"There is a kind of excellence in me and you—born in us—and it cannot live in shame."

"None but a fool or an infant could forget a father gone so far and cold. No. Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around my mind—like the bird who calls Itys! Itys! endlessly, bird of grief, angel of Zeus. O heartdragging Niobe, I count you a god: buried in rock yet always you weep."

"But when a god sends harm, no man can sidestep it, no matter how strong he may be."

"You're dreaming, girl, lost in a moving dream."

"ORESTES: Just to see the outline of your sufferingELECTRA: Yet this is only a fraction of it you see."

"Here he comes like a stealing shadow, like a footprint of death into the rooms, stalking the past with freshcut blood in his hands."

"All my love gone for nothing. Days of my love, years of my love."

"I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way."

"Electra, grieving for death, for her father, as a nightingale grieving always."

"No pity for these things, there is no pity but mine, oh father, for the pity of your butchering rawblood death."