- Saul: There are people who believe that letters are an expression of a very special primal energy and when they combine to make words they hold all the secrets of the universe...
- Saul: Remember the Vikings?
- Saul: [Takes a green apple] OK, Vikings called this "aepli".
- Saul: Now when they took it across the sea in their ships it became "apfel".
- Saul: Crossed another border, it became "appel".
- Saul: By the time it got to us it was "apple".
- Saul: Its spelling contains all of that.
- Saul: It holds its history inside it.
- Saul: [teaching] God is everything--a perfect, luminous essence. But even God wants more--to experience more, to give. So God creates a vessel, a container, that can receive this gift of God's pure light. His divine light pours into the vessel. The vessel, of course, can't contain the magnitude of this light, and it shatters. Destroying the vessel and scattering its broken shards in a big bang of creation. Now, man's job is to locate and gather these shards to make the vessel--our world--whole again.
- [first lines]
- National Spelling Bee Pronouncer: Number 14. Eliza Naumann, Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California. "Oppidan".
- Eliza: "Oppidan".
- [sighs]
- Eliza: [narrating] My father told me once that words and letters hold all the secrets of the universe. That in there shapes and sounds, I could find everything and see beyond myself, to something special. Perfect. My father told me once that I could reach the ear of God.
- [repeated lines]
- Saul: Make yourself right. Cleanse your heart and soul. Permute the letters back and forth. You will feel then as if an additional spirit is within you. In this manner you will reach beyond yourself. Go slowly, as the path is dangerous, and must be traveled with caution.
- [last lines]
- Eliza: [narrating as she walks off stage] My father told me once that I could reach the ear of God. That words and letters would guide me to reach beyond myself; to know the world as whole again. And like the ancient mystics, God will flow through me. And we would be together.
- Miriam: [watching her on television] She's my daughter.
- [crying, laughing]
- Aaron: [scolding his father] Why can't you live your own stupid life? Why do you have to drag me and Elly into it?