TV show quotes
Characters
Father PaulHamish Linklater · 16 quotes
Riley FlynnZach Gilford · 14 quotes
Erin GreeneKate Siegel · 8 quotes
Bev KeaneSamantha Sloyan · 5 quotes
Annie FlynnKristin Lehman · 3 quotes
Dr. Sarah GunningAnnabeth Gish · 3 quotes
Most scenes together: Father Paul & Riley Flynn (7), Riley Flynn & Erin Greene (5), Father Paul & Bev Keane (3)
[praying after killing a young woman while driving drunk] Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. They kingdom come, thy will be done, as Earth as...
While you're at it, ask Him why he always takes kids, while the drunk fucks walk away with scratches.
[to Riley] You're going to sit here at this table, after what you've done, and say "Oh church isn't for me?" And make jokes about altar boys and Monsignor Pruitt? No. Nope. You are going to church tomorrow, Riley. And every other Sunday. I don't care if your heart's not in it, or the mood doesn't strike you. You can consider it a condition of your parole.
Welcome to the Pot, what's left of it anyway.
The Crock Pot!
Yeah, well it's a cute nickname, yeah. But you know, it's true. We are a melting pot, a grab bag.
A piñata, even. A whole variety of different flavors, that just keeps getting pummeled with some huge awful stick.
We sure are glad to add you to the stew.
My son Riley, he's...
Not exactly in a state of grace right now.
Hey, look I think that's great. Turns out I'm not much use to people who are in a state of grace. Jesus, he didn't have that much interest for those kind of people either. No, he seemed to go straight for those folks who weren't in a state of grace. They were his favorite people, turns out. They were the ones he called friends.
How are you?
I don't know. That's kind of the whole thing. I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, in prison, it was easy. I had things to do, you know? Count the days. Count down the sentence. Eat, sleep, read. It's all pretty spelled out for you. Regimented. But here? Here I have nothing. What, am I going to get a job? Go to school? I have no money, no prospects. I just exist now. That's it. I have absolutely no purpose at all. I'm just sitting in my parents' house, breathing, and serving no purpose to anyone whatsoever. I'm just living. [long pause] And that's the worst part. Because I shouldn't be alive, Erin. So I don't know. What do I do here? I eat. Sleep. Shit. I don't know. Walk home now, eat dinner, wait out this fucking storm.
There you go. Do that. Ride out the storm tonight. And then tomorrow, you'll see what tomorrow's all about. Find another project. I'm sorry for what you've been through. I'm really, really sorry.
You found your purpose.
Yeah, cat disposal.
You've got to start somewhere.
Well, that's the thing about where we've been. It's important, sure. But it's not as important as where we're going. And every place I was before where I am now, well, they were just leading me here. Even if I didn't know it at the time. Even if I didn't see it.
How was your day?
It's been a long time since anyone asked me that.
In prison, nobody asks?
No, in prison no one needs to ask. Every day is exactly the same.
[about his poisoned dog] Did you charge her yet?
Miss Keane insists she has no idea what happened.
Oh, she insists? Why didn't you just fucking say so? That changes everything.
...
There weren't no accident, okay? But you know what, sheriff? I didn't expect this would go any different. Not with me, not here, not with her. She killed half the island with that fucking settlement. What's one more dog on the pile?
I know Bev Keane too, alright? Not as well as you, but enough to know you're not wrong about her. You're not wrong, Joe.
[at their first AA meeting together] Catholic Church in a nutshell. All over the world, these small, starving villages with big, fancy churches. Getting bigger and fancier, while the towns dry up. Churches just popping up like fat, plump little ticks sucking the town dry.
Okay, so we can safely say you're not practicing.
That's safe. [pause] You ever heard of RR?
RR?
AA for pirates?
[smiles] Oh.
Rational Recovery. It's based more on reason and psychology. It's about empowering people instead of saying you're powerless.
So you're the higher power, is that how it works? Being your own higher power, how is that working out for you?
I haven't had a drop in four years.
