How we cite our quotes: In consultation with my editor, we decided (against standard practice) to go with page numbers—since The Sunset Limited is one long act and it would be unwieldy and impractical to number all the lines.
Quote #1
BLACK: You gettin ahead of the story.
WHITE: The story of how a fellow prisoner became a crippled one-eyed halfwit so that you could find God. (49)
White finds it appalling that God would use such apparently brutal methods in order to convert someone, but Black doesn't claim to understand the workings of the divine will—the complicated circumstances provide a mystery that the heart needs to either wrestle with or wrest with.
Quote #2
BLACK: […] You got to take him and actually hold him in your arms and it don't make no difference what color he is or what he smells like or even if he don't want to be held. And the reason you won't do it is because he don't deserve it. And about that there ain't no argument. He dont deserve it. (He leans forward, slow and deliberate.) You won't do it because it aint just. Aint that so?
Silence. (78-79)
White admits, to some degree, that he doesn't think it's just. This is one of Black's biggest victories in the conversation: If you want life everlasting, he says, you have to get rid of your craving for perfect justice and have mercy on people. That craving for justice won't be satisfied, and you just might end up condemning yourself to die, like White, while you wait for it.
Quote #3
"WHITE: It's just symptomatic of the larger issues. I don't like people.
BLACK: But you wouldn't hurt them people. (91)
Black suggests that White's desire to kill himself is related to a secret desire to kill other people. This makes a certain sense, right? White says that education "makes the world personal," so therefore, by killing himself he would—in a way—be killing the world. He thinks death is the only sensible remedy for everyone and their problems, and he hates the version of himself he sees reflected in others.