You know, until last night, I was afraid of this. Dying.
Until last night, you weren't really living.
All S1
S1 E15Unfinished Business
[Sniffing coffee] Wow! This smells incredible, Tess.
Honey, will you wake up and stop smelling the coffee? Sooner or later, you gotta drink it. It's like life. You never really know how good it is until you taste it. And all coffee doesn't taste the same.
What's espresso? I always hear about espresso.
Strong and bitter. Some people like it like that: straight ahead, rich, undiluted. There's another side to an espresso kind of life. Heartburn. That's the price you pay for all that flavor.
You make it sound so dangerous.
Well, I've had my flings with danger. But my favorite is a good ol' cup of Joe: straight ahead, honest, no camouflage. 'Cause when you try to hide what's underneath, you end up feeling miserable.
Want a drink?
Oh, I'd love a cup of non-fat decaf mocha latte with a little nutmeg on the side.... Or a cup of Joe?
I got iced tea.
Well, I haven't worked up to tea yet but how about a nice cup of water?
[At dinner with her daughter Sydney and granddaughter Beth]
I think the last lover I had in Rome was a New Wave director. Now what was his name?
For Heaven's sake, Mother!
Don't give me that holier-than-thou pious look of yours, Sydney. When was the last time you had a lover? Might do you some good, you know.
[interjecting] A good brisk walk in the morning always does me a lot of good.
[As Sydney and Beth leave]
Sydney, I'm sorry. I didn't realize.
What?
That your mother has a drinking problem.
My mother doesn't have a drinking problem. My mother is an alcoholic.
Do you have any idea what it's like to watch your own mother self-destruct? I love her. She's ... She's my mother but I've given up.
No! You must never give up, Sydney.
You know ... You know what the really hard thing is? It's that I know. I know what I need to do. I know what it's gonna take. It's just I can't do it alone.
Well, then. I'll help you.
Why didn't you tell me from the start?
Well, when you met Elizabeth, you made friends with a very strong and talented and interesting woman. If you had known then what you know today, you might have just seen the alcoholic and not the woman. And that's who we love and that's who we wanna help.
But she doesn't want any help.
Then it's up to you to help her want it.
And here it is. The pin from my ejection seat.
The pilot gave this to you?
Honey, we lost two wheels in ground fire. There was no way I was going to try to land that thing. He thought it was the least I deserved.
God loves you.
Why?
Because you're Elizabeth. Not Elizabeth the journalist or the prizewinner or the alcoholic but because you're you. God loves you. Elizabeth, this is not who you were created to be. You spent your whole life running and running and trying so hard to catch up to something that was never there for you. But all you've done was go farther and farther away from that precious love that is always there for you. Now you've almost lost that completely.
[Incomprehensibly, in tears] I'm sorry. I'm sorry! Oh, God, I'm so sorry!! What am I gonna do?
You just did it.
Any marimba playing going on in there?
Beautiful music, Tess. Beautiful music.
That's gonna be some kind of interesting book of memoirs she's gonna write.
Right. It'll be worth waiting for.
It always is, baby. It always is.
I'm afraid of the water.
Say that again?
I never had to work near lakes and oceans. I always asked to be excused from those and I was. Bad memories of the Flood, I guess.
This is ridiculous! What is the first thing an angel says? "Fear not. Be not afraid. Except for large bodies of water." Is that it?
I know there's nothing to be afraid of. I know it doesn't make any sense.
Well, actually, it makes good sense now. The thing you're terrified of is something she loves.
Who?
Your next assignment, Angela Evans. She's fighting a terrible fear. The kind that comes in the night and whispers in your ear 'til dawn and then sends you running to the sea just to get the voices to quit for a little while. But Angela's voices won't quit. Not until her own voice drowns them out.
I love your accent. You must be from the old country, huh?
Yes, Very, very old.
People only carry on in the dark when they don't want you to see what they're doing.
Let me tell you something, Lundy. I lived with my father my whole life and I never knew him because he was too afraid to get to know me. Don't make the same mistake he did.
It's funny. You seem to have all this wisdom but you don't know how to make a cup of coffee.
That's the spice of life, I think. Everyone's on a different schedule. Maybe this is the night I'm supposed to learn how to make coffee. And maybe this is the night you're supposed to tell Carter the truth.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Touched by an Angel pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.