- [first lines]
- [Rainwood crushes a dollhouse, then addresses a farmer and his family]
- Lyle Rainwood: Great calamities, unforeseen and unprepared for. End of the world is just around the corner.
- [shoots two incenidary rounds into the family's cabin, setting it on fire]
- Lyle Rainwood: A wise man invests wisely in the here and now in case his future turns to ash. Guarantees - that's what the world really needs, guarantees. If you sign this, my insurance policy guarantees that you never have to worry about Armageddon again. It will set you free... I said *sign it*.
- [grabbing a gun from one of the Fussell brothers before he can pistol whip Bannister]
- Varges De La Cosa: No no no no no! Never use your gun as a hammer. It ruins the alignment of the cylinders.
- Brodie Hollister: J.W., now you asked us to down here and I know it wasn't to watch us watch you watch rabbits. What's up?
- [upon returning from a late night buggy ride with Melissa]
- Prometheus Jones: Will you get a look at Mr. Bannister Sparks!
- Bannister Sparks: This is the most glorious morning of the most perfect day of my life! Diamonds in the grass instead of dewdrops! Small quartets of meadowlarks in the trees!
- Brodie Hollister: [to the rest of the Chamber of Commerce] That's not normal.
- Varges De La Cosa: No, but it fits him well.
- [to Parks Ritchie who is trying to provoke Bannister into a gunfight]
- Prometheus Jones: I'm going to count to one. If you're still within reaching distance, I'm going to pull you in half. Then I'm going to count to two. If you're still here...
- [Parks flees]
- [Cally is trying to console Bannister after Melissa's death]
- Cally Oaks: You know, my father used to say that the three primary colors of grief are despair, pain, and anger, but that it's the nature of crystals to scatter light so that in all of our grief there are other spectrums, other colors. Like the color Courage, the color Strength, the color Love. He'd try and put physics over sadness.
- Bannister Sparks: The man had a nice way with words.
- Cally Oaks: He said them to me when my mother died... and I've had to say them to myself several times since my father died.
- [Brodie, pretending to be dead in Alice's funeral parlor, suddenly burps in front of two outlaws who think they killed him]
- Burnett: He's alive. I heard him, he's alive!
- Alice Freeze: [improvising] They always do it.
- Burnett: Who does?
- Alice Freeze: Gunshot victims. The trauma is so immediate that they don't have a chance to release all the air inside themselves. If you push up and down on his stomach, it will clear his whole cavity.
- Burnett: Push? On his stomach?
- [to Hayes]
- Burnett: You do it. You got the hands for it.
- Hayes: It don't seem right somehow.
- [Brodie gasps when Floyd pushes on his stomach]
- Alice Freeze: Don't stop. I've had some bodies go on burbling and hiccupping for hours afterwards. Besides, I may need one of you to hold him down.
- Burnett: Hold him down? What for? He's already dead!
- Alice Freeze: [fingering a bone saw] That's true, but in order to remove the more severely putrefied organs, I have to pull on them very hard.
- Alice Freeze: [giggling] Sometimes the body goes sliding right off the table. Gets a lot like a wrestlin' match!
- [standing next to her hearse after the Chamber of Commerce rounds up Rainwood's outlaw gang]
- Alice Freeze: Mr. Hollister! Any business for me?
- Brodie Hollister: No, but we sure want to thank you, Alice. We couldn't have done it without ya.
- Alice Freeze: Always a thrill helping you. It was a new experience having a live man on the slab like that.
- Brodie Hollister: [gently tugging on Alice's cheek] I'll bet it was...
- Bannister Sparks: You know, a long time ago, poets in China thought that each star in the night sky was held in place by a single hummingbird and that if you saw a shooting star, it meant that one of the hummingbirds had died and dropped its star. Lanterns were lit on such occasions to replace the dropped star and to mourn the greatness of such a small loss.
- Melissa DeVry: Which are we, Bannister - the light of the dropped star or the small loss?
- Bannister Sparks: Forever the light, Melissa... forever the light.
- [Bannister guides the buggy in which he and Melissa are riding into a grove illuminated by Chinese lanterns]
- [last lines]
- [speaking as if to Melissa's spirit, in the grove illuminated by Chinese lanterns where she and Bannister spent their last night together]
- Bannister Sparks: We all got out of it in one piece. We fight well together. You see, we're the Chamber of Commerce of Wildside. If it's all right with you, I'll come out here from time to time to get things off my chest - the place, the light of any dropped star. Forever the light, Melissa... forever the light.
- [touches a lantern, then slowly rides back to town, as the rest of the Chamber of Commerce emerge from the trees and join him and a shooting star streaks overhead]