Joe: "No, it's the end of a nineteenth-century socialist romanticist conflation of government and society, law and Justice, idea and action, irreconcilables which only meet at some remote horizon, like parallels converging in infinity. The rhythm of history is conservative. Change is geologically slow. You must accept that. And accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way."
Louis: "But that's only half the picture, that's the ego-anarchist-cowboys-shrilling-for-no-government part of the Republicans but what about the other half, the religious fanatics who want to control every breath every citizen takes? I mean you say law isn't Justice and Justice isn't morals but really, who if not the Right is putting the Prude back in Jurisprudence?"
Joe: "No but see, there you go again! We're a movement, this is politics, not a representation of some pure force, it's ... Do you want to be pure, or do you want to be effective? Choose. Even if our methods seem ... extreme, even. We've worked hard to build a movement."
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Harper (commenting the dummy family in the diorama): "They don't have any lines, the sister and the mother. And only his face [the father dummy] can moves. That's not really fare."
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Harper: "I'm stuck. My heart's an anchor."
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Joe (to Louis): "You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind always but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and weakness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be. You ought to think about that."
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Roy (to Belize): "Hire a lawyer, sue somebody, it's good for the soul."
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Belize (to Louis): "Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean."
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Louis (to Joe): "I just want to lie here and bleed for a while. Do me good."
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Harper: "I know. Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life. It's all a matter of the opposable thumb and forefinger; not of the hand but of the heart; we grab hold like nobody's business and then we don't seem to be able to let go."
Prior: "To face loss. With grace. Is key, I think, but it's impossible. All you ever do is lose, and lose ..."
Harper: "But not letting go deforms you so."
Prior: "The world's too hard. Stay here. With me."
Harper: "I can't. I feel like shit but I've never felt more alive. I've finally found the secret of all that Mormon energy. Devastation. That's what makes people migrate, built things. Heartbroken people do it, people who have lost love. Because I don't think God loves His people any better than Joe loved me. The string was cut, and off they went. I have to go now. I'm ready to lose him. Armed with the truth. He's got a sweet hollow centre, but he's the nothing man. I hope you come back. Look at this place. Can you imagine spending eternity here?"
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Prior (to Angel): "But still. Still. Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but ... You see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate but ... Bless me anyway. I want more life."
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Prior: "You'll come back."
Hannah: "If I can. I have things to take care of."
Prior: "Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
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Harper: "Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so."
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Prior: "This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come."
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On the Stage (2)
