“Reality turned to a shade darker than black.  I’d gone senseless.  Light disappeared, as did sound.  I could not feel cold nor warmth.  I had no means to recognize my mouth or nose, let alone the ability to taste or smell.  I’d become a corpse of consciousness.

Basic notions bounced about with no clear progression.  I had to know what?…no, who?…no, if?…no, where?…no when?…I was panicked, and with this my mind could not even formulate a question.  My thoughts began to swirl like a funnel, water circling a drain as they scoped to a pinpoint focus, and, like the lens of a camera, peripheral notions drowned as the focal point became clear.  My only understanding was that there was something to be known; that it was unknown to all, but did not have to be.  It was the acquisition of this knowledge on which my mind focused.  I entered a state beyond the inquisitive, beyond wonder itself.  It was a state of terrible anxiety, where I was aware of nothing, only I was cognizant of that fact.  Painful is the awareness of one’s own ignorance.  Caught in and endless loop of contradictions, I found that, in the absence of knowledge, nothing can ever be known.  We must observe an apple falling before we can understand the complexities of a black hole, and we must see our own blood before we know we can be cut.  Man’s war with this universe is to uncover all its secrets, and I had been completely disarmed in battle.”

“Like all films, it gave me the chance to be someone else.  It’s what I love about acting.  I got to explore the psyche and psychological convictions of a character who was conflicted and confused, whose actions contradicted his thought and whose thoughts contradicted themselves.  I cannot imagine better material to work with.  I love my job because I go into work and I don’t have to be me.  It’s constant self-reinvention.  Who wouldn’t love to live a thousand lives?  Even on a night like tonight, we’re not on a set or in studio, but I’m in character.  We all are.  Look around at this glory! We’re in costumes of tuxedoes and evening gowns.  It’s thrilling.”

-Franklin Patts

“That was the existence they desired, to live in a still and unchanging world. No, not to live, that would be giving them too much credit. To merely dwell, not to live. They accepted that the world spun, not out of comprehension, but as a simple necessity. It was a coping mechanism. They accepted it in the same way that men in the ancient world accepted that the sun was a chariot traveling across the sky. Because it spun in the past was the only reason to expect it to in the future. To them, life was only inertia.”

“I remember General Hailey’s line when he asked for his orders, ‘To fight is meaningless.  Surrender, too, is meaningless.  There is but one action to take; let them at least reach the outcome, whatever it is.  They deserve that much.  We all do.’  It’s a fitting message for humanity.  Death is the proper end for life.  It’s what we all deserve.”

-Chuck Hillard

“We used to call tall, lanky like the ones that he cast ‘larger than life’ because of how they looked.  People need to blend in naturally to the world, not stand out; no, stand above it.  He used men like they were accent marks on the set.  The kind of people presented in this film simply do not exist, and he seems to make a concerted effort to emphasize that fact.”

“Heroes should be an inspiration to live, not an escapist excuse to avoid life. “