Status Updates From I Have Been Here Before

Ormund. Not a chance. I'll never be a great man. There aren't many of them, and you have to stand a long way off to see their true size.

Dr. Görtler. It was not. We must play our parts until the drama is perfect.

Why should this poor improvisation be our whole existence? Why should this great theatre of suns and moons and starlight and have been created for the first pitiful charade we can contrive?

Ormund (after a pause—staring at Dr. Görtler, then with a certain breadth and nobility of manner). New life! I wish I could believe that. They've never told me yet about a God so generous and noble and wise that He won't allow a few decisions that we make in our ignorance, haste and bewilderment to settle our fate for ever.

Dr. Görtler. [...] We must set out each time on the same road, but along that road we have a choice of adventures.

Dr. Görtler. Because all events are shaped in the end by magic—
Ormund (scornfully). Yes, I thought we'd come to that. Magic!
Dr. Görtler. Yes. The creative magic of our feeling, imagination and will. These are the realities—our feeling, imagination and will—and all our histories are their dreams.
Ormund. All very easy!
Dr. Görtler (with passion). It is not easy. Life is not easy.

Janet. I'm trying to make myself remember every single line of your face. And I know I shan't. Very soon I shall try to see it again, and there'll be nothing but a blur while hundreds of faces that mean nothing will come between us. It's a hard world for love, Oliver. Even the memory of its face won't stay to comfort us.