Tannhauser Gate: a fictional place symbolizing the finite nature and transience of any moment in life.

The knight Tannhäuser in Richard Wagner's opera of the same name voluntarily waives immortality. The character in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, where the Tannhauser Gate is mentioned for the first time, does not have this choice. Nonetheless, the corresponding scene has had such a haunting effect that since then it has been circulated in films, books, computer games, and on internet pages. Blade Runner, a meditation on mortality, human identity, and free will, is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

"I've seen things you people would not believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I've watched sea beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."


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