Angels in America

The Angel:
Greetings, Prophet! The great work begins! The Messenger has arrived!

Prior:
We have reached a verdict, your honor. This man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing.

Roy Cohn:
I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand.

Mr. Lies:
Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.

Prior:
I usually say, "F*** the truth," but mostly, the truth f***s you.

Harper Pitt:
I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there's a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so.

Prior Walter:
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Hannah Pitt:
Well that's a stupid thing to do.

Roy Cohn:
You don't know what all I know. *I* don't know what all I know. Half this sh*t I make up and I'm still right, learned that in the 50's.

[Hannah Pitt approaches a Homeless Woman]

Hannah Pitt:
Excuse me. I said excuse me. Can you tell me where I am? Is this Brooklyn? Do you know a Pineapple Street or is there some train or bus I...? [sets down bags exaustedly]

Hannah Pitt:
I'm lost. I just arrived from Salt Lake City. [beet] Utah? I took the bus I was told to take and I got off... well it was the very last stop so I had to get off and I asked the driver was this Brooklyn and he nodded yes. But he was from one of those foreign countries where they think it's good manners to nod at everything, even if you don't know what it is you're nodding at. In truth I think he spoke no English at all... which I think would make him ineligible for employment on public transportation, you know with the public being English-speaking... mostly. Do you speak English.

Homeless Woman:
[nods yes]

Hannah Pitt:
Well I was supposed to be met at the airport by my son and he didn't show. And I don't wait more than three and three quarters hours for anyone, so I should have been more patient... I guess. But is this...

Homeless Woman:
Bronx.

Hannah Pitt:
[confused] Is that The Bronx? How in the name of Heaven did I get to The Bronx? When that drive...

Homeless Woman:
-slurp... slurp... will you stop that disgusting slurping, you disgusting slurping animal, feeding yourself. What would it matter to yourself or anyone if you just stop feeding and DIED!

Hannah Pitt:
Can you just tell me...

Homeless Woman:
Why was the Koziuscko Bridge named after a Po-lack?

Hanna:
I don't know what you're talking ab...

Homeless Woman:
It was a joke.

Hanna:
Well what's the punch line?

Homeless Woman:
I don't know.

Hanna:
Oh for Petes' sake! [to the street] Is there anyone who can tell me...

Homeless Woman:
[yelling to no one in particular] Stand further off you fat loathsome whore, you can't have any more of this soup slurp slurp slurp you animal, and I know you'll just go pee it all away and where will you do that behind what bush! It's f***ing cold out here and I- [gulp]... not right because I'm supposed to live in a tunnel. [to Hannah] You're not very funny. Have you read the propecies of Nostradomus?

Hannah Pitt:
Who?

Homeless Woman:
Some guy I once went out with somewhere. Nostradomus... prophet... outcast... eyes like scary sh*t, he would...

Hannah Pitt:
Shut up! Please stop jabbering for one minute and pull your wits together and tell me how to get to Brooklyn, because you know and you're going to tell me because there is no one else around to tell me and I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm very, very angry. So I'm sorry that you're psychotic but just make an effort. Pull yourself together and take a deep breath.

[Homeless Woman stares dumbfounded at Hannah]

Hannah Pitt:
Do it!

Homeless Woman:
[stuggles to take in a breath]

Hannah Pitt:
Good. Now exale. [blows air out of her mouth]

Homeless Woman:
[Tries to mimic Hannah's exhaling with mixed results]

Hannah Pitt:
Now tell me how to get to Brooklyn.

Homeless Woman:
Hmmm... don't know.

[Hannah slumps defeatedly]

Homeless Woman:
Want some soup?

Hannah Pitt:
Manhattan? I don't suppose you know the address of the Mormon Visitor Center.

Homeless Woman:
65th and Broadway.

Hannah Pitt:
How do you know that?

Homeless Woman:
I go there all the time. Free movies. Boring, but you can stay all day.

Hannah Pitt:
Well how can I get there?

Homeless Woman:
Take the D train. Next block take a right.

Hannah Pitt:
Thank you.

[Hannah picks up her bags and starts walking away. Homeless Woman dumps out the rest of her soup and throws the empty container in to a bin, startling Hannah]

Homeless Woman:
In the new century, I think we will all be insane.

[Hannah hurries away as fast as she can]

The Angel Oceania:
I-I-I think I have a copy.

