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: Runnin blindfold through the woods with the bit tween your teeth. Oh man. Didnt I try it though. If you can find a soul that give it a better shot than me I'd like to meet him. I surely would. And what do you reckon it got me?
WHITE: I dont know. What did it get you?
BLACK: Death in life. That's what it got me. (14)
What is death in life? It's like being shut off from the basic current of existence while still being a part of existence. You're walking around, but you're not really a part of the purpose of what you're walking in—you're living in your own death-like little corner of reality, wrapped up in yourself.
Quote #2
BLACK: You ever had one of them days when things was just sort of weird all the way around? When things just kindly fell into place?
WHITE: I'm not sure what you mean.
BLACK: Just one of them days. Just kind of magic. One of them days when everything turns out right.
WHITE: I don't know. Maybe. Why?
BLACK: I just wondered if maybe it aint been kindly a long dry spell for you. Until you finally took up with the notion that that's the way the world is. (42)
Without a feeling of magic in the universe—a few good days every now and then—you start to sense that things are completely out of whack, and everything just seems futile and pointless. Black thinks this might just be a bad state of mind White's fallen into, so a radical change in fortunes (like Black providentially saving him) might move his mind around to the light.
Quote #3
WHITE: We were born in such a fix as this. Suffering and human destiny are the same thing. Each is a description of the other. (55)
White thinks that life is suffering, that we were made for it. It kind of makes sense, then, that he just wants to be obliterated. We might be made to suffer, but he's all no thanks.
Quote #4
BLACK: Oh yeah. [The toilet's] a favorite place for drunks to hide a bottle. But the point of course is that the drunk's concern aint that he's goin to die from drinkin—which he is. It's that he's going to run out of whiskey fore he gets a chance to do it. (58)
Black explains how crazy the psychology of suffering is: You crave the thing that will kill you, and avoid the thing that could save you and remove your suffering. You're addicted to your suffering, in fact—it's the hardest thing for you to put down.
Quote #5
WHITE: You're thinking that I loathe them because I'm like them and I loathe myself. (83)
Black just speculated on why White might loathe his colleagues at the University. Black seems to be proved right later on, too, when White says that he's disgusted when he sees himself reflected in the people around him.
Quote #6
BLACK: I don't know. Maybe [the other commuters] just in your way. Or you dont like the way they look. The way they smell. What they doin.
WHITE: And I would mutter something ugly under my breath.
BLACK: Yeah.
WHITE: I suppose. (89)
White admits that he curses the people around him under his breath, probably around five times a day. Black thinks this might have something to do with the suicidal state he's gotten himself into—it can't be good for your psychology to have so much disdain filtering through your mind at all times.
Quote #7
WHITE: The darker picture is always the correct one. When you read the history of the world you are reading a saga of bloodshed and greed and folly the import of which is impossible to ignore. And yet we imagine that the future will somehow be different. I've no idea why we are even still here but in all probability we will not be here much longer. (112)
Black doesn't disagree with this—it's just that his response is to take pity on people, while White's response is to abandon them in disgust.
Quote #8
WHITE: […] It's that the world is basically a forced labor camp from which the workers—perfectly innocent—are led forth by lottery, a few each day, to be executed. I don't think that this is just the way I see it. I think it's the way it is. Are there alternate views? Of course. Will any of them withstand scrutiny? No. (122)
It seems like the point of life, from White's perspective, is just to lead to death. He wants to speed that process up by committing suicide—reaching the end goal long before life naturally puts him there.