Nite Owl Quotes

Nite Owl II: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream? The Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it.

Nite-Owl: Rorschach...? Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise! Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team. Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit. No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that. Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it. Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood. Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist. No matter who orders him to look the other way. We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to. We do it because we are compelled.

Accidents happen. That's what everyone says. But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception.

Nite-Owl: Look, I just meant we took enough unnecessary risks retrieving your outfit this morning... Rorschach: Unnecessary? Cowering down here in sludge and pollution, conjuring names on screens, learning nothing: that is unnecessary. Give me smallest finger on man's hand. I'll produce information. Computer unnecessary. This face, all that's necessary... all I need.

A thought nagged him: if Lynn Bracken reported to Patchett in full, he would have yanked his people before the police could bring them in—the way Inge, Bergeron and son disappeared immediately pre–Nite Owl. Two possibles on that—she was playing an angle or their rutting had her confused and she was stalling to figure the upshot. Most likely the former—the woman cut her last confused breath at birth. He could still taste her.