"You ever get the feeling sometimes you're being punished for your sins?"
Jack says this to a wooden Pinocchio doll a young boy gives him outside a fancy hotel. He's been on a drunken binge, and he feels completely alone in the world. He feels responsible for the deaths in the shooting at Babbitt's restaurant three years earlier, and he tries to vent to the wooden doll, who is seemingly his only confidante.
"I'm the janitor of God...I know."
Jack is hungover in Parry's basement lair the morning after Parry saves him from being killed by the two teenagers. Parry introduces Jack to the fictional "little people," and tells him that he is the "janitor of God," and so possesses a lot of divine knowledge. This line is a clue to just how delusional, but also spiritually attuned, Parry really is.
"Really? You look married."
When Jack leaves Parry's "apartment" after spending the night, Parry tells Jack to say hello to the wife, and Jack tells him he isn't married. Parry then makes this statement, which stops Jack, who has commitment issues with Anne. This line shows the way that Parry is unfiltered and somewhat intuitive, in spite of his zaniness.
"I told you about these people. They're evil, Edwin. They must be stopped."
Jack says this flippantly on the radio to the troubled Edwin on the radio. He is trying to give the sad caller some comfort in the wake of a rejection at a restaurant. Little does he know that Edwin will take this statement that "they must be stopped" so seriously. This advice that Jack gives, however glibly, changes the course of his life forever.
"There's three things in this world that you need: Respect for all kinds of life, a nice bowel movement on a regular basis, and a navy blazer."
This is one of the first things Parry says to Jack, and it is an absurd piece of advice, a clue to just how cuckoo Parry really is. His list of what it takes to have a good life is an odd assortment of things, sage wisdom—"respect for all kinds of life"—mixed in with random items—"a navy blazer."
"You gotta believe in God! But I don't believe that God created Man in His image. 'Cause most of the shit that happens is because of men. Naw, I think men was made in the Devil's image, and women were created outta God. 'Cause, after all, women can have babies, which is kinda like creating. And which also accounts for the fact that women are so attracted to men. 'Cause let's face it, the Devil is a helluva lot more interesting. I've slept with some saints in my day, and believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Egh-boy! So, the whole point of life, the whole point of life, I think, is for men and women to get married so that God and the Devil can get together—and work it out. Not that we have to get married or anything. God forbid."
Anne says this to Jack one night at home when they get on the topic of spirituality. She describes a concept of heterosexual romantic love, that the devil and God are metaphors for the two sexes, and that the whole point of love is to convene God and the devil. This quote shows that in spite of the impression she gives, Anne is a deep thinker capable of impressive philosophies. While Jack doesn't think she's intellectual enough for him, she proves that she has a special earthy intelligence that he lacks.
Jack: Where would King Arthur be without Guinevere?
Parry: Happily married, probably.
In Central Park at night, Jack tries to talk to Parry about the importance of romantic love, hoping to encourage him to reach out to Lydia and find love as a way to heal. Trying to appeal to Parry's love of the medieval, Jack makes an example of Arthur and Guinevere. However, as Parry points out, Arthur and Guinevere didn't have a very fulfilling or happy marriage, so they aren't a very good example of the power of romantic love.
"It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the Holy Grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men." But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God, so he reached into the fire to take the grail, and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple-minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat". So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty." It's very beautiful, isn't it?"
This is the story of the Fisher King, a depressive king who was saved from grief by a fool with the Holy Grail. Parry relates the story to Jack while they lie in Central Park at night. The story is affecting because it has some parallels with each of the men's lives. They each can project themselves into the story and find some comfort in its message.
"Some billionaire's got the Holy Grail in his library on Fifth Avenue."
When Parry first tells Jack about the Holy Grail, Jack is very skeptical, and calls out Parry's theory for what it is: a delusion. There is no way, in Jack's mind, that the Holy Grail, the famous cup out of which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, is sitting in a library on the Upper East Side.
Lydia: I have never been through a dating period.
Anne: It's a disgusting process. You haven't missed a thing.
While Lydia and Anne do not seem like especially compatible women, on the night that Lydia comes over to Anne's apartment for a manicure, they strike up an unlikely friendship, bonding especially over their shared difficulties with men and dating. Lydia has never dated, but Anne insists that dating is not fun at all, in fact, it's a "disgusting process."
