Stingo: I was twenty two, and a virgin, and was clasping in my arms at last the goddess of my unending fantasies. My lust was inexhaustible. Sophie's lust was both a plunge into carnal oblivion, and a flight from memory and grief. More than that, I now see it was a frantic attempt to beat back death.
Nathan Landau: On this bridge on which so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words to give America its voice... looking toward the land that gave them Whitman... from its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words... on this span of which Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote, we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods... whose words are all we know of immortality. To Stingo.
Sophie: Don't you see? We are dying. I longed desperately to escape, to pack my bags and flee, but I did not.
Nathan Landau: This toast is in honor of my disassociation of you two creeps. Disassociation from you, coony captive cunt of king's county. And you, the dreary dregs of dixie.