Joe Pitt:
I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask him together.

Harper Pitt:
God won't talk to me. I have to make up people to talk to me.

Joe Pitt:
You have to keep asking.

Harper Pitt:
I forgot the question?... Oh, yeah. God, is my husband a homo?

Joe Pitt:
Stop it! Stop it! I'm warning you! Does it make any difference that I might be one thing deep within? No matter how wrong or ugly that thing is so long as I have fought with everything I have to kill it? What do you want from me? What do you want from me Harper, more than that? For God's sake, there's nothing left. I'm a shell. There's nothing left to kill. As long as my behaviour is what I know it has to be, decent, correct that alone in the eyes of God.

Harper Pitt:
No, no, not that. That's Utah talk, Mormon talk. I hate it, Joe. Tell me, say it.

Joe Pitt:
All I will say is that I'm a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you wanna destroy that. You wanna destroy me but I am not gonna let you do that.

Harper Pitt:
I'm gonna have a baby.

Joe Pitt:
Liar!

Harper Pitt:
You liar!... A baby born addicted to pills. A baby who does not dream but who hallucinates, who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and who does not know who we are.

Joe Pitt:
Are you really?

Harper Pitt:
No... Yes... No... Yes... Get away from me. Now we both have a secret.

Hannah Pitt:
An angel is a belief, with wings, and arms that can carry you. It's not to be afraid of, and if it can't hold you up, seek for something new.

The Angel:
There is no Zion save where you are.

The Angel:
American prophet tonight you become American eye that pierceth dark, American heart hot full for truth.

Ethel Rosenberg:
[seeing the buttons on the telephone] Oh! Buttons! Such things they have these days!

Prior:
Are you a ghost, Lou?

Louis Ironson:
No. Just spectral. Lost to myself. Sitting all day on cold park benches wishing I could be with you. [Extends his arm] Dance with me, babe.

Joe Pitt:
If you have something you want to ask me ask me! Ask me, go!

Harper Pitt:
I can't, I'm scared of you.

Prior Walter:
Look. Garlic. A Mirror. Holy Water. A Crucifix. F*** off! Get the f*** out of my room! Go!

Harper Pitt:
Oh well don't apologize, I can't expect someone who's really sick to entertain me.

Prior:
How on earth did you know?

Harper Pitt:
Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation. Sometimes you can see things like how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?

Prior:
Yes, you are amazingly unhappy

Harper Pitt:
Big deal, you meet a valium addict, you figure out she's unhappy -that doesn't count. Of course I - something else? something suprising?

Prior:
Something suprising?

Harper Pitt:
Yes

Prior:
Your husband's a homo.

Harper Pitt:
Well this is the most depressing hallucination I ever had.

Harper Pitt:
I burned dinner.

Joe Pitt:
I'm sorry.

Harper Pitt:
Not my dinner, my dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched 'til it burned black. It's still hot, very hot, want it?

Joe Pitt:
You didn't have to do that.

Harper Pitt:
I know, it just seemed like the kinda thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.

Harper Pitt:
It's a sin and it's killing us both.

Harper Pitt:
I wish I could go traveling. Things aren't right with me.

[ Harper opens cabinet door in bathroom to remove pill container. She closes the door which reveals Mr. Lie's reflection in the mirror. She gasps. ]

Mr. Lies:
Cash, check, or credit card?

Harper Pitt:
You startled me.

Mr. Lies:
Cash, check, or...

Harper Pitt:
I remember you. You're from Salt Lake. You sold us the plane tickets when we flew here. What are you doing in Brooklyn?

Mr. Lies:
You said you wanted to travel.

Harper Pitt:
How thoughtful!

Mr. Lies:
Mr. Lies of the International Order of Travel Agents. We mobilize the globe. We set people adrift. We are adepts of motion, acolytes of the flocks. Cash, check, or credit card, name your destination.

Harper Pitt:
Antartica, maybe? I want to see the hole in the ozone. I heard on the radio...

Mr. Lies:
We'll arrange a guided tour. Now?

Harper Pitt:
Soon, maybe soon. I'm not safe here, you see. Weird stuff happens.

Mr. Lies:
Like?

Harper Pitt:
Like you, for instance. Just appearing. Or last week. Well, nevermind. People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Joe stays away and now, well look, my dreams are talking back to me.

