Hesther: I mean he's in pain, Martin. He's been in pain for most of his life. That much, at least, you know.
Dysart: Possibly.
Hesther: Possibly?!... That cut-off figure you just described must have been in pain for years.
Dysart: (doggedly) Possibly.
Hesther: And you can take it away.
Dysart: Still - possibly.
Hesther: Then that's surely enough. That simply has to be enough for you, surely?
Dysart: No!
Hesther: Why not?
Dysart: Because it's his.
Hesther: I don't understand.
Dysart: His pain. His own. He made it. 

(a pause, then earnestly) 

Look... to go through life and call it yours - your life - you first have to get your own pain. 

Pain that's unique to you.

You can't just dip into the common bin and say 'That's enough!'... He's done that.

All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear.

He was dangerous, and could be again, though I doubt it.

But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life, and let me tell you something: I envy it.
Hesther: You can't.
Dysart: (vehemently) Don't you see? That's the Accusation! 

That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time. 'At least I galloped! When did you?'

...  (simply) I'm jealous, Hesther. Jealous of Alan Strang.

Equus ~ Peter Shaffer

Dysart: (quietly) Can you think of anything worse one can do to anybody than take away their worship?

Hesther: Worship?

Dysart: Yes, that word again!

Hesther: Aren't you being a little extreme?

Dysart: Extremity's the point.

Hether: Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that.

Dysart: I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? 

Think about him. He can hardly read.

He knows no physics or engineering to make the world real for him.

No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. 

No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. 

No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. 

He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist.

He lives one hour every three weeks - howling in a mist. 

And after the service kneels to a slave who stands over him obviously and unthrowably his master. 

With my body I thee worship!... Many men have less vital relationships with their wives.

Equus ~ Peter Shaffer

The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest. My tools are very delicate. My compassion is honest. I have honestly assisted children in this room. I have talked away terrors and relieved many agonies. But also - beyond question - I have cut from them parts of individuality repugnant to this God, in both aspects. Parts sacred to rarer and more wonderful Gods. And at what length... sacrifices to Zeus took at the most, surely, sixty seconds each. Sacrifices to the Normal can take as long as sixty months.

Dysart, Equus ~ Peter Shaffer

The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right.
It is also the dead stare in a million adults.
It both sustains and kills - like a God.
It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal.

Dysart, Equus ~ Peter Shaffer

Tragedy obviously does not lie in a conflict of Right and Wrong, but in a collision between two different kinds of Right.

Peter Shaffer about Equus