Not much of a selection in prison though, is there? Alcohol isn't good or bad. Not itself. But it's people. Suffering can be a gift. It all just depends on us. What we do with it, how we react to it. So, alcohol isn't good or bad. And the same with guilt, grief, suffering. It just depends on what we do with it. What's more empowering than that?
No, alcohol isn't good or bad. But the version of me that would come out when I had enough to drink, he was bad. He was selfish and careless and he ruined my life. There is a saboteur inside of me, and I always thought, you know, we'd work it out. We'd learn to live with each other, because he wouldn't really hurt me. Not me. I fed him, so he wouldn't hurt me. And then one morning I woke up and found out he killed someone. I had killed someone. So who's to blame there? I am to blame there. And God? Well, He just kind of let it happen, didn't He? See, that's the part I cannot square. Because you're right, there is-- there is so much suffering in the world. So much. And then there's this higher power. This higher power who could erase all that pain, just wave His hand and make it all go away, but doesn't? No. No thank you. The worst part is that it lets all the rest of us off the hook. We can all just stand by and watch Leeza Scarborough wheel herself around town. We can watch Joe Collie slowly drink himself to death. We can watch so many people just slip into these bottomless pits of... of awful, and we can stand it. We can tolerate it because we say things like, "God works in mysterious ways." Like-- Like there's a plan? Like something good's going to come out of it? Nothing good came out of my drinking. Nothing good came out of me killing that poor girl. Nothing good came out of Joe Collie's drinking. And not a single good thing comes out of Leeza never being able to walk again. Nothing good came out of a metric ton of crude oil filling up the bay. And the only thing, the only fucking thing that lets people stand by, watching all this suffering, doing nothing, doing fucking nothing, is the idea that suffering can be a gift from God. What a monstrous idea, Father.
Look, there's nothing in the scripture, or in the world for that matter, that suggests God negates personal accountability. There's certainly nothing in the program to suggest that. Not at all, in fact. I believe God can take our work, even our awful works, and turn them into something else. I know He can find the good in them, and find the love in them, whether we see it or not. That I know, Riley Flynn. That I know.
[about Leeza being able to walk] Have you ever seen anything like this? I mean, it's a miracle isn't it? A real one, like a Gospel's real one.
Before today? No, I haven't seen anything like this before today. But now I have.
She's walking and she's standing. And we're grateful. It feels wrong, doesn't it? To interrogate a miracle? Second guess a gift from God?
Whole town's buzzin'. A miracle at St. Patrick's. You're gonna have every resident with a bum knee and a head cold in the pews. Wouldn't be surprised if you get a phone call from a reporter on the mainland. Might wanna do a human-interest story on little Leeza's recovery, about the priest who healed her.
This isn't about publicity. I'd turn that down. As Matthew says, you know, "If you give something to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." And Dolly and Wade, you know, they're not looking to exploit their daughter or sensationalize anything. I just can't actually imagine that it'll summon that much interest outside of Crockett, and that's okay. It's for the best. The important thing is Leeza.
Yeah. See, I'm a pretty rational guy, and you know that all our myths, our religions, come from natural occurrences that we can't explain. So, I can pretty easily see my way through that.
Good for you.
I can wrap my head around a misdiagnosis. I looked. It happens. It's rare, but it does. So, like, her body could have been slowly healing this whole time. I can explain all of it. If I'm honest, it's all explainable.
That sounds wonderful, frankly.
Except one thing. You had to know. You had to know that she could walk. I mean, you went back up the stairs. You beckoned to her. If she hadn't, what would've happened to you? What would this community have thought of you if she hadn't?
Well, but she did.
And you had to know that. I'm asking, how did you know that?
I really don't have an answer that's going to satisfy you. Not you. I mean, if I told somebody else that I could just feel it as she wheeled past me on that ramp, that I could almost see it, that I could almost hear a voice inside my head. I felt so connected to her at that moment. That might be good enough for someone, but not for you, is it, Riley Flynn?
I suppose I'd want more.
Yeah, and I'll always wish that I could give you more. But that's all I got.
