HARPER: “In your experience of the world, how do people change?”

MORMON MOTHER: “Well it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your body tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled, and torn, It’s up to you to do the stitching.”

HARPER: “And then get up. And walk around.”

MORMON MOTHER: “Just mangled guts pretending.”

HARPER: “That’s how people change.”

(Angels in America: Perestroika, by Tony Kushner.)