Mr. Lies:
The price of rootlessness, motion sickness. Only cure, keep moving.

Harper Pitt:
I'm undecided. I feel that something's going to give. It's 1985... fifteen years to the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again or maybe the troubles will and the end will come. And the sky will collapse and there'll be terrible rain and showers of poison light. Or maybe my life is really fine... maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise. Or maybe not. Maybe it's even worse than I know. Maybe I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.

Mr. Lies:
I suggest a vacation.

Prior:
[Wrestling the Angel] I will not let thee go except thou bless me! I will not let thee go except thou bless me! I will not let thee go except thou bless me!

The Angel:
You have prevailed Prophet. The choice is yours. Now release me; I have torn a muscle in my thigh.

Prior:
Big deal. My leg's been hurting for months.

Harper Pitt:
Night flight to San Francisco - chase the moon across America.

Harper Pitt:
There's something creepy about this place. Remember Rosemary's Baby?

Joe Pitt:
Rosemary's Baby?

Harper Pitt:
Our apartment looks like that one. Wasn't that apartment in Brooklyn?

Joe Pitt:
No.

Harper Pitt:
Well, it looked like this. It did!

Joe Pitt:
Then let's move.

Harper Pitt:
Georgetown's worse. The Exorcist was in Georgetown.

Harper Pitt:
I'm gonna have a baby.

Joe Pitt:
Liar.

Harper Pitt:
You liar. A baby born addicted to pills. A baby who does not dream, but who hallucinates. Who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and who does not know who we are.

Joe Pitt:
Are you really?

Harper Pitt:
No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. Get away from me. Now we both have a secret.

Harper Pitt:
I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die.

Harper Pitt:
I got this tree from the great Antarctic pine forest, right over the hill.

Mr. Lies:
There are no pine forests in Antarctica.

Harper Pitt:
This one's a blue spruce.

Mr. Lies:
There are no blue spruce in...

Harper Pitt:
I chewed this pine tree down with my teeth. Like a beaver. I'm hungry, I haven't eaten in three days. I'm gonna use it to build something. Maybe a fire. Lucky I brought these.

Mr. Lies:
Snow'll melt

Harper Pitt:
Let it. I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die. But there's still the rest of you. There's your breasts and your genitals... They're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs. They don't get it, they just want him. Want him.

Mr. Lies:
Eskimo's back.

Harper Pitt:
I know. I wanted a real Eskimo, someone chilly and reliable. An Eskimo dressed in seal pelts. Not this. This is just some lawyer, just...

Joe Pitt:
Hey, buddy.

Harper Pitt:
Hey.

Joe Pitt:
I looked for you. I've been everywhere.

Harper Pitt:
Well, you found me.

Joe Pitt:
No, I'm not looking now. I guess I'm having an adventure.

Harper Pitt:
Who with?

Joe Pitt:
No one you know. No one I know, either.

Harper Pitt:
ls it fun?

Joe Pitt:
Scary fun.

Harper Pitt:
Can I come with you? This isn't working anymore, I'm cold.

Joe Pitt:
I wouldn't want you to see.

Harper Pitt:
You think it's worse than what I imagine? It's not.

Joe Pitt:
I should go.

Harper Pitt:
Bastard! You fell out of love with me.

Joe Pitt:
That isn't true, Harper.

Harper Pitt:
Then come back!

Joe Pitt:
My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place, and I can't despise my whole life. I think I believed that when I met you, I could save you. You, at least, if not myself.

Louis Ironson:
Well, oh boy. A gay Republican.

Joe Pitt:
Excuse me?

Louis Ironson:
Nothing.

Joe Pitt:
Oh, I'm not... no, forget it.

Louis Ironson:
Not... Republican? Not Republican?

Joe Pitt:
What?

Louis Ironson:
What.

Joe Pitt:
Not gay. I'm not gay.

Louis Ironson:
Oh. Sorry. It's just that sometimes you can tell by the way a person sounds. I mean, you sound...

Joe Pitt:
No, I don't. Like what?

Louis Ironson:
Like a Republican.

Joe Pitt:
Do I sound like a...?

Louis Ironson:
What? Like a Republican? Or do I?

Joe Pitt:
Do you what?

Louis Ironson:
Sound like a...

Joe Pitt:
Yeah. Like a... I'm confused.

