The Magnus Archives Quotes

Sorry Elias, I can't hear you, there’s a door in the way.

Maybe we're all just broken inside. Unable to really grasp the difference between fictional people and people we just don't know. They're all just abstract ideas we're happy to have suffer for our enjoyment.

Bodies are strange. Rather glad they're not my concern anymore." "Must be nice." "It really is.

What good’s being alone if you don’t know how alone you truly are?

There is nothing in the world more reassuring than ignorance, which we can mistake for certainty.

The more I listen, the more it seems to me we’re all just – groping about, trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing.

Free of what? We all have forces that drive us, circumstances that direct us, and even if we choose to ignore these and act against all logic, just to prove that we can – is that not simply allowing the existential terror of our own powerlessness to control us instead?

Well, sometimes the helping people hurts. Sure, but that doesn’t mean everything painful helps.

Jumping on a grenade is only heroic if you weren’t the one who actually threw it.

Right, well. If I’m just another cog, maybe I can’t leave the machine, but from this moment I’m not turning. I’m jammed.

Nice to see Gertrude also used to get a lot of threats. So far, it doesn’t seem that any of them went desperately well, except for Elias, of course, but he didn’t threaten, did he, just...did it.

Some of the smartest people there were also the most committed. Intelligence doesn’t make you less prone to taking on bad ideas, it just makes you better at defending them to other people and to yourself. Smart people can believe some truly ridiculous things, and then deploy all the reason and logic at their disposal to justify them, because a belief doesn’t begin in your mind. It begins in your feelings.

The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.

Hello Jon, Apologies For The Deception.

I am not a “who,” Archivist, I am a “what.” A “who” requires a degree of identity I can’t ever retain.

I was… so sure I’d find something up there. But instead it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life.

 I have always believed that the key to manipulating people is to ensure that they always under- or over-estimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans.

Sometimes people have problems that will wreck you long before you can make a dent in them, and some people don’t want help, they just want other people suffering with them.

It’s easy to pass judgment from the outside. One more reason to stay on the outside and watch.

Maybe. Look, life forces you to make hard decisions, but I can never trust someone who goes around looking for hard decisions to make.

Doesn’t even need to tell you any lies – just waits for the lies you tell yourself.

Is that your first question? …is there a limit? Only until I get bored. And that does tend to come more quickly these days.

My family were blandly supportive to the point of uselessness. Oh, they had plenty of soothing platitudes, but platitudes wouldn’t get me back 20 years.

Do you have any idea how much damage you can do if you’re a police officer who wants to hurt people? How much the system will protect you?

The only reason this one feels special is because it's happening to you

After all, the larger the space you find yourself alone in, the more isolated you feel. And being aware of how lonely you are (dry laugh) can make anywhere feel more empty.

Why do you do that? Do what? Push the sceptic thing so hard!? I mean, it made sense at first, but now? After everything we’ve seen, after everything you’ve read! I hear you recording statements and y-you just dismiss them. You tear them to pieces like they’re wasting your time, but half of the “rational” explanations you give are actually more far-fetched than just accepting it was a, a ghost or something. I mean for god’s sake John, we’re literally hiding from some kind of worm… queen… thing, how, how could you possibly still not believe!? Of course, I believe. Of course I do. Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact Storage? That’s enough to convince anyone. But, but even before that… Why do you think I started working here? It’s not exactly glamorous. I have… I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Within reason. I mean. I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe… thirty, forty that are… that go on tape. Now, those, I believe, at least for the most part. Then why do you – Because I’m scared, Martin!. Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will… know somehow. The skepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer.

Cults are very good at finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there.

Scans show decisions are made by your brain long before your conscious mind even has a chance to register them. Most of one’s life is simply spent looking back and convincing yourself that you chose deliberately to act like you did.

These things that – loom so large over our lives trap us and push us and – sometimes kill us. But they never actually tell us what we’re supposed to be doing. So we scheme and we plot, lash out at each other without ever really knowing why.

We do spend a lot of time together. It’s not that easy though. When everyone has so many walls, so many defenses, sometimes you can feel lonely even when you’re all in the same room. But it’s better than the alternative and at least none of us are suffering alone.

