History Quotes / EmptyShell

->''MT Foxtrot unnerves me. Man or machine, over a long enough timeline everything hits terminal fatigue: mental, or metal. This guy's hit both. A shot-out barrel, a double-fed cartridge stuck in the rifle of a dead conscript. Just look at [[ThousandYardStare his eyes]] - no time left on the clock.''

->''MT Foxtrot unnerves me. Man or machine, over a long enough timeline everything hits terminal fatigue: mental, or metal. This guy's hit both. A shot-out barrel, a double-fed cartridge stuck in the rifle of a dead conscript. [[ThousandYardStare Just look at his eyes]] - no time left on the clock.''

->''Sure, there's the [[VideoGame/CrueltySquad offworld death squad work]] on the CV and that exotic tac rig he wears to back it up. He walks, he might talk, he obeys orders better than all of these cut-rate lotto ticket the SNC loves handing out so much, but I'm telling you: there's no driver at the wheel. Send him back to his original handler, the one even uglier than me. When this guy detonates, nobody is going to want to be around to witness it.''

->''"It's so cute... [[OhCrapFakeout how you THINK that would work on me]]! Don't you know I'm dead inside?"''
-->-- '''"Big" Jack Horner''', ''WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish''

>-'''Libby:''' Molly, you're a wraith! A living person who has literally given up the ghost!\\

->"Perhaps we tried to make a human without a heart."

->''MT Foxtrot unnerves me. Man or machine, over a long enough timeline everything hits terminal fatigue: mental, or metal. This guy's hit both. A shot-out barrel, a double-fed cartridge stuck in the rifle of a dead conscript. Just look at his eyes - [[ThousandYardStare no time left on the clock.]]''

-->--'''MB''''s Acquisition Entry on '''MT Foxtrot''', ''VideoGame/{{Brigador}}''

-> “I lobotomized it.” I gave her another down-the-nose look. “How do you think I’ve been holding onto it for all these months with only Ysa for help?”\\

--> ''Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}}: How I Live Now''

->''The door opened to reveal Applejack. Despite the fact that she’d been in the middle of breaking and entering, there was no anger or hostility or alarm or anything whatsoever on the Earth pony’s face. The emptiness which sat in Applejack’s eyes was the same as that in Rarity’s own. Both of them walked forward. Their shoulders bumped against each other, their sides slid alongside one another like two pieces of wheeled luggage at a train station. No words were spoken.''

->''"Slumped shoulders, wild eyes, and a stumbling gait — [[BadBoss this one is no more good to us.]]"''
->''"Another soul, battered and broken... cast aside like a spent torch."''
->''"This one has become vestigial... useless."''
-->--'''The Narrator''', ''Videogame/DarkestDungeon'', when dismissing a hero

->''He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that. Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of [[FinalSolution his entry number]]; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man. I think that even he has forgotten his name, certainly he acts as if this was so. When he speaks, when he looks around, he gives the impression of being empty inside, nothing more than an involucre, like the slough of certain insects.''
-->-- '''Primo Levi''', ''Literature/IfThisIsAMan''

-->-- [[spoiler:'''O'Brien''',]] ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''

->''And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?''
-->-- '''Sister Miriam Godwinson''', "We must Dissent", ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri''

->''Kiriyama...saw past him...nothing there...emptiness.''

->''Barely human...like a machine...he doesn't care what happens to himself...he doesn't care what happens to himself...empty inside...no consequence...it's not just us...he doesn't care about himself.''

->''"You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no...anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just--exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever...lost."''

->Later, much later, when Piers and Ilane are able to look at their third son again, they will reflect that it was almost like losing two children. [[TheAtoner Conal]] goes off to the Palace with the shadow of what he has done still hanging over him, and when they return from the Yamani Isles he is a stranger, a tall, whip-thin, silent boy with a badly-healed broken nose and huge shadows under his pale grey eyes.

