- Veronika: [first lines]
- Veronika: Well, let's see. After you decide that I'm depressed, or whatever, you'll put me on meds, right? Well I know hundreds of people on them and they're all doing just fine. Really. I'll go back to work on my new anti-depressants, have dinner with my parents and persuade them I'm back to being the normal one who never gives them any trouble. And one day some guy will ask me to marry him. He'll be nice enough. That'll make my parents very happy. The first year we'll make love all the time, and in the second and third less and less. But just as we're getting sick of each other, I'll get pregnant. Taking care of kids, holding onto jobs, paying mortgages, It'll keep us on an even keel for a while. Then about ten years into it he'll have an affair because I'm too busy and I'm too tired. And I'll find out. I'll threaten to kill him, his mistress... myself. We'll get past it. A few years later he'll have another one. This time I'm just going to pretend that I don't know because somehow kicking up a fuss just doesn't seem worth the trouble this time. And I'll live out the rest of my days sometimes wishing my kids could have the life that I never had. Other times secretly pleased they're turning into repeats of me. I'm fine. Really.
- Dr. Blake: Until she finds out from some other doctor that she's perfectly healthy, she'll consider each day a miracle. Which in my view, it is.
- Veronika: I hate you.
- Dr. Blake: Really? Tell me about it.
- Veronika: Fine. I hate your stupid desk. And I hate your ugly ties. And I hate your ridiculous socks. And I hate everyone locked up in this place. And I hate my parents for spending their very last penny to keep me in this zoo. God forbid they should ever, for one moment, live their own lives. Is that what they came here for? To be the fucking same as everybody else? And I hate the jerks in my office who think the money they earn makes them "the shit". And more than anything I hate the zombies on the subway who have forgotten all of their dreams or the fact that they ever had any to begin with!
- Dr. Blake: I have some terrifying news for you.
- Veronika: What could be more terrifying than this?
- Dr. Blake: You sound like you might be feeling better. Answer me honestly, please. Doesn't it feel better to feel better?
- Mari: You know, I heard you last night. playing the piano in a way I've rarely heard before. I recognized that you played with so much soul because you know you're going to die. I thought, 'I'm going to die. Where's my soul?' I lost it... to a husband and a job and a house I never had the courage to leave. Now, today I feel it again.
- Veronika: I wasn't myself last night. Or maybe I really was. Nothing makes any sense anymore.
- Mari: Some people go their whole lives searching for one moment like the one you had, and never achieve it. You had a thousand in you.
- Veronika: Hasn't anyone else noticed that everyone has gone totally insane? Why are we all so afraid to look at things as they really are?
- Veronika: I want people to know that I'm killing myself rather than participate in the collective madness of this world we are all living in. This is not the real world.
- Claire: Learn to think as those around you think and you can pass yourself off as anything. You think outsiders are any less crazy than we are?
- Veronika: Well, how long do I have? A year? Years?
- Dr. Thompson: Exact estimates are impossible. Not years.
- Veronika: Okay, so six months? Five months? Four months?
- Dr. Thompson: It could be any time. Um... two weeks. One week.
- Veronika: Two weeks or one week, which is it?
- Dr. Thompson: More like one.
- Veronika: I have to wait that long?
- Dr. Thompson: Well, uh...
- Veronika: If I succeeded, why don't you just kill me now?
- Dr. Blake: In order to lose someone, you must first experience authentic attachment. Now, if Edward could recover normal affect to the point where he'd be capable of genuine loss, I think I'd consider that my finest hour as a doctor.
- Edward: They say what doesn't destroy you makes you stronger, but what if it leaves you so weak, it feels wrong not to be destroyed?
- Claire: If someone with only a short time to live, spends it watching a man sleeping, I'd say that's love.