Perestrokia lines
Dec. 16th, 2003 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serafina20This took a lot longer than expected. God, I love this play.
Harper: 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, and they're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs, they don't get it, they just want him. Want him.
Henry: He's a very important man.
Belize: Oh, OK. Then I shouldn't fuck up his medications?
Okay, honestly, maybe this isn't the best line in the world, but I adored the man who played Roy Cohen in the play I saw (in retrospect, I think he's the one I had the biggest crush on during that semester, which was when I firmly decided that I was probably bisexual and had a horrible crush on the Prior from the play and a woman I'd just met. But, out of all of them, only Jack was an inspirational muse for one of my most favoritestest characters I've ever created so anything I can still hear him say in my head, I love.
Roy: And get me a real phone, with a hold button, I mean look at this, it's just one little line, now how am I supposed to perform basic bodily functions on this?
Oh, and the above line is also a good example of why I love this play so much. It's like poetry, the way Kushner uses punctuation to maneuver the delivery of the lines.
I once used this part in a fic. I cannot for the life of me remember what fic. Hugs to anyone who finds it for me. ;)
Louis: Smell is ... an incredibly complex and under appreciated physical phenomenon. Inextricably bound with sex. (Joe speaks) It is. The nose is really a sexual organ.
Smelling. Is desiring. We have five senses, but only two that go beyond the boundaries ... of ourselves. When you look at someone, it's just bouncing light, or when you hear them, it's just sound waves, vibrating air, or touch is just nerve endings tingling. Know what smell is? (Joe answers) It's made of the molecules of what you're smelling. Some part of you, where you meet the air, is airborne. (they smell, Joe stutters uncomfortably) Smelling. And tasting. First the nose, then the tongue. (Joe speaks) They work as a team, see. The nose tells the body--the hear, the mind, the fingers, the cock--what is wants, and then the tongue explores, finding out what's edible, what isn't, what's most mineral, food for the blood, food for the bones, and therefore most delectable.
Angel: The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence.
same scene
Prior: The sexual politics of this are veryconfusing. God, for example, is a man. Well, not a man, he's a flaming Hebrew letter, but a male flaming Hebrew letter.
(same scene)
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, incurred the angel's wrath.
I believe I've seen the end of things. And having scene, I'm going blind, as prophets do. It makes a certain sense to me.
Roy: The worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel, is you are booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for sick. Look at Regan: He's so healthy he's hardly human, he's a hundred if he's a day, he takes a slug in his chest and two days later he's out west riding ponies in his PJ's/ I mean who does that? That's America. It's just no country for the infirm.
Actually, I love the whole scene with Roy, Belize, and Ethel. Serious considering a sex change just for the damn role. I, like Al Pacino, would have gone to see this play three times a week just to study the role.
Harper: Angelology. The field work must be rigorous. You'd have to drop dead before you saw your first specimen.
(same scene)
Louis: I don't like cults.
Joe: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not a cult.
Louis: Any religion that's not at least two thousand years old is a cult.
(same scene)
Prior: I never imagine losing my mind was going to be such hard work.
Joe: You believe the world is perfectible and so you find it always unsatisfying.
(same scene)
Louis: This is interesting. I'm losing myself in an ideological leather bar. The more appalling I find your politics the more I want to hump you.
Prior: Fuck you. I'm a prophet.
(same scene)
Prior: You cry, but you endanger nothing in yourself. It's like the idea of crying when you do it.
Or the idea of love.
(Same scene)
Roy: Hire a lawyer, sue somebody, it's good for the soul.
Lawyers are ... the High Priests of America. We alone know the words that made America. Out of thin air. We alone know how to use The Words. The Law: the only club I ever want to belong to. And before they take that from me, I'm going to die.
because, in the right fic, under the right circumstances, i can see Lex saying this
(about Joe)
Prior: Mega-Butch. He made me feel beyond nelly. Like little wipsy daisies were sprouting out my ears. Little droopy wispy wilted ....
One of my favorite speeches in the entire play, and, no, I don't entirely feel this way
Belize: Well, I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big idea, and stories, and people dying, and 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 can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. .... I live in America, Louis, that's hard enough. I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something.
Hanna: But that wasn't it. Homosexuality. It just seems ... ungainly. Two men together. It isn't an appetizing notion but then, for me, men in any configuration ... well they're so lumpish and stupid. And stupidity gets me cross.
Prior: I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.
Harper: Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life.
Prior: To face loss. With grace. Is key, I think, but it's impossible. All you ever do is lose and lose.
(same scene)
Harper: Unspeakable beauty. That's something I would like to see.