-> The door opened to reveal Applejack. Despite the fact that she’d been in the middle of breaking and entering, there was no anger or hostility or alarm or anything whatsoever on the Earth pony’s face. The emptiness which sat in Applejack’s eyes was the same as that in Rarity’s own. Both of them walked forward. Their shoulders bumped against each other, their sides slid alongside one another like two pieces of wheeled luggage at a train station. No words were spoken.
-->-- The first few moments of the Swap in FanFic/DividedRainbow

->It is said that memories are what make us who we are. Personal, private, intimate— small fragments of the life that we have lived. Memories are precious gems to remind us of times when we were happy, or they are weights that burden and callous [sic] our souls. Without our memories we are nothing but a living shell that is empty, with no past or origin, existing simply to exist.
->''That is what I am.''
->I have no recollections of my past that are my own, knowing only what is recounted to me. Within my mind's eye are no faces of any beings that I recognise as mother or father. There are no friends or siblings whose names I recall fondly, nor are there any happy memories, or moments that have shaped and moulded the entity that I am.
-->-- ''[[http://sleyf.deviantart.com/art/Circlebound-Blessed-Be-The-Queen-prologue-421609846 Circlebound]]'' by Sleyf and [=BlueNephelim=]

->''You won't talk. Or - you ''can't'' talk? Hold on, hold on, wait a minute, just let me - OH! No. YES! Nooo! Think it through - you spoke before. I heard your voice. An intelligent voice; no, more than that, brilliant! But, looking at you now, all I can see...is...Beast. The animal. Just the body. You're just the body, the physical form. What's happened to your mind, hmm? Where's it gone? Where's that intelligence?...Oh, no...''
-->-- '''The Doctor''', ''Series/DoctorWho'', "The Satan Pit"

-->-- "Cry For Judas", by '''The Mountain Goats'''

-->-- ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse - Possessed: A Player's Guide''

->Always before when I have seen [[BigBad him]], he has been [[LargeHam speaking with his whole body]], [[ChewingTheScenery using his physicality for all it's worth]]. Now he sits, slack, in this chair in this featureless box. His eyes are open, and he is looking straight ahead. It seems at first that he is dead. If so, he has gone into rigor in place; they will never be able to get him out of the chair without bolt cutters (the dirty secret of undertakers). On the other hand, with the muscle he has, I'd expect him to be more contorted. He should be all wrapped around himself, like a spider in the rain. He is not. If anything, he's like a sleeper. If I lean my head, I can see his chest move slowly, in and out.
->[[spoiler: Humbert Pestle]] is not dead. He has been put away. This is how he is when he is not the Boss. When he has no purpose. [[spoiler: Humbert Pestle]] [[WhamLine is a type A pencilneck, and this is what he is when there is no work to be done]].

->These beautiful women are every bit the model stereotype, [[BrainlessBeauty vapid and distant]]. They also seem so high on drugs that they appear utterly incapable of even feeding themselves. That is, of course, because they are incapable of feeding themselves; the models of the Avalon House are simply pretty shells, a wardrobe of skins that the magicians behind the fashion house [[BodySurf use]] to maintain their network of information, wealth and debauchery.
-->--''[[TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness Immortals]]''

-->--''Videogame/DwarfFortress'', when a dwarf goes Catatonic

->A pomegranate bounced off the cart and exploded against the face of the female adventurer from Slippery John's party, who was walking along on the left. She didn't so much as flinch, but continued walking at a perfectly maintained pace, swaying her hips in exactly the same motion with with each step, juicy seeds dripping off her fine upturned nose. Experimentally, I leaned out of the cage and waved a hand in front of her eyes. Not a blink.
->"[[ThirdPersonPerson Slippery John wouldn't bother if Slippery John were you]]," said Slippery John from the other side of the cage. "She's got the Syndrome."
->"[[CovertPervert She looks healthy to me]]," I said, watching her tea-colored thighs rotating like synchronized metronomes.
->"That's the thing. Syndrome only affects the good-looking ones. Drylda over there used to be an adventurer like anyone else. Quested part-time to pay her way through college, y'know. Then the Syndrome hit her. Out of nowhere, that's how it always goes. They stand around like they've got a broom up their arse, start talking weird, lose interest in everything [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything except quests and having the best armor]]. Sometimes they stopped moving altogether for days at a time. Don't even wake up, no matter how many times you fondle and sniff their pert bodies." A pause. "[[IHaveThisFriend Or so Slippery John hears]]."

