Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City, a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Esser ... See full summary »

Preest: If a god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he must be malevolent. If he is neither able or willing then why call him a god? Why else do bad things happen to good people?
Preest: Somebody once said that religion was deemed by the commoners as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. The only thing I believe is that my name is Jonathan Preest. And tonight, I'm gonna kill a man.
Preest: If you believe in something strongly enough, who's to say if it's real or not?
Preest: When you're lost, you're willing to believe anything. In this city, every religion promised a future, whether in this world or the next. All you had to pay them with was your faith and trust and, despite the celebration, the reverence and the prayer, everybody ends up in the same human mess. Old. Sick. Unhappy. Dead.
Naomi: The world is full of people sent here to help us. Most of the time, we just don't see them.
Preest: If you needed to find someone, the best place to start was the Faith Registration Centre - Meanwhile's melting pot of the pious. Every creed, cult, religion and doctrine pass through these doors, all looking for the same sense of belonging and hope.
Milo: I heard this story once when I was a kid, or read it. It was about a storyteller who was so good at telling stories that everything he made up became real. So the storyteller creates a world for himself where he's the king of the castle, has a beautiful princess on his arm. And then, one day, he wakes up. He looks around. He kisses her on the cheek and... legs it.
Dan: Why?
Milo: I don't know. Even though his life was perfect, absolutely perfect, he had the feeling he should be somewhere else. With someone else. Anyway, the princess wakes up and he's gone. And that's it. I guess. Does that make any sense?
Dan: No. I'm going to open another bottle.
Preest: You see, without faith, it's difficult to be controlled.
Emilia: Life's too much of an adventure as it is without making anything else up.
Dr. Earlle: Building trust takes time. All structure must start with foundation, and communication is the cornerstone of foundation.
Emilia: Amen.
Milo: If I'm having an imaginary conversation, I'd at least hope for something a bit more fucking exciting.
Preest: But don't get me wrong. This wasn't fate. For every soul of this deluded population who believed in fate's comic clockwork, they neglect to see the wear and tear beneath the surface. The teeth that grind into the cogs. The damage that fate causes so many in its selfish journey towards just one favourable consequence. The Individual had simply run out of luck, and I was here to collect.
Milo: The storyteller was so used to his fantasies that no matter how good his reality was, it was never enough. Would never be enough.
Preest: Anywhere can feel like a prison, when you don't have any faith.
Pastor Bone: I'm just saying that it isn't just about your family, your friends, the people you leave behind. It's about the people you haven't met yet. A person can stay inside themselves for too long and end up blind, like not recognising your own voice on tape or...
Preest: Fractured. Infected. Forgotten. Meanwhile's slum quarter.
Preest: In this world my name is David.
Gavin Clune: What happened to your Following project? Two months following random strangers around London with your video camera. Now you're going to throw it all away?
Emilia: The last guy saw me. I even wore a wig to disguise myself for a few days, but it didn't work. It's over.
Hospital Representative: Your daughter was killed playing in the street outside your house just two weeks before David came back from Iraq.
The Individual: What's Sarah got to do with it? Why are you talking about this?
Hospital Representative: We think it's key to David's condition. It was clear from his evaluation that he holds an individual responsible. Now, you wouldn't happen to know who that might be? You?
The Individual: G-d, maybe? It was G-d's will that Sarah was taken from us.
Hospital Representative: We spoke to Anne earlier today, Peter. She seemed to think that you were fairly convinced of G-d's hand in finding David. Your ex-wife thinks you're deluded.
Preest: There are now so many faiths registered in this town, it gets kind of hard to be original.
Preest: These days, you can form a congregation simply based on washing-machine instructions.
Pastor Bone: My name is Pastor Bone. It means "bread of life".
Preest: I'd been investigating a nasty little faith known as Duplex Ride. Their leader called himself The Individual. He was one of the most dangerous I'd come across. Egocentric and insanely deluded. The Individual had abducted a young girl into Duplex Ride. For what purpose? Somebody's G-d only knew.