When I was a boy, I was brought up in a circus. My only real friend was a huge, magnificent, African bull elephant. One day, his handler mistreated him and he went berserk. Bleeding, dying, he came and found me, stood on one leg, his best trick, picked me up and put me on his back. The drunken handler came along and emptied his gun into his eye. I emptied my stage pistol into his! You see, Mr. Bond, I always thought I loved animals. Then I discovered that I enjoyed killing people even more.
—Francisco Scaramanga, The Man with the Golden Gun
There are those hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or, if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman.
That's the last time I lose to you… Sullivan.
—Randall Boggs, Monsters University
We all start out the same, with simple naive trust,
Shielded from the many ways that life's not fair or just.
But then there comes a moment, a simple truth that you must face:
If you depend on others, you'll never find your place.
And when you take that first step, on a path that's all your own,
You see it all so clearly, the best way to survive is all alone.
Shielded from the many ways that life's not fair or just.
But then there comes a moment, a simple truth that you must face:
If you depend on others, you'll never find your place.
And when you take that first step, on a path that's all your own,
You see it all so clearly, the best way to survive is all alone.
—Tempest Shadow, My Little Pony: The Movie (2017)
At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier. I couldn't believe they wanted this man dead. Third generation West Point, top of his class. Korea, Airborne. About a thousand decorations, etcetera, etcetera. I had heard his voice on the tape and it really put the hook in me. But I couldn't connect up that voice with this man. Like they said, he had an impressive career, maybe too impressive; I mean perfect. He was being groomed for one of the top slots in the corporation: General, Chief of Staff, anything. In 1964, he returned from a tour with advisory command in Vietnam and things started to slip. His report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Lyndon Johnson was restricted. It seems they didn't dig what he had to tell 'em.
—Willard, Apocalypse Now
There in lies the path to Hell. Edw- Caesar needed me to translate. Translation became giving orders. Giving orders became leading into battle. Leading into battle became training, punishing, terrorising. A series of small mistakes before a great fall. And I stayed in that darkness until after Hoover Dam. Until I failed Caesar and he had me burned alive, and thrown into the Grand Canyon.
"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said - no. But somehow we missed it."
—Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
"One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?"
— Oatsie Manglehand, Wicked
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Movable Feast
No one becomes depraved all at once.
— Juvenal, Satires
In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.
— James Oliver Curwood, The Case of Beauvais
"Once there was a man named Jack who wanted to find a Vault and become a hero. Things kind of escalated from there."
—Loading Screen of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!
Weaver paused in her work and looked around. The harder she looked, the less sense her work made to her. "What is the point," she asked, "in making pattern and form if Wyld changes it and Wyrm destroys it constantly?" Her question echoed in the void, unheeded and unanswered.
She cried out in anguish; her mind fractured. In this way was the Tellurian wounded.
— Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Book Of The Weaver
There was a moment, Che, when the universe slowed. You were on the bed with two women. "Top of the world, ma!" you yelled, flexing in the mirror. Hamburger slapping brick. I was on the floor. The wallpaper patterns... moved... I saw sleepy mouths swallowing planets. I knew, right then, I was where I needed to be.
So much time in that room, Che. I left a different person.
—The Black Signal, The Secret World
Every Infernalist, whether he learns the Black Arts or not, reaches a time in his life where goodness seems pathetic. For whatever reason, he feels the hunger of the inner abyss, sees the eyes that surround him in the night, and decides that he was never meant for a life of virtue. Every human being, at some point, hears the Darkness call his name. But while other people wander in the woods a short ways from the fire, the diabolist decides to enter the night unafraid note and see where his instincts take him.
—Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade - Infernalism
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... only you won't admit it!"
Supergirl: Diana said the Joker was executed. Were you the one who...?
Superman: I took one life to save millions.
Supergirl: But it wasn't just one, Kal, was it? How many? How many?! Everywhere I go, people are afraid of this... Now I know why.
Superman: I took one life to save millions.
Supergirl: But it wasn't just one, Kal, was it? How many? How many?! Everywhere I go, people are afraid of this... Now I know why.
I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and children too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals! I hate them!
— Anakin Skywalker, on the Tusken Raiders who killed his mother, Attack of the Clones
How their father [Doctor Sivana] had managed to manufacture them, he had never been certain. He had reportedly given their mother a shot of something, with her concession, that would produce magnificent physical specimens in their offspring. Mom had agreed to it. After all, who doesn't want beautiful children? But Magnificus's birth had taxed her, and she never quite recovered from bearing Beautia. Within two months of the girl's birth, their mother was dead.
He figured that had something to do with how his father turned out in later years. That, and the perpetual wall of NO his father had run into, every time he tried to sell his new theories of industry to the barons of commerce and manufacturing.
He figured that had something to do with how his father turned out in later years. That, and the perpetual wall of NO his father had run into, every time he tried to sell his new theories of industry to the barons of commerce and manufacturing.
"What's the difference between killing one man or two? Yeah. That's right. My path was set in stone... The day I killed Dojima and I abandoned Kiryu. I'll show everyone. I'll make it to the top. And to do that... I'll kill as many as it takes!"
— Akira Nishikiyama, Yakuza Kiwami
"In my years fighting crime, I learned one truth — that every villain is the hero of his own story. Superman was no exception. The Joker drugged him, tricked him into killing his pregnant wife Lois, and made him trigger the bomb that nuked Metropolis. So when Superman killed the Joker, I understood why. We all did. But once that line was crossed, there was no going back. He gave himself and the Justice League a new mandate: Stop all crime before it happened, by any means necessary. But he couldn't see his good intentions were leading him down a path of tyranny and evil. That's how our greatest hero became our greatest threat."
—Bruce Wayne on how Superman became a tyrant, Injustice 2
Fix-It Felix Jr.: "Well, back when the arcade first opened, "TurboTime" was by far the most popular game. And Turbo, ugh, he loved the attention. So, when "RoadBlasters" got plugged in and stole Turbo's thunder...boy, was he jealous. So jealous, that he abandoned his game and tried to take over the new one. Turbo ended up putting both games and himself out of order for good.
Calhoun: Yes, the selfish man is like a mangy dog chasing a cautionary tale.''
Calhoun: Yes, the selfish man is like a mangy dog chasing a cautionary tale.''
—The origins of "Going Turbo", Wreck-It Ralph
