'That years national debate topic was farming subsidies. And if you don't know how farming subsidies could inspire all this commotion, then you don't know life. And there's nothing that can be said about it. Suitcases end marriages, and farming subsides cause cataclysms.'
'Can a voice travel from one person to another, like yawning and mono. sure it can. The will to speak traveled that night across the dark new jersey highways, until it arrived on this very block. where it would take up residence, or try to, in someone new.'
'Do you want to hear your problem? You have no agenda. Strictly head in the ground material. Look at me. Look at me. I wake up every morning and what do I do? I create an agenda for the day, which is a sub-agenda for the month. Which is in itself a pie-slice of my agenda for life.'
'Resolved, that Hal Hefner should really stop letting the world tell him what's possible and try and figure it out for himself.'
'Before this, there was the nothingness of Plains-borough New Jersey, but now Hal Hefner suddenly had only one thought. And it felt like all his life his brain had been waiting for this thought. So comfortably now did it fit in, and take up all the room there was.'
'Hi, do you want to sit down and listen to an old couple work through their marriage through music therapy?'
Ginny: 'Have you ever felt like you could burn the world down?'
Hal: 'Every day'
'It was like he was pretending. Pretending that it could all be what it was. But it can't. You can only pretend for so long before the forces that be take that away from you. Just like that it took off. And he found himself sprinting. It was ridiculous but he did, he sprinted. You don't let love collapse all around you and not put up a fight. You punch back. Unless you can find someone else to throw the punch for you. Then by all means, do that.'
'Have i got this right? Your contention is that we should debate as a team. You; an inexperienced kid with a bad and unpredictable stutter. Me; not have debated at all this year and having no knowledge of the resolution. In support of this you basically offer up that you threw a cello through someone's window. It's charming, no doubt.'
'I swear, I don't know what you'd do without someone in this family who could steal and then organise.'
'Come and visit me sometime if you want, we'll reminisce about this, what it means'
'Well, ahh, today was not my day, OK? But some day will be. And on that day, you will be sitting at home, alone, at home, and you'll think to yourself..when you're alone, that I knew him when. Him, being me.'
'Don't you dare go thinking that this was easy for me, or simple. If you think that my feelings on the matter were clear then you'd be underestimating my complexity. And while i see that you don't recognise this now, you actually have me to thank, in part modesty forces me to acknowledge, but in large part for your newfound zest of competition and gamesmanship. That was very clever of you to find ben. Surprisingly clever, and very painful, which means that I upped your game little man. You're welcome.'
*about love: 'Well i guess there comes a point, see when you reach a certain age and.. you're in jersey, or someplace just like it, and you stop trying to figure it all out, you just..are glad for what you have.'
'Eventually all of this would pass, and the memory of it would give way to embellishment, and fantasy and outright distortion, until it was hard for Hal Hefner to remember what he was really like back then, when he still carried in his head the sound of a made-up perfect voice, the voice that could speak it's heart. The voice he used to wish he had. Until the day he stopped wishing he sounded like anyone else, and just started talking as he was.'
image from:www.reverseshot.com/ article/rocket_science
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