The Human Stain

Faunia Farley:
Action is the enemy of thought.

Faunia Farley:
You're a crow... who doesn't know how to be a crow.

Nathan Zuckerman:
I'm writing a book... it's called 'The Human Stain'.

Ernestine:
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated.

Coleman Silk:
Granted, she's not my first love. Granted, she's not my great love. But she is sure as hell my last love. Doesn't that count for something?

Mrs. Silk:
You need to be proud of your race.

Young Coleman Silk:
What about me? What about just being proud of being me? It's my life.

Young Coleman Silk:
So, that's an... What is it? Swedish?

Steena Paulsson:
Close, it's Danish and Icelandic.

Mrs. Silk:
Coleman, you think like a prisoner. You're white as snow and you think like a slave.

Mrs. Silk:
Funny, I never thought of you as black or white. Golden, you were my golden child.

Nathan Zuckerman:
[voiceover] 1998 was the summer of sanctimony. After the fall of Communism and before the horrors of terrorism, there was a brief interlude when the nation was preoccupied by cock sucking.

Young Coleman Silk:
Dance For Me.

Coleman Silk:
You can't make a college without breaking egg heads, and uh, I couldn't write a book called Spooks that didn't sound like the raving of a lunatic.

Psychologist:
Did you ever kill anyone when you were in Vietnam, Mr. Farley?

Lester Farley:
Did I kill anyone?

Psychologist:
Um hmm.

Lester Farley:
Isn't that what I was supposed to do when I went to f***in' Vietnam, f***in' kill gooks? They said everything goes, so everything went.

Faunia Farley:
You can't go out there, he's f***in' crazy.

Coleman Silk:
Yeah, so am I. [picks up a baseball bat]

Nelson Primus:
How do you know she doesn't want to use you to make up for all that she's lost? Do I represent you in a paternity suit, Coleman? "Give up the girl, Achilles." I took your intro to European lit umpteen years ago as an undergrad. Give her up, and your troubles go away.

Young Coleman Silk:
[giving eulogy] Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant only taste death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.

Nathan Zuckerman:
Coleman, every mistake a man can make usually has a sexual accelerator. The things that restore you can also destroy you.

Faunia Farley:
[dancing provocatively] You're way too young for me. I need a man much older than you. At least 100. Know anyone in a wheelchair?

Steena Paulsson:
I want to spend my life with you.

Young Coleman Silk:
What are you doing Sunday?

Herb Keble:
Coleman Silk and his wife Iris were betray by the moral stupidity of a censorious and coercive community. And I was a part of that community. We all were.

Mrs. Silk:
Funny I never thought of you as black or white. Gold. You were my golden child.

Mrs. Silk:
Coleman, you think like a prisoner. You're white as snow, and you think like a slave.

[last lines]

Lester Farley:
You know my secret place. You know everything now, don't you Mr. Zuckerman? But you won't tell, will you?

Nathan Zuckerman:
[slowly turns to walk away]

Lester Farley:
Hey, the book. Send me one.

Nathan Zuckerman:
It's in the mail.