Quotes from Stephen Adly Guirgis

I'm not like a champion of profanity. I write what I hear, and the characters that I write, that's how they talk. That's how I talk a lot of the time. So I'm not trying to advance a social cause.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

I've lived my entire life in New York, and it informs everything.

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

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, "God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good"…She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me…I threw away gold. That's a fact. That's a natural fact.

The only person who needs forgiveness is the one who doesn't deserve it.

God is fucking stealing souls again!

Despair … is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny by ourselves.

JACKIE. I swear to God: Being in love with Veronica - it's like feeding your love to Godzilla every morning, and every morning you go "Yo, 'Zilla, these shits are very delicate so please chew softly", - and every morning - the motherfucker just goes crunch!

JESUS: I'm not above it all--I'm right here in it, don't you see that?

I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking- I do not question why.

I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" …

MOTHER TERESA: Boy, one must participate in one's own salvation. In order to hear, one must be willing to listen.

MARY MAGDALENE: I also knew Judas Iscariot very well. SAINT MONICA: Gangsta! MARY MAGDALENE: Out of the Twelve, he was the most moody and the most impetuous, and yet, he was my favorite. SAINT MONICA: Tupac!

CUNNINGHAM: Defense calls Sigmund Freud, Your Honor. BAILIFF: Name! SIGMUND FREUD: Doctor Sigmund Shlomo Freud. CUNNINGHAM: Doctor Freud, would it be accurate to say you qualify as an expert in the field of modern psychiatry? SIGMUND FREUD: Fräulein—I AM modern psychiatry. EL-FAYOUMY: Objection, Your Honor!—the witness is boasting! JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Overruled!

I do know that I am in continuous need of the Spiritual and that I usually go to great lengths to avoid it.

What is it that we need to overcome in order to truly be "Ourselves"?

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD: Good. Now, when I come to court dressed as Ethel Merman in a one-piece bathing suit, that'll be my signal to you that I want your opinion! BAILIFF: Yes, sir.

I think that when Jesus was put before you, you did not see a God or a prophet, you did not see a lunatic or an innocent, you didn't even see a human being. I think, Mister Pilate, that what you saw before you that morning was just one more Jew, and you didn't hesitate. Why would you?

And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking-- I do not question why.

JUDGE LITTLEFIELD (rising): Right … Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at this time, I must excuse myself from these proceedings until such time as said witness has concluded testimony. Before his ascension into the Lap of the Lord, Caiaphas the Elder and I were partners in a successful chain of Kosher Pizza Parlors in East Purgatory—For that reason, at this time, I must step down. Bailiff!!! Get your ass over there, put on those glasses, and adjudicate—pronto! Proceed.

CAIAPHAS THE ELDER: Hello. EL-FAYOUMY: "Shalom"—as it were. CAIAPHAS THE ELDER: Shalom. EL-FAYOUMY: Caiaphas the Elder: Perhaps you can clear this up—is there a Caiaphas the Younger? CAIAPHAS THE ELDER: No. EL-FAYOUMY: And yet, you are the Elder? CAIAPHAS THE ELDER: Yes.

Defense counsel is aware she is a juicy pulchritudinous dish—and yet, the witness is being berated for merely avoiding the salacious temptations of her intoxicatingly firm and fervently aromatic flesh! I move to censure, really!! CUNNINGHAM: I withdraw the question.

And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you?...Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?