->"He can reshape any mind he chooses. He used it to erase our memories, put his own thoughts there. He was surprised it took so much power. We fought him, remember? But we grew so tired, our minds so blank, so open, that any thought he placed there became our thoughts. Our minds so empty like a sponge, needing thoughts, begging. Empty. Loneliness. So lonely to be sitting there empty, wanting any word from him..."
-->-- '''Dr Van Gelder''', ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', "Dagger of the Mind"

->''Growing up in the [[DarkWorld Nightside]], I saw a lot of dead men walking about. They could walk and talk and go through the motions, [[TheAlcoholic drifting from bar to bar and drink to drink]], but there was nothing left behind their eyes. Nothing that mattered. My father was a dead man for years, long before his heart finally, mercifully, gave out and they nailed the coffin lid down.''
-->--'''John Taylor,''' ''[[Literature/{{Nightside}} Something From The Nightside]]''

->'''Jack Slash:''' Do you know what ''tabula rasa'' is, boy?
->'''Theo Anders:''' No, sir.
->'''Jack Slash:''' Blank slate. A piece of paper with nothing on it. A formatted computer. A tombstone without the name on it. Seems [Oni Lee] can [[SelfDuplication copy his body]] just fine when he teleports, but something in his mind gets left behind. Once I realized it, picked up on the fact that he was little more than a robot wanting his orders, I informed him I had decided we had no need for his services, we fought, and… here we are.
-->-- ''{{Literature/Worm}}''

->'''Isaac:''' How do we get their minds back? The ones who've been taken.
->'''Vermishank:''' Back? Ah... you cannot.
->'''Isaac:''' Don't lie to me.
->'''Vermishank:''' ''They have been drunk.'' They have been ''drunk'': their thoughts have been taken, their dreams - their conscious and subconscious - have been burnt up in the [[AnimalisticAbomination moths]]' stomachs, have trickled out to feed the grubs. Have you taken [[FantasticDrug dreamshit]], Isaac? Any of you? If you have, ''you'' have dreamed them, the victims, the prey. You have had their metabolized minds slip into your stomach and you have ''dreamed'' them. ''[[WhamLine There is nothing left to save. There is nothing to get back.]]''
-->--''Literature/PerdidoStreetStation''

->'''Linda Forchet''': Charlie, you are the quietest man I've ever known.\\
'''Major Charles Rane''': That's 'cause I can't think of anything to say. It's like my eyes are open and I'm looking at you but I'm dead. They've pulled out whatever it was inside of me. It never hurt at all after that and it never will.
-->--''Film/RollingThunder''

-->--'''Patrick Bateman''', ''Film/AmericanPsycho''

->When all traces of humanity have gone, and all that remains is the body, the blade, and the urge to kill, [[TheJuggernaut the Mask]] has arrived.
-->--''TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil: Slasher''

-->--'''Louis''', ''Film/InterviewWithTheVampire''

->''"Slumped shoulders, wild eyes, and a stumbling gait — this one is no more good to us."''

-->-- '''Sister Miriam Godwinson''', [[VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri "We must Dissent"]]

->Growing up in the [[DarkWorld Nightside]], I saw a lot of dead men walking about. They could walk and talk and go through the motions, [[TheAlcoholic drifting from bar to bar and drink to drink]], but there was nothing left behind their eyes. Nothing that mattered. My father was a dead man for years, long before his heart finally, mercifully, gave out and they nailed the coffin lid down.

'''Merlyse:''' ''[[DefiedTrope No. No, that's not true.]]''\\

'''Merlyse:''' ''How long has he been a Controller?''\\

'''Merlyse:''' ''Delareyne settled three months ago. A dæmon settles into a form that shows the human's personality. Who they really are. If there were really nothing left of Tom, Del wouldn't have settled. He wouldn't have a personality for her to show. He's still in there. He hasn't lost who he is.''\\

'''Melyse:''' ''How long has he been a Controller?''\\