Here are some great quotes from the games I have lodged inside my cranium, each of them a potential aneurysm that could rupture at any moment and wash away my reality:

"A freshly-slain corpse lies spread on the dissection table, rigor mortis making a mockery of its smile." -- The Narrator in Planescape: Torment.

"Words fail to describe how rank it smells in here. They should have sent a poet." -- Disco
Elysium; definitely a game that knows -- and plays a lot with -- the power of poetry.

"Don't open it!" in Vampire, the Masquerade: Bloodlines (you should've been there).

"Delia... take it easy, now! What if all this is just a reflection of a reflection?" -- one of the "metaphysical curveballs" you have to process if you're playing Here and there along the Echo.

“Electric lights coming through the branches of dead trees, the flames of burning barrels, flares going up into the sky… we call this ‘the lights of civilisation’. They often go out before we even have the chance to see them.” – this is how precarious life under the Dome is and how great the writing in Encased can get at times.

"You see clear, beautiful, violent flashes of light. Light cutting through a smoke-filled darkness. That is what the future will look like -- if it ever comes." And that is how Disco Elysium 's writing cuts through the prose of reality.

"Maybe y'seen all them craters along here? Yep, those were monks. Now they ain't nothing but Geiger clicks." -- Jill Yates, summing up poetically and surgically (with haiku precision) the whole matter of suicidal monks using nuke grenades, in Canyon of Titan, Wasteland 2.

”The light will pass through closed eyes. The sight will be too much, and the raw vulnerability of being examined and understood.” -- how the dwellers of the Unterzee perceive light, after long decades of keeping away from it, in Sunless Sea.

"It is not my destiny to be a hero." -- Corvus, in Heretic II, when, after finally getting home from the long adventure of saving Parthoris in the first game, is faced with having to do it again, in the second. The guy has statues in the Celestial Palace, honouring him, and he keeps on with this "not my destiny to be a hero" nonsense!

"The atoms don't form us anymore." -- the saddest way to talk about a break-up. In Disco
Elysium.

"I've always equated feelings with getting caught." -- Garrett, in Thief II: The Metal Age; a great way to characterise the protagonist.

"It's not right to go outside the town without a mission to complete." -- Gate guard in Rage of Mages. Effective way of creating an "invisible wall" and also a campy description of what the average life of an RPG hero is supposed to be like.

“It's called the 'Mortuary'… it's a big black structure with all the architectural charm of a pregnant spider.” -- Morte, in Planescape: Torment; being a floating skull and dead for a very long time will certainly affect your taste for metaphors.

"PIPES are the ARTERIES of this mighty ERECTION." -- Mr. LAMB, the Pipe Factory supervisor, in Beneath a Steel Sky. He's talking, of course, about the City people ERECTED using the pipes he produces.

"I'd insert here a smiley face to convey sarcasm, but I think that anyone who puts a colon in front of a closed parenthesis should be shot in his colon and left to die slowly from rectal bleeding." - Scarlet Lake, freelance journalist and contract killer , in Alpha Protocol.

"Adventures of the greatest thief the world has NEVER seen." -- tag line on the box of Thief II: The Metal Age.

"What can change the nature of a man?" -- Ravel, in Planescape: Torment.

“Climb down from the equestrian monument, cop-man. Consciousness is new to the Universe. We all have our ways to ease the shock.” – this is what the young ravers of Revachol reply to Harry the police officer when questioned about their substance abuse, in Disco Elysium.

"- Chubnik's magical waterway transportation service will, for a modest fee, whisk you not just across the raging Chubnik river, but also transport you into... the future!
- How far into the future?
- Uh, that depends on how long it takes to cross the river." -- Chubnik, a very resourceful ferryman (trow, actually), in The Bard's Tale.

"I've seen many men in my time, and you're certainly one of them." -- how the money changer lady in the city of Shapeir greets the Hero of Spielburg, when you're role-playing him in Quest for Glory II. Obviously, she's not one to be easily impressed.

"Concoct an excuse" -- the most hilarious quest entry ever! You get it after failing to retrieve The Artifact, in DeathSpank. Where other games (and other game designers) would urge you to "Recover your stolen belongings" or "Find out who double-crossed you and get him!" or any other stuff like that, DeathSpank (and Ron Gilbert) gives this as the primary objective after such a failure. Yep, DeathSpank is just that kind of game. Too bad its gameplay isn't quite up to the writing. (Also a great way to characterise the pompous buffoon DeathSpank actually is.)

