from “Circe”

[...]
    
    STEPHEN: (Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) They said I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.
    THE MOTHER: (A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.) You sang that song to me. Love’s bitter mystery.
    STEPHEN: (Eagerly.) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.
    THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is all powerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual, and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.
    STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena!
    THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.
    ZOE: (Fanning herself with the grate fan.) I’m melting!
    FLORRY: (Points to Stephen) Look! He’s white.
    BLOOM: (Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.
    THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!
    STEPHEN: (Panting.) The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones!
    THE MOTHER: (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.) Beware! (She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched fingers.) Beware! God’s hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen’s heart.)
    STEPHEN: (Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and grey and old.)
    BLOOM: (At the window.) What?
    STEPHEN: Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!
    FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.)
    THE MOTHER: (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O divine Sacred Heart!
    STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I’ll bring you all to heel!
    THE MOTHER: (In the agony of her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.
    STEPHEN: Nothung!
    (He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)

[...]

    STEPHEN: (Abruptly.) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself. God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself, becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow’s noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. Ecco!