This life was so close to never happening — 25th Hour

"Youre a New Yorker, that wont ever change. You got New York in your bones. Spend the rest of your life out west but youre still a New Yorker. Youll miss your friends, youll miss your dog, but youre strong. You got your mothers backbone in you, youre strong like she was. You find the right people, and you get yourself papers, a drivers license. You forget your old life, you cant come back, you cant call, you cant write. You never look back. You make a new life for yourself and you live it, you hear me? You live your live the way it should have been. But maybe, this is dangerous, but maybe after a few years you send word to Naturelle. You get yourself a new family and you raise them right, you hear me? Give them a good life Monty. Give them what they need. You have a son, maybe you name him James, its a good strong name, and maybe one day years from now years after Im dead and gone reunited with your dear ma, you gather your whole family around and tell them the truth, who you are, where you come from, you tell them the whole story. Then you ask them if they know how lucky they are to be there. It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening."

"[to Monty] Youve never been west of Philly, have ya? This is a beautiful country Monty, its beautiful out there, like a different world. Mountains, hills, cows, farms, and white churches. I drove out west with your mother one time, before you was born. Brooklyn to the Pacific in three days. Just enough money for gas, sandwiches, and coffee, but we made it. Every man, woman, and child alive should see the desert one time before they die. Nothin at all for miles around. Nothin but sand and rocks and cactus and blue sky. Not a soul in sight. No sirens. No car alarms. Nobody honkin atcha. No madmen cursin or pissin in the streets. You find the silence out there, you find the peace. You can find God. So we drive west, keep driving till we find a nice little town. These towns out in the desert, you know why they got there? People wanted to get way from somewhere else. The deserts for startin over. Find a bar and Ill buy us drinks. I havent had a drink in two years, but Ill have one with you, one last whisky with my boy. Take our time with it, taste the barley, let it linger. And then Ill go. Ill tell you dont ever write me, dont ever visit, Ill tell you I believe in Gods kingdom and Ill see you and your mother again, but not in this lifetime. Youll get a job somewhere, a job that pays cash, a boss who doesnt ask questions, and you make a new life and you never come back."

"This is my advice to you: When you get there, figure it out whos who. Find the man nobodys protecting. A man without friends. And beat him until his eyes bleed. Let them think you are little bit crazy, but respectful, too. Respectful of the right men."

"One wrong choice... one last night... 24 hours to live a lifetime"

"I have been in three different prisons, Montgomery. Three different countries. And you know what I learned? I learned prison is a bad place to be."

"Philip Seymour Hoffman - Jacob Elinsky"

"In the life of the mass-order, the culture of the generality tends to conform to the demands of the average human being. Spirituality decays through being diffused among the masses when knowledge is impoverished in every possible way by rationalisation until it becomes accessible to the crude understanding of all."

"The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life."

"Jewish custom, which traces descent solely from the mother, is more sensible and more discreet. Our own lawgivers cant accept the fact that there are many things in family life that are best kept shrouded in mystery."

"One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved."

"If it fulfills our hopes, this center will be, at once, a symbol and a reflection and a hope. It will symbolize our belief that the world of creation and thought are at the core of all civilization. Only recently in the White House we helped commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. The political conflicts and ambitions of his England are known to the scholar and to the specialist. But his plays will forever move men in every corner of the world. The leaders that he wrote about live far more vividly in his words than in the almost forgotten facts of their own rule. Our civilization, too, will largely survive in the works of our creation. There is a quality in art which speaks across the gulf dividing man from man and nation from nation, and century from century. That quality confirms the faith that our common hopes may be more enduring than our conflicting hostilities. Even now men of affairs are struggling to catch up with the insights of great art. The stakes may well be the survival of civilization. The personal preferences of men in government are not important--except to themselves. However, it is important to know that the opportunity we give to the arts is a measure of the quality of our civilization. It is important to be aware that artistic activity can enrich the life of our people, which really is the central object of Government. It is important that our material prosperity liberate and not confine the creative spirit."

"I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hairs-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up — he had judged. The horror! He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth — the strange commingling of desire and hate."