"I would lose my head if it weren't in the clouds" -- Kate's single mother, on the phone, in Syberia.

"To be alone, you must have something to be alone from." -- The Queen of Beggars to Garrett, in the new Thief (I know, I know, it's too blunt to be a great - or even a proper - Thief quote, but the way it substantiates Garrett and The City as an archetypal-like twofold entity is one of the few things Rhianna Pratchett's Thief does right.)

Dialogue between George Stobbart and Fleur, florist and psychic, in Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse :
"George: Fleur, can you help me distract that police officer at the front door?
Fleur: Don't you want to play the game yourself?
George: Game? What game?
Fleur: Oh! I thought you knew! Nevermind."

"Sounds too complicated, I'll just take the water chip!" -- The Vault Dweller in Fallout to Set, the leader of Necropolis, after Set tells him how simply taking the water chip would doom the city, leaving it without water, and was taking the time to present to him a creative -- and not quite easy to follow -- workaround meant to benefit everyone.

"It's not easy being a Greenskin on this fu*king continent... You got my sympathy if that's your case." -- Styx the goblin, in one of his rants acting as the narrator, in Of Orcs and Men.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Wrong form of its . Come on, people!" -- Tex Murphy, analysing an Achievement Recognition Certificate emitted by the C.I.A.and hung up on the wall in one of his suspects' study, in Tesla Effect: a Tex Murphy Adventure.

"Scotchmo! What are you doing here? You better get outta here. These crazy robots will fill you so fulla holes you won't be able to hold your liquor." -- Werewolf Wally, the radioman, to Scotchmo the hobo, well known among traders of liquor throughout the Wasteland for his "drinking skills", when they meet in robot-infested Damonta, in Wasteland 2.

"The front line of this war is not in the dungeon, but, rather, inside the mind." -- what the narrator in Darkest Dungeon says when you upgrade the Sanitarium, where you forcibly treat your heroes of all the philias, phobias and manias they develop during the gruesome dungeon battles; it sums up pretty well the very ingenious stress mechanic the devs have come up with. Lovecraft would definitely approve!

"There's absolutely nothing out there. Nothing. Oh, there's a city, an entire world, even. But... nothing."-- talk about feeling empty! April Ryan, inside Roma Gallery, in the poorer districts of Newport, in The Longest Journey.

"Feeling a bit under the weather? So sad to hear that your illness isn't lethal" -- flower note to Deidranna, the evil queen of Arulco, in Jagged Alliance 2.

“We were waiting for a helicopter to take us there, but now that you’re here you can take the car.” –– that's what your colleagues in INFRA tell you right before sending you off to the site of a nuclear power plant on the brink of collapse. If its laboriously creative level design wasn’t already proof enough that INFRA was a thing hammered out in the wonderful forge of the ’90s, then the approach to building its main character undoubtedly places it, self-ironically, in the legacy of such games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake or Half Life. Single-handedly saving the human race city of Stalburg because the game engine isn’t powerful enough to give you a proper support team has its charm even in a “walking simulator” made in 2016.

"A little hard work never killed anyone important."
"Work hard, die young, win wonderful prizes!" -- Abe quotes are such a fine jab at corporate motivational slogans!

“You feel a pang of regret for [deciding to go home and] disappointing Jason. There is a version of this night that continues into danger, ecstasy, oblivion.” – Mara Whitefish (of Perfect Tides )’s sensibilities make her a perfect amphibian creature, always living in two worlds at the same time. She's a cyclops and an amphibian! That single eye on her face feeds two worlds into her brain! How's that for great character design?

"Now, why did I bring my knives? I should have brought a violin." -- Styx the goblin, in Of Orcs and Men, when his orc partner decides to settle peacefully the altercation they had with a powerful foe they set out to eliminate. (He doesn't play the violin, btw, it's all just fancy rhetoric.)

“I want to bite you and kiss your skin just hard enough so you’ll keep a mark, a new tattoo made by my lips and teeth. Maybe you’d shiv me in my sleep for doing that, but I won’t care, as long as you remember me for a few days.” – Mindy Blanchard, tattoo artist and second in command of The Howlers, is deserving of all the love sonnets Dishonored 2 sends her way, totally enraptured and fascinated.

“You won’t be able to save everyone. You might not even be able to save yourself. Welcome home.” – Scarlet Hollow ’s intro tagline is the same level of alluring and paradoxical as Fallen London ’s “Welcome, delicious friend!” or Rimbaud’s “Je est un autre”.