Everyone thinks they’re too smart to get involved in a cult. I’m sure you do. You think that, of the first mention of aliens, or the end of the world, or the lost book of the Bible where Jesus buried his holy staff in the foothills of the Himalayas, you’d go running. Trouble is, that misunderstands how it works

Cinematographer.” Such an ornate term, yet still so vague. I often wonder if that’s to blame for how overlooked we are as a profession. Or even worse, that dry title, “Director of Photography.” But we are the true artists. A director may quite literally call the shots, but it is the cinematographer that makes them. We choose the angles, the lighting, pretty much everything that you see on the screen. The camera is a brush, and we are the hand, the arm, the eye. The director’s basically just the mouth, making pointless noise while the hand does the actual work. Almost every famous director that you know who has a distinctive visual style has simply managed to lock down a talented DoP.

Hm. Have you ever read War and Peace, John? I know, I know; I had to read an extract for a literature class once, ended up reading the whole thing It’s not actually as boring as people say, and its central thesis is that the tiniest, most insignificant factors can control the destiny of the world. In its post-script, Tolstoy muses on the concept of free will, on whether or not he really believes in it. He ultimately decides that if all the millions upon millions of factors that weigh upon our choices were fully and completely known, then all could be foreseen and predetermined. But, he argues, it is quite impossible for the human mind to comprehend even a fraction of these. And in that vast, dark space of ignorance lies: free will. Isn’t that marvelous, John? Free will is simply ignorance. It’s just the name we give to the fact that no one can ever really see everything that controls them. Of course, that’s not the real crux of the free will question that’s bothering you at the moment, is it? I think that one probably comes down to whether or not you’re choosing to continue reading this statement out loud.

Karl Giese seemed to supply all of Hirschfeld’s needs. He was his secretary, the guardian of the Archive and planner of new projects for the education of the public of homosexuality. His infinite knowledge of Hirschfeld’s work and ideas made him his natural confidant. In short, Giese had the unique position of being his lover and most trusted collaborator. He knew everything that could be known about the Institute, and, soon after he had taken up residence there, he guided visitors through its different departments. They were a mixed crowd—German and foreign doctors, other academics, writers, artists. and many members of the public. Giese was no academic, but he had native wit and considerable intelligence. He had been a brilliant autodidact. He was also an articulate speaker, and Hirschfeld entrusted him with lecturing to the general public on questions of sexual conflict and homosexuality. He fulfilled his many tasks with enthusiasm, and at the same time cared for Hirschfeld’s well-being like a mother.

Martin." Sims said. "Jon." Blackwood said. "Tim." Tim said. They all looked at him. "Oh, sorry, I thought we were saying names." Sims grinned, shaking his head. "Never change, Tim." Tim shot him finger guns. "You got it, boss.

Books When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning Books as Weapons, John B. Hench The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance, Anders Rydell The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson Gay Berlin, Robert Beachy Articles Leary, William M. “Books, Soldiers and Censorship during the Second World War.” American Quarterly Von Merveldt, Nikola. “Books Cannot Be Killed by Fire: The German Freedom Library and the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books As Agents of Cultural Memory.” John Hopkins University Press Appelbaum, Yoni. “Publishers Gave Away 122,951,031 Books During World War II.” The Atlantic “Paris Opens Library of Books Burnt by Nazis.” The Guardian Archives Whisnant, Clayton J. “A Peek Inside Berlin’s Queer Club Scene Before Hitler Destroyed It.” The Advocate “Between World Wars, Gay Culture Flourished in Berlin.” NPR’s Fresh Air More The Great Courses: A History of Hitler’s Empire, Thomas Childers “Hitler: YA Fiction Fan Girl,” Robert Evans, Behind the Bastards Podcast Magnus Hirschfeld, Leigh Pfeffer and Gretchen Jones, History Is Gay Podcast “Das Lila Lied,” composed by Mischa Spoliansky, lyrics by Kurt Schwabach

So what? I don’t get to be angry? I don’t get to burn things? Just, just run around, making tea, while everyone else gets to actually have feelings?

But you think sometimes about what the real world is. Just what your brain mixes together from what your senses tell you. We create the world in a lot of ways. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that, when we’re not being careful, we can change it.

Despite his dread, it takes only a moment for him to make his decision. He reaches out with his other arm and feels it gripped by another hand as slowly, inexorably, he allows himself to be pulled back into the great, suffering colossus. Far below, there is another impact –