Powder

Powder:
If you say that my IQ is well beyond your IQ charts then why are you asking me if I understand what you're saying?

Donald Ripley:
It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.

Powder:
Einstein.

Donald Ripley:
When I look at you, I have hope that maybe one day our humanity will surpass our technology.

Powder:
She didn't go some place... your wife. I felt her go. Not away, just out... everywhere.

Powder:
And then its possible to talk to someone without any lies. With no sarcasms, no deceptions, no exaggerations, or any of the other things people use to confuse the truth.

Powder:
It's because you have this spot that you can't see past. My grams and gramps had it, the spot where they thought they were disconnected from everything.

Powder:
And how beautiful they really are. And that there's no need to hide, or lie. And that it's posible to talk to someone without any lies, with no sarcasms, no deceptions, no exaggerations or any of the things that people use to confuse the truth.

Sheriff Doug Barnum:
I never thought we'd find a man too white for you there Harley.

Powder:
Inside most people there's a feeling of being separate, separated from everything.

Powder:
And they're not. They're part of absolutely everyone, and everything.

Powder:
Do you? Do you?

Powder:
Do you think I'm ugly?

Sheriff Barnum:
He won't come up from the cellar. He didn't report his grandfather's death either. We already know he died of natural causes. … The neighbors talk about him as if he's some kind of phantom. I haven't met one yet that ever had a good look at him.

Jessie:
What are you telling me, Doug?

Sheriff Barnum:
That the old folks may have kept him down there — like some kind of a family secret.

Powder:
I've never been to school. I've read about it though.

Jessie:
But, you said you read all these books? [Picking up a copy of Moby-Dick] : Have you read this book? … I know college kids who couldn't wade through this one.

Powder:
Pick a page.

Jessie [looks into book]:
216.

Powder [reciting from memory] :
"Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it."

Jessie:
You know that whole book?

Powder:
I know them all. [Jessie steps out and gazes at the cellar lined with books].

Sheriff Barnum:
You telling me the kid electrocuted the old man? What, you think he's Doctor Frankenstein?

Deputy Harley Duncan:
I'm just saying that that's more than albino, Doug — that is spooky.

Sheriff Barnum:
I never thought we'd find a man too white for you there, Harley.

Powder:
The worst day I can remember was in a hospital.

Sheriff Barnum:
What day was that?

Powder:
The day I was born.

Jessie:
Your grandmother tutored you — did she ever say anything about it?

Powder:
She said I was a fast learner.

Jessie:
Yeah, well, I think that's about to fall into the "no sh*t" category.

Dr. Aaron Stripler:
Your I.Q. scored right off the charts Jeremy. There isn't even a classification for you it was so high. All of your tests indicate you have the most advanced intellect in the history of humankind. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Powder:
If you thought I was that advanced would you ask me if I understood? … You're not here to ask me questions. You're here to find out how I cheated. It's the only way you can make sense of it. It's what you need to believe. But I don't need you to believe in me, Doctor Stipler, and I'm not interested in any of your tests. I'm not interested in you or anything else here. I'm interested in going home.

Powder:
When a thunderstorm comes up, I can feel it inside. When lightning comes down, I can feel it wanting to come to me. Grandma said it was God. She said the white fire was God. Do you believe in God, Sheriff? That it was God who took my mother?

Sheriff Doug Barnum:
Hey — took your mother? Your grandfolks told you that?

Powder:
I remember it.

Jessie [in regards to the Deputy being taken away in an ambulance after Powder transmits to him the feelings of the dying deer he had shot]:
What did happen? Why won't you tell anyone?

Powder:
I let him see. I opened him up and I let him see. He just couldn't see what he was doing, so I helped him.

Lindsey [As she communicates with Powder through his touch]:
Your father. Your father hurt you a long time ago. You're so sad — he made you so sad. He thought you were ugly, and he kept saying that you weren't… — I'm sorry.

Powder:
Do you? Do you?

Lindsey:
Do I what?

Powder:
Do you think I'm ugly?

Lindsey:
I don't know what I think when I look at you. But sometimes I think, I think you're the most beautiful face I've ever seen.

Dick Kelloway [seeing his daughter seated with Powder]:
You having a good time with my daughter?

Powder [smiles]:
Wonderful.

Dick Kelloway:
You think this is funny? You think this is funny? Huh, lover boy?

Donald Ripley:
"It's become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."

Powder:
Albert Einstein.*

Donald Ripley:
I look at you, and I think that someday our humanity might actually surpass our technology. * Though this is quoted as Einstein in Voices of Truth : Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers, and Healers (2000) by Nina L. Diamond, p. 429, there are no published sources of this statement yet located earlier than its occurence in this film.

Sheriff Barnum:
What the hell you doing, Jess?

Jessie:
The right thing — and if you don't see that, why don't you just turn your head, and please, please, just look the other way.

Sheriff Barnum:
I don't know how to do that, Jess.

Powder:
I could never watch television.

Powder:
I want to go home. Do you understand that? I want to go home. … I saw that I don't like what you do. Any of you. … You pretend to be my friend, the way you pretend everything. A friend doesn't lock you up. A friend doesn't take you away from your home, and say that its for your own good. How long do you really think I'll let you keep me here?

Powder:
They were afraid to touch me after a while — my grandma and grandpa. They got really scared.

Powder:
Have you ever listened to people from the inside? Listened so close you can hear their thoughts — and all their memories. Hear them think from places they don't even know they think from?

Powder:
She says she believes in miracles now, and that you should too. … She thinks I'm an angel. Come to take her home, and to bring you and Steven together again, and remind you of how much you still are in each other's hearts.

Jessie Caldwell:
I'm telling you. I've never seen anything like him. … Because of the way he's lived — he doesn't seem to know what things are. I mean, things you and I take for granted, common everyday objects, simple ideas. I just don't think he's ever been exposed to them. He's about the most well-read teenage kid you could ever meet, but in other ways, I think he's a lot like a little child.

Lindsey Kelloway:
That was some light-show. People are going to be talking about that to their grandkids grandkids around here.

Donald Ripley:
Energy, always relaying, always transforming, and never-ending.

Donald Ripley:
Something's happened here. Something's happened here. I'm telling you, with everything we know, about science, about the makeup of the human body, what happened in that classroom is impossible. That kid attracted an arc of electricity from thirty feet away, and not just from the Jacob's Ladder, I mean, after a second it was like it was coming out of the whole… building.

Donald Ripley:
We're stumbling around in a very dark age basically trying not to kill each other. So it hurts me when you say "So what?" Because you are not just different, Jeremy, I think you have a mind that we won't evolve to for like thousands of years — you're maybe the man of the future right here and now.

Sheriff Doug Barnum:
We've got something out here nobody's gonna believe.

Sheriff Doug Barnum:
I got twenty different kids telling me twenty different stories.

Deputy Harley Duncan:
You ever see so many goddamned lightning rods on one house?

Deputy Harley Duncan:
That kid, he lays his hand on the deer while it's still shaking, and then he touches me at the same time. Now, I can't figure out why — till my heart starts pounding, and I'm shaking, and I'm feeling myself hurt and scared shitless, slipping away in the goddamned dark. That's the worst thing I ever felt. Its like I could feel that animal dying. Hell, it was like I was the goddamned thing.

John Box:
Why you look like that? You look like some kind of vampire from outerspace or something.

John Box:
Don't look at me, man? … Did you hear what I said? … I don't like your eyes.

John Box:
Well, what you know — the boogeyman's afraid of lightning.

John Box:
There's not much fight in you, is there freak show? You really think you could be like us?