Norman Arriaga quotes from Angels in America

You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is that you are so full of piping hot crap that the mention of your name draws flies.

I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then 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. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, Louis, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, Louis. I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s gotta love somethin'.

Look at that heavy sky out there.

Louis Ironson

Purple.

Purple? Boy, what kind of a homosexual are you anyway? That's not purple, Mary. That color up there is mauve.

Prior Walter

Out of my way, I wanna meet my replacement [pushes past Belize into Joe Pitt's office] Oh, God.

Yes, can I help you?

Prior

[stares] I'm a prophet.

What?

Prior

PROPHET! PROPHET! I PROPHESY, I HAVE SIGHT, I SEE! What do you do?

[slightly stunned] I'm a clerk.

Prior

Oh, big deal, a clerk? You, what, you file things? You better be keeping a file on the hearts you break. That's all that counts in the end. You'll be having bills to pay in the world to come. You and your friend, the Whore of Babylon. Sorry, wrong room.

Prior

[back outside with Belize] He's the Marlboro Man!

Prior

Home on the range!

Chaps and spurs.

Prior

Mega-butch! He made me feel beyond nelly, like I've got wispy daisies sprouting out my ears.

Roy Cohn

[delirious, under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?

"Sir"?

Roy

What's it like? After?

After...?

Roy

This misery ends?

Hell or heaven?

Roy

[laughs]

Like San Francisco.

Roy

A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy

Isaiah.

Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cow spit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy

And Heaven?

That was Heaven, Roy.

Roy

The fuck it was!