Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Death

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Marcus Aurelius

Of course, it could never be both, could it?

“People living deeply have no fear of death.” Anaïs Nin

On the contrary, the deeper you live the more precious life becomes. The more precious life becomes that more ghastly death becomes in turn.

“Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another." Ernest Hemingway

Take suicide, for example...

“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.” Antonio Porchia

You know, among other things.

“The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.” Kenzaburō Ōe

This actually does work for some.

“Many people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they are seventy-five.” Benjamin Franklin

Let's explain that.

[iambiguous]

Cheaters

Jerry: What did Dante say was written on the gates of Lucifer’s “shop”.
Jolie: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Student: That’s what it should say on the door to this school.

Next up: this forum.

Jolie: This isn’t about cheating, it’s about winning. And as we all know winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Capitalism, let's call it.

Jolie: If you’re going to cheat, cheat smart.

Tell that to Irwin.

Jerry: You wanna know why you should do this?
Paul: Course we’re gonna embarrass ourselves in front of the entire city?
Jerry: Because no one thinks you can. Because you don’t think you can.
Paul: Sir, we know we can’t.

It's not called "Cheaters" for nothing.

Jolie: Dr. Plecki is amazing. He’s a really good teacher.
Darius: Well, what’s he doing here then?

Good question?

Darius: Well, if we could get the tests, I’m sure Whitney Young has them too.
Jolie: Of course they do. Doesn’t the decathlon have their offices at Whitney Young? I mean, you do the math.
Dominik: So, two wrongs would make a right?
Darius: No. Two wrongs make it even.

We don't call them "ego defense mechanisms" for nothing.

[iambiguous]

Cool Hand Luke

Luke: Oh come on. Stop beatin' it. Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me. Get out of here. I can't breathe. Give me some air.

So, he wasn't the second coming of Christ after all.

Luke: What we got here is a failure to communicate.

Tell me about it.

Captain: You gonna get used to wearin' them chains afer a while, Luke. Don't you never stop listenin' to them clinking. 'Cause they gonna remind you of what I been saying. For your own good.
Luke: Wish you'd stop being so good to me, Captain.

You know what's coming.

Captain: Now, I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean sum-bitch.

Not many that isn't true regarding.

Dragline: [Dragline attacks Boss Godfrey after Godfrey fatally shoots Luke. The other prison guards subdue him to the ground. Sobbing and sitting against a car Dragline tells Luke...] You hang on in there Luke. You hang on. There's gonna be some world-shakin' Luke. We gonna send you a postcard.

Not a snowball's chance in hell, is there?

Boss Paul: That ditch is Boss Kean's ditch. And I told him that dirt in it's your dirt. What's your dirt doin' in his ditch?
Luke: I don't know, Boss.
Boss Paul: You better get in there and get it out, boy.

Cue Boss Dean, of course.

[Discussing a new prisoner who has to spend the night in the box]
Dragline: He ain't in the box because of the joke played on him. He back-sassed a free man. They got their rules. We ain't got nothin' to do with that. Would probably have happened to him sooner or later anyway, a complainer like him. He gotta learn the rules the same as anybody else.
Luke: Yeah, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get.

Next up: "you're gonna have to kill me".

Luke: I can eat fifty eggs.
Dragline: Nobody can eat fifty eggs.
Society Red: You just said he could eat anything.
Dragline: Did you ever eat fifty eggs?
Luke: Nobody ever eat fifty eggs.
Prisoner: Hey, Babalugats. We got a bet here.
Dragline: My boy says he can eat fifty eggs, he can eat fifty eggs.
Loudmouth Steve: Yeah, but in how long?
Luke: A hour.
Society Red: Well, I believe I'll take part of that wager.

On the other hand: https://edu.rsc.org/the-mole/boiled-egg ... %20problem.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.” Arthur Miller

Go figure?

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.” Pierre Dos Utt

Next up: breakfast and dinner.

“My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” Bertrand Russell

I'll start: dasein.

“A cult is a religion with no political power.” Tom Wolfe

And what does that tell us then?

“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.” Epicurus

The first language game?

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Let's fit philosophy in there somewhere.

