Far from Heaven (2002)

Dennis Haysbert: Raymond Deagan

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Studying a Miró painting] 

  Raymond Deagan : So, what's your opinion on modern art?

  Cathy Whitaker : It's hard to put into words, really. I just know what I care for and what I don't. Like this... I don't know how to pronounce it... Mira?

  Raymond Deagan : Miró.

  Cathy Whitaker : Miró. I don't know why, but I just adore it. The feeling it gives. I know that sounds terribly vague.

  Raymond Deagan : No. No, actually, it confirms something I've always wondered about modern art. Abstract art.

  Cathy Whitaker : What's that?

  Raymond Deagan : That perhaps it's just picking up where religious art left off, somehow trying to show you divinity. The modern artist just pares it down to the basic elements of shape and color. But when you look at that Miró, you feel it just the same.

• Raymond Deagan : Here is to being the only one.

• Raymond Deagan : I've learned my lesson about mixing in other worlds. I've seen the sparks fly. All kinds.

• Cathy Whitaker : Heaven knows we all have our troubles. I'm sure you, yourself...

  Raymond Deagan : What?

  Cathy Whitaker : I don't know. Ever since running into you at the exhibition, I kept wondering what it must be like to be the only one in a room. Colored or whatever it was. How that might possibly feel. I'm sure I've - I've never...

  Raymond Deagan : Well, I suppose you sort of grow accustomed to it over time. I mean, don't get me wrong. There is a world, even here in Hartford, where everybody does indeed look like me. Trouble is, very few people ever leave that world.

• Raymond Deagan : Sometimes it's the people outside our world we confide in best.

  Cathy Whitaker : But once you do confide, share with someone, they're no longer really outside, are they?

• Cathy Whitaker : It isn't plausible for me to be friends with you. You've been so very kind to me and I've been perfectly reckless and foolish in return, thinking...

  Raymond Deagan : Thinking what? That one person could reach out to another, take an interest in another - and maybe for one fleeting instant could manage to see beyond the surface, beyond the color of things?

  Cathy Whitaker : Do you think we ever really do see beyond those things - the surface of things?

  Raymond Deagan : "Just beyond the fall of grace, behold that ever-shining place." Yes. I *do*. I don't really have a choice.

  Cathy Whitaker : I wish I could.

• Raymond Deagan : One daiquiri and a bourbon on the rocks. Thank you, doll.