Awakenings Quotes

Leonard Lowe: We've got to tell everybody. We've got to remind them. We've got to remind them how good it is.
Dr. Sayer: How good what is, Leonard?
Leonard Lowe: Read the newspaper. What does it say? All bad. It's all bad. People have forgotten what life is all about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be

reminded. They need to be reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!

Dr. Sayer: [in job interview] It was an immense project. I was to extract 1 decagram of myelin from 4 tons of earth worms.
Dr. Sullivan: Really!
Dr. Sayer: Yes. I was on the project for 5 years. I was the only one who believed in it. Everyone else said it couldn't be done.
Dr. Kaufman: It can't.

Dr. Sayer: I know that now. I proved it.

Dr. Sayer: 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.

Dr. Peter Ingham: Most died during the acute stage of the illness, during a sleep so deep they couldn't be roused. A sleep that in most cases lasted several months. Those who survived, who awoke, seemed fine, as though nothing had happened. Years went by - five, ten, fifteen - before anyone suspected they were not well... they were not. I began to see them in the early 1930's -

old people brought in by their children, young people brought in by their parents - all of them complaining they weren't themselves anymore. They'd grown distant, aloof, anti-social, they daydreamed at the dinner table. I referred them to psychiatrists. Before long they were being referred back to me. They could no longer dress themselves or feed themselves. They could no longer speak in most

cases. Families went mad. People who were normal, were now elsewhere.
Dr. Sayer: What's it like to be them? What are they thinking?
Dr. Peter Ingham: They're not. The virus didn't spare the higher faculties.
Dr. Sayer: We know what for a fact?
Dr. Peter Ingham: Yes.
Dr. Sayer:

Because?
Dr. Peter Ingham: Because the alternative is unthinkable.

Leonard Lowe: "I'm all right, and then everything stops, There's no warning, It's like a light switch going off. It happens that fast. Something has to happen to bring me back. A sound or a touch. And then I can move again, I'm okay again. It's not that it feels bad, It's just that it's nothing. I feel nothing, like I'm dead. Nothing. Gets to be like I'm no a person anymore. Just

a collection of tics. Not that I mind them necessarily. Sometimes they make life kind of interesting. Though I'm not sure who's in control, me or them. What I do mind is knowing that they shouldn't be there".