- [first lines]
- Mal's Mother: Malcolm, want your dinner now? I made fish sticks with mashed potatoes and string beans, okay? Did you hear me? Well, if you're not gonna tell me what you want, I'm gonna make your decisions for you,and you get what you get. Christ, the older you are, the more you remind me of your father. You hear that, Mal?
- Mal's Mother: [seeing him aiming at her from the hallway] What is that thing?
- Mal: [shoots her]
- Mal's Mother: [with labored breathing] Did you just do what I think you did? Oh, Mal! Who's gonna clean this up now.
- [collapses]
- Jeff: [narrating as people flee the mall] Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours. I *do* want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.
- Jeff: [narrating as Mal walks away from the mall] He went on two legs, wore clothes, and was a human being. But nevertheless, he was in reality a wolf of the Steppes. He had learned a good deal, and was a fairly clever fellow. But he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life. He knew all the time that he was in reality not a man.
- Jeff: [thinking about Mal's request to be shot] You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.
- Jeff: [narrating] I am not the coward in the woods with the gun. He is stuck in his man-wolf dichotomy. I am made up of many more elements than that. I am not stuck, I am unstuck.
- Jeff: [walking along] It's like what Orwell said, we all live in a giant machine. We're nothing but numbers. No one needs to torture me to make be behave, no cage of rats around my head. I have no choice but to behave.
- [stops to urinate on a dumpster]
- Jeff: And that's what they want - you to give in. So think about the rats and the futility, and you know what I say? Fuck it.
- Jeff: Look, they made that sidewalk to look a sidewalk to make this mall look like where people thrive. But it's not real. No one walks on the soul-less paths. No one cares about the dystopian landscaping. This place is like a cardboard cut-out of a mall. We believe in a world generated by computers and corporations. The reality does neither replicate a real human experience.
- [pointing at a kiosk]
- Jeff: Artificial scented candles.
- [a video playing]
- Jeff: Hmm, artificial sex appeal.
- [a Chinese place]
- Jeff: Cultural simulation. Nostalgia. Fabricated memories. Manufactured happiness. Hot cookies, fresh out of the oven. Just like mom never really made them.
- Adelle: Those smell good...
- Mal: You should think about going on a diet. You're a little overweight.
- Sales Girl: You smell, and have bad breath.
- Jeff: [observing a mother and child] That kid's gonna wake up one day and realize it's not his wife he hates. It's his mother. But since he married his mother, it'll be too late to do anything about it.
- Adelle: Where do you come up with these things?
- Jeff: I collect observations.
- Adelle: You should write them down, Jeff. Write a book.
- Jeff: I will.
- Jeff: [narrating as peeping tom is taunted] Life is always frightful. We cannot help it, and we are responsible all the same. One is born and at once one is guilty.
- Jeff: [drinking a beer] I used to always come here with my parents, before they got divorced. My dad always ordered the steak, medium rare. My mom always ordered the fish, as if by ordering fish she was some how improving herself. She was always trying to improve herself, never noticing any change.
- [last lines]
- Jeff: [narrating] One day I would be dealt a better hand than a king. One day, I would learn how to laugh.