Louis Ironson:
Yes. My name is Louis but all my friends call me Louise. I work in word processing. Thanks for the toilet paper.

[Joe goes to speak, but Louis quickly plants a kiss on his cheek before exiting, leaving Joe slightly shocked]

Harper Pitt:
What are you doing in my hallucination?

Prior Walter:
I'm not in your hallucination, you're in my dream.

Harper Pitt:
You're wearing makeup.

Prior Walter:
So are you.

Harper Pitt:
But you're a man.

Prior Walter:
[looks into mirror and screams] My hands and feet give it away.

Harper Pitt:
There must be some mistake here. I don't recognize you. Are you my... - some sort of imaginary friend?

Prior Walter:
No. Aren't you too old to have imaginary friends?

Harper Pitt:
I have emotional problems. I took too many pills. Why are you wearing makeup?

Prior Walter:
I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better. I swiped the new fall colours at the Clinique counter at Macy's.

Harper Pitt:
You stole these?

Prior Walter:
I was out of cash. It was an emotional emergency.

Harper Pitt:
Joe will be so angry. I promised him no more pills.

Prior Walter:
These pills you keep alluding to...

Harper Pitt:
Valium, I take Valium. Lots of Valium.

Prior Walter:
And you're dancing as fast as you can.

Harper Pitt:
I'm not addicted. I don't believe in addiction and I... I never drink and I never take drugs.

Prior Walter:
Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.

Harper Pitt:
Except for Valium.

Prior Walter:
Except Valium in wee fistfuls.

Harper Pitt:
It's terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I'm a Mormon.

Prior Walter:
I'm a homosexual.

Harper Pitt:
Oh. In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals.

Prior Walter:
In my church, we don't believe in Mormons.

Harper Pitt:
You try to walk out right now I'll put your dinner back in the oven and turn it up so high the whole building will fill with smoke and everyone will asphyxiate. So help me God I will, now answer the question.

Joe Pitt:
I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask Him together.

Harper Pitt:
God won't talk to me, I have to make up people to talk to me.

Joe Pitt:
You have to keep asking.

Harper Pitt:
I forgot the question. Oh yeah... God, is my husband a homo?

Belize:
Look at that heavy sky out there.

Louis Ironson:
Purple.

Belize:
Purple? What kind of a homosexual are you anyway? That's not purple, Mary, that color out there... is mauve.

The Angel:
Stop moving!

Roy Cohn:
[on why he wanted Ethel Rosenberg to get the death sentence] I would have pulled the switch if they let me. Why? Because I hate traitors. I HATE communists. Was it legal? F*** legal. Not nice? F*** nice. The Nation says I'm not nice? F*** THE NATION. Do you wanna be NICE? Or you wanna be EFFECTIVE?

Prior Walter Ancestor #2:
The twentieth century. Oh dear, the world has gotten so terribly, terribly old.

[Ethel Rosenberg walks into the room]

Roy Cohn:
Aw, f***. Ethel.

Ethel Rosenberg:
You don't look so good, Roy.

Roy Cohn:
Well, Ethel. I don't feel so good.

Ethel Rosenberg:
But you lost a lot of weight. That suits you. You were heavy back then. Zaftig, mit hips.

Roy Cohn:
I haven't been that heavy since 1960. We were all heavier back then, before the body thing started. Now I look like a skeleton they stare at.

Ethel Rosenberg:
The sh*t's really hit the fan, huh, Roy? The fun's just started.

Roy Cohn:
What is this Ethel, Halloween? You trying to scare me? Well you're wasting your time 'cause I'm scarier than you are any day of the week! So beat it, Ethel! Boo! Better dead than red! Somebody trying to shake me up? Hm, hm? From the throne of God in heaven to the belly of hell, you can all f*** yourselves and then go jump in the lake because I am not afraid of you or death or hell or anything!

Ethel Rosenberg:
I'll be seeing you soon, Roy. Julius sends his regards.

Roy Cohn:
Yeah, well send this to Julius!

[Roy flips her the bird]

Ethel Rosenberg:
You really are a very sick man, Roy.

Roy Cohn:
I have all the time in the world.

Ethel Rosenberg:
You're immortal.

Roy Cohn:
I'm immortal. Ethel. I have forced my way into history. I ain't never gonna die.

Ethel Rosenberg:
History is about to crack wide open. Millenium approaches.

