24.

The following is my collection of quotes from the graphic novel Watchmen, written by Alan Moore.


"Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and god was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hellbound as ourselves; go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."
           -Walter Kovacs/Rorschach


"Who of us is responsible? Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there… a clock without a craftsman."
           -Jon Osterman/Doc Manhattan

"There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet."
           -Jon Osterman/Doc Manhattan

"…The point of all that struggling; the purpose of this endless labor; accomplishing nothing, leaving people empty and disillusioned. Leaving people broken."
           -Jon Osterman/Doc Manhattan


"The Earth. Humanity. All we've ever known… "end of the world" does the concept no justice. The world's present would end. Its future, immeasurably vaster, would also vanish. Even our past would be cancelled. Our struggle from the primal ooze, every childbirth, every personal sacrifice rendered meaningless, leading only to dust, tossed on the void-winds. Save for Richard Nixon whose name adorns a plaque upon the moon, no human vestige would remain. Ruins become sand, sand blows away… all our richness and color and beauty would be lost… …as if it had never been."
           -Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias


(Note: These conversations take place at different times throughout the book.)


"Laurie: '…The most powerful thing in the universe and you're just a puppet following a script?'

Jon: 'We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.'"



"Laurie: 'Humanity is about to become extinct. Doesn't that bother you? All those people dead…'

Jon: 'All that pain and conflict done with? All that needless suffering over at last? No… No, that doesn't bother me. All those generations of struggle, what purpose did they ever achieve? All that effort, and what did it ever lead to?'"



"Laurie: '…Just the existence of life, isn't that significant?'

Jon: 'In my opinion, it's a highly overrated phenomenon. Mars sets along perfectly without so much as a micro-organism. See: There's the south pole beneath us now… No life. No life at all, but giant steps, ninety feet high scoured by dust and wind into a constantly changing topographical map, flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide. Tell me… would it be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?'"



"Laurie: '…Everyone will die…'

Jon: '…And the universe will not even notice. We've been through this before, Laurie. You argued that human life was more significant than this excellent desolation and I was not convinced. You attempted to compare the mere uncertainty in your existence with the chaos of the world beneath us…'