Awakenings

Leonard: "It's quiet."
Dr. Sayer: "Yes, everybody's sleeping."
Leonard: "I'm not."

"I can't imagine being older than 22. I've no experience at it. I know it's not 1926. I just need it to be."

Margaret: "Miriam, there's no easy way to tell you this, so - your husband - he was granted a divorce from you in 1952."
Miriam: "Oh, thank God!"

"His gaze is from the passing of bars so exhausted, that it doesn't hold a thing anymore. For him, it's as if there were thousands of bars and behind the thousands of bars no world. The sure stride of lithe, powerful steps, that around the smallest of circles turns, is like a dance of pure energy about a center, in which a great will stands numbed. Only occasionally, without a sound, do the covers of the eyes slide open. An image rushes in, goes through the tensed silence of the frame... only to vanish, forever, in the heart."

Beth: "Miriam! I have to take your blood pressure!"
Miriam: "I've been sitting still for 25 years. You missed your chance."

Dr. Sayer: "You told him I was a kind man. How kind is it to give life, only to take it away?"
Eleanor: "It's given to and taken away from all of us."
Dr. Sayer: "Why does that not comfort me?"
Eleanor: "Because you are a kind man. Because he's your friend."

"I'm sorry, if you were right, I would agree with you."

"What we do know is that, as the chemical window closed, another awakening took place; that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and that is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter. This is what we'd forgotten... the simplest things."