[Prior is talking about his lineage with Ancestor #1]

Prior Walter:
I'm the thirty-fourth, I think.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
Actually the thirty-second.

Prior Walter:
Not according to mother.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
Oh, then she's including the two bastards. I say leave them out. I say, no room for bastards. These little things you swallow...

Prior Walter:
Pills.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
Pills. For the pestilence. I too...

Prior Walter:
Pestilence... you too what?

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
The pestilence in my day was much worse than it is now. Whole villages of empty houses. Look outdoors and you see Death walking in the morning, as plain as I see you now.

Prior Walter:
You died of the plague.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
The spotty monster. Like you, alone.

Prior Walter:
I'm not alone.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
You have no wife, no children.

Prior Walter:
I'm gay.

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
Well, be gay, dance in your altogether for all I care, what's that to do with not having children?

Prior Walter:
Gay homosexual, not bonny, blithe and... never mind.

[Ancestor #1 watches Prior and Louis dance]

Prior Walter Ancestor #1:
Hah. Now I see why he's got no children. He's a sodomite!

Prior Walter Ancestor #2:
Be quiet you medieval gnome. Let them dance.

Prior Walter:
That ludicrous spectacle in there. Just a parody of the funeral of someone who really counted. We don't. Faggots. We're just a bad dream the real world is having. And the real world's waking up.

Belize:
I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then 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 could reach it. That was deliberate.

[about how to get the angel to go away]

Hannah Pitt:
I don't know. I don't know what to do.

Prior:
Come on, what about scriptural precedence!

Hannah Pitt:
That was supposed to be more of a metaphor!

Prior:
A metaphor, come on, what am I supposed to do?

Hannah Pitt:
You have to... wrestle her!

Prior:
Say what?

Roy Cohn:
[under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?

Belize:
[going along with it] "Sir"?

Roy Cohn:
What's it like? After?

Belize:
After...?

Roy Cohn:
This misery ends?

Belize:
Hell or heaven?

Roy Cohn:
...heh...

Belize:
Like San Francisco.

Roy Cohn:
A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that sh*t.

Belize:
Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy Cohn:
Isaiah.

Belize:
Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy Cohn:
And Heaven?

Belize:
That was Heaven, Roy.

Roy Cohn:
The f*** it was!

Harper:
You mean like no Eskimo in Antarctica.

Mr. Lies:
Correcto. Ice and snow, no Eskimo. Even hallucinations have laws.

Harper:
Well then who's that?

Mr. Lies:
[surprised] An Eskimo.

Roy Cohn:
[Referring to his heart] Tough little muscle. Never bleeds.

[after Prior Walter says he is distracted]

The Angel:
The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence!

Belize:
You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is you're so full of piping hot crap the mention of your name draws flies.

Roy Cohn:
AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don't tell you that.

Henry:
No?

Roy Cohn:
No. Like all labels they tell you one thing, and one thing only: Where does an individual so identified fit into the food chain, the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I f*** or who f***s me, but who will come to the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, a homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men, but really this is wrong. A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anit-discrimination bill through the city council. A homosexual is somebody who knows nobody and who nobody knows. Who has zero clout. Does this sound like me Henry?

Belize:
I live in America, Louis. I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's gotta love something.

Louis Ironson:
Everybody does.

Ethel Rosenberg:
[to a dying Roy Cohn] I came here to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Knowing that I would get to see you die, more terribly than I did. And you are. Cause you're dying in sh*t, Roy. Defeated.

[leans in] And you could kill me... but you couldn't ever defeat me... you never won. And when you die, all anyone will say is, "Better that he had never lived at all."

Belize:
[seeing that Roy appears dead] Is he...

Ethel Rosenberg:
Mm hmm.

Roy Cohn:
[rising from his bed] No I'm not! I fooled you, Ethel! I knew it was you the whole time! I can't believe you actually feel for that Ma stuff! I just wanted to see if I could finally, FINALLY, make Ethel Rosenberg sing! I win!

[He starts to flatline again]

Roy Cohn:
Oh... f***.

Harper Pitt:
In my church we don't believe in homosexuals.

Prior:
In my church we don't believe in Mormons.

Prior Walter:
This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all. And the dead will be commemorated, and we'll struggle on 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.

