- 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: 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.
- 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: 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: 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- White: All right. I think the answer to your question is that the dialectic of the homily always presupposes a ground of evil.
- [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: 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.
- 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: His single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place.
- 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?
- White: It's the first thing in that book there: the Garden of Eden. Knowledge is destructive to the spirit, destructive to goodness. Everyone knows that story. It's probably the most famous story in there. I suppose from the God point of view all knowledge is vanity. Or maybe it just gives people the unhealthy illusion that they can outwit the devil.
- White: The Bible is full of cautionary tales - all of literature for that matter - telling us to be careful. Careful of what? Taking the wrong turn, the wrong path. How many wrong paths are there? Their number is legion. How many rights paths? Just one. Hence the imbalance that you spoke of.
- 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.
- White: Its that the world is basically a forced labour camp from which the workers, perfectly innocent, are led forth, by lottery, a few each day to be executed.
- 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: The things I believed in, no longer exist. Its foolish to pretend they do. Western civilisation finally went up in smoke in the chimneys of Dachau, and I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.
- Black: First thing you got to understand is, I aint got an original thought in my head, if it aint got the lingering scent of divinity to it, I aint interested in it.
- White: Who knows, maybe birthdays are dangerous, like Christmas, ornaments hanging from the trees, wreaths from the doors, bodies from the steam pipes, all over America.
- White: Um, cultural things, for instance, books, music, art, things like that. Those are the things that have value to me. They're the foundations of civilisation.