“When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye and, and the rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

“Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?”

“Love and death are very similar. They're the times in your life when you most want to believe in magic, when you yearn for some symbolic act or retrospective edit that can change the world you find yourself in.”

“We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity--governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity wit which we rendered them.”

“I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)”