Harper Pitt:
I don't understand this. If I didn't ever see you before, and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here in this hallucination because in my experience the mind which is where hallucinations come from shouldn't be able to make anything up that wasn't there to start with that didn't enter it from experience from the real world. Imagination can't create anything new can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?

Prior Walter:
Given the circumstances, yes.

Harper Pitt:
So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.

Prior:
And you were there and you, and you. And some of it was wonderful and some of it was terrible but all the same I kept saying I want to go home. And they sent me home.

Joe Pitt:
You said something about my friend. Is this about Louis? Is he...?

Prior Walter:
[shouting] Is he what? Sad, hot, happy? Talk to him yourself, Bullwinkle! What do I look like, a marriage counselor?

Prior Walter:
You're seeing someone else.

Louis Ironson:
What? No.

Prior Walter:
You are.

Louis Ironson:
I'm not! Well - occasionally, I - he's a... just a pickup...

Prior Walter:
Goddamn, ask me how I knew.

Louis Ironson:
How?

Prior Walter:
Threshold of revelation.

Louis Ironson:
What?

Prior Walter:
F*** you! I'm a prophet.

Prior Walter:
[to himself, as Louis approaches] Oh, this is gonna be so much worse than I'd imagined.

Louis Ironson:
Hello.

Prior Walter:
F*** you, you little sh*t bag.

Prior Walter:
I'm a prophet.

Joe Pitt:
What?

Prior Walter:
Prophet! Prophet! I prophecy, I have sight, I see! What do you do?

Joe Pitt:
I'm a clerk.

Prior Walter:
Oh, big deal, a clerk? You, what, you file things? You better be keeping a file on the hearts you break. That's all that counts in the end. You'll be having bills to pay in the world to come. You and your friend, the Whore of Babylon. Sorry, wrong room.

Prior Walter:
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 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. So 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. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life. And if he comes back, take him to court. He walked out on us, he oughta pay.

Prior:
I had a wet dream.

Belize:
Mmm. The Calvin Klein man?

Prior:
No, it was a woman.

Belize:
Are you turnin' straight on me?

Prior:
An... unconventional woman!

Belize:
Grace Jones?

Prior:
Maybe I am a prophet. Not just me, all of us who are dying now. Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy... Be still, toil no more. Maybe the world has driven God from heaven and incurred the angel's wrath. I believe I've seen the end of things, and having seen I'm going blind as prophets do; it makes a certain sense to me. And if I hate heaven my only resistance is to run.

Joe Pitt:
I want to... I don't know anymore what I want.

Hannah Pitt:
What you want, what you want. Well, that shifts with the breeze. How can you steer your life by what you want? Hold to what you believe!

Joe Pitt:
You and me, it's like we're in Salt Lake again. You sort of bring the desert with you. [Noticing Hannah becoming upset] Are you...? Don't cry.

Hannah Pitt:
Oh, if I ever do, I promise you, you'll not be privileged to witness it.

Harper Pitt:
Imagining, just like me. Except the only time I wasn't imagining is when I was with you. You, the one part of the real world that I wasn't allergic to.

Prior:
When you cry, Louis, it's nothing. It's just the idea of crying.

Belize:
Real love isn't ambivalent. I'd swear that's a line from my favorite best-selling paperback novel, "In Love with the Night Mysterious", except I don't think you've ever read it. Well, you ought to, instead of spending the rest of your life, trying to get through "Democracy in America." It's about this white woman whose daddy owns a plantation in the Deep South, in the years before the Civil War. And her name is Margaret, and she's in love with her daddy's number-one slave, and his name is Thaddeus. And she's married, but her white slave-owner husband has AIDS: Antebellum Insufficiently-Developed Sex-organs. And so, there's a lot of hot stuff going down, when Margaret and Thaddeus can catch a spare torrid ten under the cotton-picking moon. And then of course the Yankees come, and they set the slaves free. And the slaves string up old daddy and so on, historical fiction. Somewhere in there I recall, Margaret and Thaddeus find the time to discuss the nature of love. Her face is reflecting the flames of the burning plantation, you know the way white people do, and his black face is dark in the night and she says to him, "Thaddeus, real love isn't ever ambivalent."

Martin Heller:
It's the fear of what comes after the doing that makes the doing hard to do.

Roy Cohn:
Amen.

Martin Heller:
But you can almost always live with the consequences.

Roy Cohn:
Life is full of horror; nobody escapes, nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you. Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone... Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.