Prior: This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We will not die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More Life
The Great Works Begins.
Harper: 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, and they're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs, they don't get it, they just want him. Want him.
Henry: He's a very important man.
Belize: Oh, OK. Then I shouldn't fuck up his medications?
Okay, honestly, maybe this isn't the best line in the world, but I adored the man who played Roy Cohen in the play I saw (in retrospect, I think he's the one I had the biggest crush on during that semester, which was when I firmly decided that I was probably bisexual and had a horrible crush on the Prior from the play and a woman I'd just met. But, out of all of them, only Jack was an inspirational muse for one of my most favoritestest characters I've ever created so anything I can still hear him say in my head, I love.
Roy: And get me a real phone, with a hold button, I mean look at this, it's just one little line, now how am I supposed to perform basic bodily functions on this?
Oh, and the above line is also a good example of why I love this play so much. It's like poetry, the way Kushner uses punctuation to maneuver the delivery of the lines.
I once used this part in a fic. I cannot for the life of me remember what fic. Hugs to anyone who finds it for me. ;)
Louis: Smell is ... an incredibly complex and under appreciated physical phenomenon. Inextricably bound with sex. (Joe speaks) It is. The nose is really a sexual organ.
Smelling. Is desiring. We have five senses, but only two that go beyond the boundaries ... of ourselves. When you look at someone, it's just bouncing light, or when you hear them, it's just sound waves, vibrating air, or touch is just nerve endings tingling. Know what smell is? (Joe answers) It's made of the molecules of what you're smelling. Some part of you, where you meet the air, is airborne. (they smell, Joe stutters uncomfortably) Smelling. And tasting. First the nose, then the tongue. (Joe speaks) They work as a team, see. The nose tells the body--the hear, the mind, the fingers, the cock--what is wants, and then the tongue explores, finding out what's edible, what isn't, what's most mineral, food for the blood, food for the bones, and therefore most delectable.
Angel: The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence.
same scene
Prior: The sexual politics of this are veryconfusing. God, for example, is a man. Well, not a man, he's a flaming Hebrew letter, but a male flaming Hebrew letter.
(same scene)
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, incurred the angel's wrath.
I believe I've seen the end of things. And having scene, I'm going blind, as prophets do. It makes a certain sense to me.
Roy: The worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel, is you are booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for sick. Look at Regan: He's so healthy he's hardly human, he's a hundred if he's a day, he takes a slug in his chest and two days later he's out west riding ponies in his PJ's/ I mean who does that? That's America. It's just no country for the infirm.
Actually, I love the whole scene with Roy, Belize, and Ethel. Serious considering a sex change just for the damn role. I, like Al Pacino, would have gone to see this play three times a week just to study the role.
Harper: Angelology. The field work must be rigorous. You'd have to drop dead before you saw your first specimen.
(same scene)
Louis: I don't like cults.
Joe: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not a cult.
Louis: Any religion that's not at least two thousand years old is a cult.
(same scene)
Prior: I never imagine losing my mind was going to be such hard work.
Joe: You believe the world is perfectible and so you find it always unsatisfying.
(same scene)
Louis: This is interesting. I'm losing myself in an ideological leather bar. The more appalling I find your politics the more I want to hump you.
Prior: Fuck you. I'm a prophet.
(same scene)
Prior: You cry, but you endanger nothing in yourself. It's like the idea of crying when you do it.
Or the idea of love.
(Same scene)
Roy: Hire a lawyer, sue somebody, it's good for the soul.
Lawyers are ... the High Priests of America. We alone know the words that made America. Out of thin air. We alone know how to use The Words. The Law: the only club I ever want to belong to. And before they take that from me, I'm going to die.
because, in the right fic, under the right circumstances, i can see Lex saying this
(about Joe)
Prior: Mega-Butch. He made me feel beyond nelly. Like little wipsy daisies were sprouting out my ears. Little droopy wispy wilted ....
One of my favorite speeches in the entire play, and, no, I don't entirely feel this way
Belize: Well, I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big idea, and stories, and people dying, and 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 can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. .... I live in America, Louis, that's hard enough. I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something.
Hanna: But that wasn't it. Homosexuality. It just seems ... ungainly. Two men together. It isn't an appetizing notion but then, for me, men in any configuration ... well they're so lumpish and stupid. And stupidity gets me cross.
Prior: I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.
Harper: Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life.
Prior: To face loss. With grace. Is key, I think, but it's impossible. All you ever do is lose and lose.
(same scene)
Harper: Unspeakable beauty. That's something I would like to see.
Prior: This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We will not die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More Life
The Great Works Begins.
