK (hopelessly) All the time in the world… SPOCK And filled with tomorrows.

He's so nasty, treatin' her rough! Smackin' her around and always talkin' so tough! You need blood, and he's got more than enough! I need blood, and he's got more than enough!

Alisaie? Alisaie, listen: there are soldiers wounded and dying all around us - soldiers with families, just like you and me. They need our help. Do you understand?

Vampiric creatures have roots deep in numerous world mythologies but first popped out of their coffins in modern literature through several eighteenth-century German works.

Get out of bed, put on some clothes, and find your shoes. At least there's nothing more you could really lose, now is there?

Some of us can only live in songs of love and trouble. Some of us can only live in bubbles.

After years of life together, you feel the sinking of the fire and thus fade away together, gradually, faintly, delicately, as it were in each other’s arms, passing from the familiar room – that is a power of unison between souls like love itself!

His gaze was unwavering, and revealed nothing but a man in stasis, a judgment held on the tip of the tongue, begging for an excuse to run rampant.

Seen you eating catfood out of a can. You was using a fork. Seems like you got some manners..i like that.

I know Death. I have been dancing with you my entire life. So I neither fear nor desire you, but I know you. And this is as close as I will allow you.

And who steered you on to reading poetry first? I did! And because I once wanted to write, I planted it in your mind that someday you’d write! Hell, you’re more than my brother. I made you! You’re my Frankenstein!

The truth is, I am a toy that people enjoy 'til all of the tricks don't work anymore – and then they are bored of me.

I thought it true that the older the thing the closer it was to the end of its life cycle and the less harm there was in taking it, but also true that the younger a thing, the less its grip was on its own life and the more willing it would be to be lifted out of its environment.

Of all the people in the world who have miserable lives – and, as I’m sure you know, there are quite a few – the Baudelaire orphans take the cake, a phrase which here means that more horrible things have happened to them than just about anybody.

You would not kill me. You did not steal me from murderers to murder me yourself.

That taught him to need people better than I ever could. Need people? But he doesn't need anyone. You should look at him closer. He needs his friends. He needs you. No, he doesn't. He doesn't. He's always… he's always so…

Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die.