Quotes from Stephen Adly Guirgis

I had just done something in TV, but my real love is theater. I had won this award and I was up at Yale, and I was happy because it came with money.

The good thing is that life is sometimes a work in progress.

CUNNINGHAM: Your Honor, this petition is signed by God! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Yeah, but it ain't signed by your client, now, is it? CUNNINGHAM: My client is catatonic, he's incapable of signing. JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: If he's catatonic, then how do you know he wants an appeal in the first place?

So if you got one friend when you die, then you got something most people never have.

Oh, just some crap about the essential paradox of man: How we refuse to juxtapose the absolute to the relative, and some other some-such about paradox as an ontological definition which expresses the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth—You know, bullshit.

Thomas Merton said, "To be a saint means to be myself.

GLORIA: Between Heaven and Hell—there is another place. This place: Hope. Hope—is located right over here in downtown Purgatory.

EL-FAYOUMY: Yes. Mother. Is there a Hell? MOTHER TERESA: I hope not, but I think so.

At night, I fly down to Earth, and I watch my littlest Babyboy sleep. He's seven, and he's got a picture of me on his wall—right in between Shaquille O'Neal and the Incredible Hulk.

In biblical times, Hope was an Oasis in the Desert. In medieval days, a shack free of Plague. Today, Hope is no longer a place for contemplation—litigation being the preferred new order of the day.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: What's your name, Bailiff?! BAILIFF: Julius of Outer Mongolia.

EL-FAYOUMY: May I approach you? JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: The bench, not me!

EL-FAYOUMY: Do not bait this great man, lady! He presided over the appeal of Attila the Hun when you were nothing more than a cheap shot of whiskey on your great-great-grandfather's first unpaid bar tab! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Well said!

BAILIFF (cautiously): Sir, his name's El-Fayoumy. JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: What? BAILIFF: You called him El-Fajita. JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Just gimme my glasses! BAILIFF: You're wearing them, sir.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Your client is Judas Iscariot! Your client sold out the son of God, for Chrissakes!

The synthesis of Love and Justice can produce only Mercy and Forgiveness, Your Honor! If a just God sits in Heaven, it can fall no other way!

Why... didn't you make me good enough... so that you could've loved me?

CUNNINGHAM: Your Honor, Defense reconjures Satan to the stand. JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Lou, you can come in now … Bailiff! Go fetch him! Go fetch Satan! BAILIFF: Alone? JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Go!

SAINT PETER: I hated your ass to look at it. SAINT MATTHEW: And I looked at you, Peter, as a dumb, ignorant fisherman.

CUNNINGHAM: Mother Teresa, if abortion is so terrible, then how come I'm not in Hell? MOTHER TERESA: I don't know. Did anybody tell you you weren't? CUNNINGHAM: Must be nice to have all the answers.

CUNNINGHAM: Mother Teresa, if abortion is so terrible, then how come I'm not in Hell? MOTHER TERESA: I don't know. Did anybody tell you you weren't? CUNNINGHAM: Must be nice to have all the answers. MOTHER TERESA: Must be hard to have only questions.

JUDAS: Clams, man, I haven't been laid in three years, bro. Can ya believe that—guy like me? SATAN: Three years? JUDAS: I wasted my prime, man. And then I wasted my prime after my prime. SATAN: Well, I think you'll prolly get fucked tonight, bro. JUDAS: Ya think so? SATAN: Yeah. I'm pretty sure.

MARY MAGDALENE: I also knew Judas Iscariot very well. SAINT MONICA: Gangsta!

September 11 reinforced for me that whatever I'm writing about, it better be something that really matters to me because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And for me it's stories about people in pain in New York.