“I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look 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 isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.”

“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.”

“Dan: We're looking at World War Three within the WEEK! I mean, what do we DO? The stakes are so high and humanity is so close to the edge...Rorschach: Some of us have always lived on edge, Daniel. It is possible to survive there if you observe rules: Just hang on by fingernails... and never look down.”

“The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959. [...] I'm tired of looking at the photograph now. I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us... All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. [...] It's October, 1985. I'm basking in the two-million-year-old light of Andromeda. I can see the supernova that Ernst Hartwig discovered in 1885, a century ago. It scintillates, a wink intended for the Trilobites, all long dead. Supernovas are where gold forms; the only place. All gold comes from supernovas.”

“Rorschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. 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.”

“It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.”

“Nite-Owl: Look, I just meant we took enough unnecessary risks retrieving your outfit this morning...Rorschach: Unnecessary? Cowering down here in sludge and pollution, conjuring names on screens, learning nothing: that is unnecessary. Give me smallest finger on man's hand. I'll produce information. Computer unnecessary. This face, all that's necessary... all I need.”