- The Storyteller: Orpheus wanted to keep her away from the untrimmed trees and the ragged depts of the forests because he knew who was there.
- The Dog: Who was?
- The Storyteller: Centaurs, fauns, satyrs, creatures given up to pleasure, hairy and unpredictable.
- The Dog: Like me.
- [laughs]
- The Storyteller: Hairy, anyway.
- [scratches the dog's belly]
- Persephone: Everything must die, Orpheus, the people we love most have to die, even the rocks, the earth itself is eaten away by time. Everything must die, Orpheus.
- Orpheus: [stops playing his flute] To live again!
- Charon: Don't ask me questions, don't sing. Don't remind me of the world. I have my duty, that's enough.
- The Storyteller: Orpheus and Eurydice. Two names that will always belong together. Two people who loved each other even beyond the shadow of death itself.
- The Storyteller: When Orpheus played, the whole world wanted to move. It seemed that the roots of the trees would to haul themselves up from the Earth and dance to his rythm.
- Orpheus: [to Eurydice] I am Orpheus. Or... pheus. I have sung storms to sleep. I have made the clashing rocks move away from our ship. I have been to the end of the world and seen things more terrible, more beautiful than I thought could be. But you...
- The Storyteller: There is almost no sound in Hades.
- The Dog: They have a dog there, don't they?
- The Storyteller: They have a three-headed dog, Cerberus, if you must know. But this isn't a story about dogs, this is the story of Orpheus, who went down into Hades itself to bring back his loved one.
- Hades: Who comes uninvited to my kingdom?
- Orpheus: I am Orpheus, king of Thrace, son of Calliope.
- Hades: And what does King Orpheus seek from Hades?
- Orpheus: The soul now before you in judgement. Eurydice, my wife.
- Hades: No soul returns from my kingdom.
- Orpheus: Love is stronger than death.
- Hades: [laughs] Nothing is stronger than death, little musician.
- Hades: Fear me. I am the bored audience at the theater. A knock on the door when you least expect it. I am the one whose name must not be spoken for fear I hear it and sit next to you. I am the pain in your arm at four in the morning, the headache that will not shift, the sour taste in your mouth of everything you ever did.
- The Storyteller: He was almost at the entrance to the cave that leads to Hades and he could hear the birds singing outside...
- The Dog: [interrupting] And they walked out into the sunlight and were happily ever after?
- The Storyteller: They didn't. They didn't.
- [the dog sighs]
- The Storyteller: They didn't.
- The Storyteller: It is always just when you think you have things in your grasp that you close your fingers and find they have gone. Because when we're in love it's our hearts that guide us and betray us all the time.
- Orpheus: My lyre must always play. For without music we are nothing. We knead the shapes out of nothing. Tunes out of silence, love out of hate. Music that lasts forever.