[to the congregation] For most of us, eternity, it's an abstract. It's a metaphor, a colorful exaggeration. When we're waiting for something we want, it takes forever. We sit in traffic for an eternity. Abstracts, metaphors, colorful exaggerations. To us, maybe, but not to God. Not to Him. And it shouldn't be for us either. God's gifts are tangible as the ground beneath our feet. And His covenant, it's not abstract. No. It's a contract, scrawled in flesh, inked in the blood of the martyrs. And yet, try as we might, we cannot visualize, we cannot mentally picture the rewards promised. Well, if you're here seeking answers to the unknowable, it's incumbent upon me to tell you that I have none. And if you want to know why or how God's will shapes the world, brothers and sisters, so do I. I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. What I do have though, and what God gives us plentifully, are mysteries. God gives us miracles very rarely, here and there, but mysteries? The more that we know, the less we bend. The more brittle we become, the easier to break. Like some would say this island broke. Was broken. But I am here to tell you, the resurrection, body and soul, the redemption, body and soul, the miracles waiting for us here on Crockett Island. Not metaphors, not abstracts, not colorful exaggerations, no.
[to Joe] I hate you. Honesty is important, so we'll start there. I hate you Joe Collie. I've hated you for years. And the things I've imagined doing to you? I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want you to make those noises my dad made when he put his hand over the bullet hole in my spine. I want you to beg for forgiveness, so that I can tell you no. I want you to live in complete, absolute misery. So when I say this place is just like I pictured it, what I really mean is it's just like I hoped it would be.
I'm sorry...
Damn right, you're sorry! You stole from me. Not just who I was, but who I could've been. You stole from me things I didn't even have yet. You reached through time, Joe Collie! You reached through time and you stole. [pause] All of that is true. And all that is still in here, but that's not why I came here today. I came here today... I forgive you. I forgive you, Joe Collie. I forgive you and I see you now. I see you. And I'm still angry with you. But it's different. Even now just saying it, it's different. Do you want to know why it's different? Because the only thing standing between you and a better life is you. The only thing standing in my way was hate. The only thing standing in your way is you. "Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit, than he who takes the city." That's Proverbs 16:32, Joe. Do you know what Proverbs means? What the Book of Proverbs is? It means wisdom. Wisdom and knowledge. So if God can forgive you -- and He says He can, all over the place, He says it -- then I can forgive you. And if I can forgive you, Joe Collie, then anyone can.
Father Paul: Darkness. It was darkness in those ruins. No light. Every step forward, a step into nothing. And the pain, pain, pain. Pain, yes. And then the fear was drained from his body. Drained from his body was all the fear, pain... It was just drained. Drained. Those eyes. Eyes and skin and hands, but also wings. A sense of great wings enfolding him. And his mind finally found the word. The word was unearthed by his fear like the tomb was unearthed by the storm. And the word was "angel." Angel.And he was sore afraid. As a hand in the dark, a hand outstretched, stigmata, the wound of the Lord, and from the angel's wrist, the blood of life flowed, and a new word took shape. Drink. Drink. Take this, all of you, and drink from it. This is my blood. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. These words in the old man's old mind again and again and again and again as he drank. Monsignor John Pruitt woke the next morning. The storm had passed. The sun was coming in through the cave's entrance and he walked to it. He walked to it. And he raised a hand to shield him from the sun. His hand was young again. The decades washed away.
...
I knew the journey would be long. But I knew where this angel was needed. And so, I'd travel, and I'd wait, and the angel would catch up. I'd travel and wait in fear. Lord, fear that someone would discover it, or that one night it wouldn't be there, it wouldn't fly to me. And when it did, I knew I'd have to hide it. And so I'd hid it in earth and packed it with antiquities. And I'd leave the rest to God. Leave it to God that I might bring it safely back home to the people who needed it most. And by Your grace, I did. And I knew all the while that I'd have to lie. Lie to the very people I'm here to save. To the dear souls of this island, so that we may bring then Your love, and your mercy, and your miracles. Forgive me Lord for the small lies I must tell in your service. Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell. But most of all because they offend Thee.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Midnight Mass pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.