- Harper Pitt: Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America. God! It's been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we'll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air. As close as I'll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air and attained the outer rim, the ozone which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things. Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead of people who'd perished from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls. And the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so.
- Hannah Pitt: I'm going now.
- Prior Water: You'll come back?
- Hannah Pitt: If I can. I have things I have to take care of.
- Prior Water: Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
- Hannah Pitt: Well that's a stupid thing to do.
- Prior: I love you, Louis.
- Louis Ironson: Good.
- Prior: I Really Do. But you can never come back. Not ever. I'm sorry but you can't.
- Roy Cohn: [on the phone to his doctor, refusing experimental meds] No, I was never very good at tests. I'd rather cheat!
- Hannah Pitt: Homosexuality. It just seems so, ah, ungainly to me. Two men together. It's not an appetizing notion. But then, for me, men, in any configuration . . . they're just so lumpish and stupid. Stupidity gets me crazy.
- Belize: [after Prior's ranting to Joe Pitt in the courthouse] Behave yourself cherie... or Nanny will be forced to use the wooden spoon!
- Prior: [looking under the bed covers] Fuck. Will you look at this? First goddamn orgasm in months and I slept through it.
- Joe Pitt: [to Louis] You have a good heart. The good thing is to be guilty and kind always; but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft. There's a genuine violence in softness and weakness. Sometimes, self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.
- Prior: [Introducing Hannah] This is my ex-lover's lover's Mormon mother.
- Nurse Emily: Even in New York in the 80s, that is strange.
- Joe Pitt: I can't believe this! My decisions are being criticised by the guy who changes the coffee filters in the secretary's lounge!