Prior:
Oh my queen; you know you've hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag.

The Angel:
You can't outrun your occupation, Jonah. Hiding from me one place, you'll find me in another. I-I-I-I stop down the road waiting for you. You know me, prophet. You're a battered heart bleeding life in the universe of wounds. Vessel of the book now, on you, in you, in your blood we write, have written, stasis. The end.

The Angel:
I am the continental principality of America! I am a bird of prey! I will not be compelled!

Harper:
In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother:
Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper:
And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother:
Just mangled guts pretending.

Mormon Mother:
That's how people change.

The Angel:
My wrath is as fearsome as my countenance is splendid.

Sir:
Whadda you want?

Louis Ironson:
I want you to f*** me, hurt me, and make me bleed.

Sir:
I want to.

Louis Ironson:
Yeah?

Sir:
I wanna hurt you.

Louis Ironson:
F*** me.

Sir:
Yeah?

Louis Ironson:
Hard.

Sir:
Yeah? You've been a bad boy?

Louis Ironson:
[laughs] Very bad. Very bad.

Sir:
You need to be punished, boy?

Louis Ironson:
Yes, I do.

Sir:
Yes, what?

Louis Ironson:
...Oh, uh...

Sir:
Yes, what, boy?

Louis Ironson:
Oh! 'Ts- yes, sir.

Sir:
I want you to take me to your place, boy.

Louis Ironson:
No, I can't do that.

Sir:
No, what?

Louis Ironson:
No sir, I can't. I don't live alone, sir.

Sir:
Your lover know you're out with a man tonight, boy?

Louis Ironson:
No sir, he... my lover doesn't know.

Sir:
Your lover know you like...

Louis Ironson:
Let's change the subject, okay? Can we go to your place?

Sir:
...I live with my parents.

Harper Pitt:
People are like planets, you need a thick skin.

The Rabbi:
[Rabbi's opening monologue in 'Angels of America' about the death of Sarah Ironson] This good and righteous woman... she was not a person, but a whole kind of a person - the ones that crossed the ocean that brought with us to America, the villages of Russia and Lithuania. And how we struggled! And how we fought! For the family... for the Jewish home! Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America - you and your children, and their children with their goyische names. You do not live in America - no such a place exists. Your clay is the clay of some litvak shtetl, and your air is the air of the steppes, because she carried that Old World on her back, across the ocean, in a boat! And she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue... on Flatbush. You can never make that crossing that she made, for such great voyages in this world do not any more exist. But every day of your lives, the miles - that voyage from that place to this one - you cross. Every day! You understand me? In you, that journey... is.

Roy Cohn:
I'm not afraid of death. What can death bring that I haven't faced? I've lived. Life is the worst.

Prior:
MY! People come and go so strangely here.

Roy Cohn:
[on the phone to his doctor, refusing experimental meds] No, I was never very good at tests. I'd rather cheat!

Hannah Pitt:
Homosexuality. It just seems so, ah, ungainly to me. Two men together. It's not an appetizing notion. But then, for me, men, in any configuration . . . they're just so lumpish and stupid. Stupidity gets me crazy.

Belize:
[after Prior's ranting to Joe Pitt in the courthouse] Behave yourself cherie... or Nanny will be forced to use the wooden spoon!

Hannah Pitt:
I'm going now.

Prior Water:
You'll come back?

Hannah Pitt:
If I can. I have things I have to take care of.

Prior Water:
Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Hannah Pitt:
Well that's a stupid thing to do.

Prior:
[looking under the bed covers] F***. Will you look at this? First goddamn orgasm in months and I slept through it.

Prior:
I love you, Louis.

Louis Ironson:
Good.

Prior:
I Really Do. But you can never come back. Not ever. I'm sorry but you can't.

Joe Pitt:
[to Louis] You have a good heart. 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 in softness and weakness. Sometimes, self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.

Prior:
[Introducing Hannah] This is my ex-lover's lover's Mormon mother.

Nurse Emily:
Even in New York in the 80s, that is strange.

Joe Pitt:
I can't believe this! My decisions are being criticised by the guy who changes the coffee filters in the secretary's lounge!

Harper Pitt:
Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America. God! It's been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we'll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air. As close as I'll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air and attained the outer rim, the ozone which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things. Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead of people who'd perished from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls. And the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. 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.