The Sunset Limited

White:
Your god must once have stood at a dawn of infinite possibilities, and this is what he's made of it. You tell me that I want God's love? I don't. Perhaps I want forgiveness, but there's no-one to ask it of. And there's no going back, there's no setting things right, there's only the hope of nothingness.

Black:
Belief 'aint like unbelief. If you're a believer and you finally got to come to the well of belief itself , then you 'aint got to look no further. There 'aint no further. But the unbelievers got a problem. He's set out to unravel the world. For everything he can point to that 'aint true, he leaves two false things laying there.

White:
The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy.

White:
I don't believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you, man. Can't you see? The clamour and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear.

White:
I long for Darkness. I pray for death, real death. And if I thought that in death I would meet the people I knew in life, I don't know what I would do. That would be the ultimate horror, the ultimate nightmare. If I thought I was gonna meet my mother again an' start all of that over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to... that would be the final nightmare. Goddamn Kafka on wheels.

White:
All right. I think the answer to your question is that the dialectic of the homily always presupposes a ground of evil.

White:
Banish the fear of death from men's hearts and they would not live a day.

White:
His single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place.

White:
And brotherhood, justice, eternal life? Good God man... Show me a religion that prepares one for nothingness, for death. That's a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life, for dreams and illusions and lies. Banish the fear of death from men's hearts and they wouldn't live a day. Who would want this nightmare but for fear of the next. The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death, every friendship, every love. Torment, lost, betrayal, pain, suffering, age, indignity, hideous lingering illness... and all of it with a single conclusion. For you and everyone and everything you have ever chosen to care for.

White:
If people could see the world for what is truly is, see their lives for what they truly are without dreams and illusions, I don't believe they could offer the first reason why they should not elect to die as soon as possible. I don't believe in God. Can you understand that?

White:
The darker picture is always the correct one. When you read the history of the world you are reading a saga of bloodshed and greed and folly the import of which is impossible to ignore. And yet we imagine that the future will somehow be different.

Black:
The light is all around you but you don't see nothing but shadow. And you're the one causing it. It's you. You're the shadow! That's the point.

[first lines]

Black:
So what am I supposed to do with you, Professor?

White:
Why are you supposed to do anything?

Black:
The sun don't shine up the same dog's ass every day, you understand what I'm saying?

White:
If what you're saying is that I'm simply having a bad day, that's ridiculous.

Black:
I ain't saying you're having a bad day, Professor, I'm saying you're having a bad life.

Black:
I ain't a doubter, but I am a questioner.

White:
What's the difference?

Black:
A questioner wants the truth. A doubter wants to be told there ain't no such thing.

White:
What would the difference be, to Him, between a building that was spiritually and morally vacant, and one that was just plain empty?

Black:
Hmm, Professor, you're a theologian here, and I didn't even know it.

White:
You're being facetious.

Black:
I don't know that word - but don't be afraid to talk down to me, you aren't going to hurt my feelings.

[last lines]

Black:
If you don't never speak again, you know I'll keep your Word. You know I will, you know I'm good for it. Is that okay? Is, is that okay?

White:
The things I love are very frail. Very fragile. I didn't know that, I thought they were indestructible. They weren't...

Black:
And that's what sent you off the edge of the platform, it wasn't nothin' personal?

White:
Oh, it's personal, that's what an education does, it makes makes the world personal?

Black:
You think He goes around talkin' to people He knows ain't gonna listen to Him in the first place? You think He got *that* kinda free time?

Black:
The drunk's concern ain't that he's gonna die from drinkin', which he is, but that he's gonna run out'a whiskey before he get a chance to do it.

Black:
I'm gonna take it the good way, 'cuz that's my nature. That way I get to live in my world, not yours.

White:
And what makes you think mine is so bad?

Black:
I don't think it's so bad, I just no it's brief.

White:
Jesus drank wine, He and His disciples...

Black:
Yeah, He did. Says so right here in the Bible. Of course it don't say nuthin' about Him hiding it in the toilet.