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
WHITE: People stopped valuing [cultural things]. I stopped valuing them. To a certain extent. I'm not sure I could tell you why. That world is largely gone. Soon it will be wholly gone.
BLACK: I aint sure I'm followin you, Professor.
WHITE: There's nothing to follow. It's all right. The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didnt know that. I thought they were indestructible. They werent. (25)
How do cultural things actually die? White seems to think that they lose their meaning when life gets too horrible. But does a play about how life is really horrible, like King Lear, lose it's meaning when life gets excessively terrible? Or does it help make the terror comprehensible by showing how bad things really are or can be?
Quote #2
WHITE: […] I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. (26)
White thinks that the whole world is at risk of obliterating itself—it's not just culture that has been destroyed. His decision to kill himself seems like a way of preemptively ending the world: If he's dead, it's like the world has stopped existing, too (as far as he's concerned).
Quote #3
BLACK: […] You got these elegant world-class reasons for takin the Limited and these other dudes all they got is maybe they just dont feel good. In fact, it might could be that you ain't even all that unhappy. (117)
White's reasons seem more intellectual than emotional—it's like he thinks despair instead of feels it. In other words, Black seems to think White might have worked himself into a state of despair, despite his own anti-feelings tendencies.
Quote #4
BLACK: It's them reasons that your brother dont know nothin about hangin by his necktie from the steampipe down in the basement. He got his own dumb-ass reasons, but maybe if we could educate him to where some of them more elegant reasons was available to him and his buddies then they'd be a lot of folks out there could off theyselves with more joy in they hearts. What do you think? (120-121)
Black admits he's being facetious, but it's still sort of a serious question. What's the point of killing yourself over these high-class intellectual things and setting yourself above even the average suicidal person? Black can't understand it. Can you?
Quote #5
BLACK: […] You say you dont care about nothin but I dont believe that. You asked me what I thought it was you was holdin on to and I got to say I dont know. Or maybe I just dont have the words to say it. And maybe you know but you aint sayin. But I believe that when you took your celebrated leap you was holdin on to it and takin it with you. Holdin on for grim death. (127)
Black thinks White's holding on to something—probably connected with his own ego, his own belief in "the primacy of the intellect." That must be what's driving him crazy.
Quote #6
WHITE: The one thing I won't give up is giving up. I expect that to carry me through. (130)
White simply won't give up on giving up. He just doesn't want to exist—it's not his thing.
Quote #7
WHITE: […] Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left.
BLACK: That's a dark world, Professor. (131)
White is saying that the longer you live, the fewer escape routes you have from the meaninglessness of it all. At some point, you finally only have one escape route: death.
Quote #8
WHITE: […] Well, here's my news, Reverend. I yearn for the darkness. I pray for the death. Real death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I've known in life I dont know what I'd do. That would be the ultimate horror. The ultimate despair. If I had to meet my mother again and start all of that all over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to? Well. That would be the final nightmare. Kafka on wheels. (135)
White sees any kind of prolonged human interaction as agony. He doesn't want to relate to anyone, or share their pain, not even when it comes to his own mother. His desire is for what he imagines is the perfect isolation of death—perfect because there's not even a person there to be isolated, since that person won't exist anymore.
Quote #9
WHITE: […] You cant be one of the dead because what has no existence can have no community. No community. My heart warms just thinking about it. Silence. Blackness. Aloneness. Peace. And all of it only a heartbeat away. (136)
To get technical, it's debatable whether the annihilation White imagines would really be peaceful. You know, because he won't exist then. In point of fact, it wouldn't be peaceful because it wouldn't be anything at all. For someone who loves logic, it kind of falls apart sometimes when he's waxing romantic about dearh.
Quote #10
WHITE: […] I know what is out there and I know who is out there. I rush to nuzzle his bony cheek. No doubt he'll be surprised to find himself so cherished. And as I cling to his neck I will whisper in that dry and ancient ear: Here I am. Here I am. Now open the door. (141)
White wants death to open the last door, the only escape from the meaninglessness of life that remains since the doors of art and culture all slammed shut.