[iambiguous]

Good Will Hunting

Sean: [yelling at Gerald] And why does he hang out with those retarded gorillas, as you called them? Because any one of them, if he asked them to, would take a fucking bat to your head, okay? It's called loyalty.

On the other hand, Sieg Heil?

Sean: I teach this shit, I didn't say I know how to do it.

Tell me that's not applicable here.

Sean: [during a therapy session] Maybe *you're* perfect right now. Maybe you don't wanna ruin that. I think that's a super philosophy, Will; that way you can go through your entire life without ever having to really know anybody...
Will: ...You ever think about gettin' remarried?
Sean: My wife's dead.
Will: Hence the word: remarried.
Sean: She's dead.
Will: Yeah; well, I think that's a super philosophy, Sean. I mean, that way you could actually go through the rest of your life without ever really knowing anybody.
Sean: Time's up.

For both of them?

Lambeau: You're angry at me for doing what you could have done; but ask yourself, Sean. Ask yourself if you want Will to feel that way, if you want him to feel like a failure.
Sean: Oh, you arrogant shit! That's why I don't come to the goddamned reunions, 'cause I can't stand that look in your eye. Ya know, that condescending, embarrassed look. You think I'm a failure. I know who I am, and I'm proud of what I do. I was a conscientious choice, I didn't fuck up! And you and your cronies think I'm some sort of pity case. You and your kiss-ass chorus following you around going, "The Fields Medal! The Fields Medal!" Why are you still so fuckin' afraid of failure?

These guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Me ... _medalists

Lambeau: [in Gerald's office] What happened at the MacNeil meeting?
Will: Oh, I couldn't go. I had a date, so I sent my chief negotiator.
Lambeau: On your own time you can do whatever you'd like Will, but when I set up a meeting with my associates and you don't show up, it reflects poorly on me.
Will: Well then don't set up any more meetings.
Lambeau: Well, I won't. I'll cancel them. I'd give you a job myself, I just wanted you to see what was out there.
Will: Look, maybe I don't want to spend the rest of my fucking life sitting around and explaining shit to people.
Lambeau: I think you could show me some appreciation.
Will: A little appreciation?
[Will picks up the math sheet]
Will: Do you know how easy this is for me? Do you have any fucking idea how easy this is? This is a fucking joke! And I'm sorry you can't do this, I really am because I wouldn't have to fucking sit here and watch you fumble around and fuck it up.
Lambeau: Then you'd have more time to sit around and get drunk instead, wouldn't you?
Will: You're right, this is probably a total waste of my time
[Will lights the math sheet on fire]
Lambeau: [Runs and grabs the math sheet to blow out the fire] You're right Will. I can't do this proof. But you can, and when it comes to that it's only about... it's just a handful of people in the world who can tell the difference between you and me. But I'm one of them.
Will: Sorry.
Lambeau: Yeah, so am I. Most days I wish I never met you. Because then I could sleep at night, and I wouldn't... and I wouldn't have to walk around with the knowledge that there's someone like you out there.
[Will leaves the room]
Lambeau: I didn't have to watch you throw it all away.

Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.

Sean: [forcibly grabbing the front of Will's throat] If you ever disrespect my wife again, I will end you. I will fucking end you. You got that, chief?
Will: Time's up.

No, actually, it's not.

[iambiguous]

Despair

“All at once, she had fallen into the most extreme wretchedness: that of believing that one is not loved.” Émile Zola

Or, here, hated?

“Hope is a torturous thing. It wrenches one from despair just long enough to allow one to take a breath before plunging her back beneath the icy waters. If it wasn't for those breaths, it would be easy to let ice claim the soul. Easy to let surrender swallow the struggle. But hope - cruel mistress that she is - is not satisfied with so neat an ending. Like a house cat with a tiny prisoner, she wants only to torment the soul again, and again, until it dies from a burst heart.” Sarah K.L. Wilson

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

“One day you’ll be blind, like me. You’ll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me.
One day you’ll say to yourself, I’m tired, I’ll sit down, and you’ll go and sit down. Then you’ll say, I’m hungry, I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up. You’ll say, I shouldn’t have sat down, but since I have I’ll sit on a little longer, then I’ll get up and get something to eat. But you won’t get up and you won’t get anything to eat.
You’ll look at the wall a while, and you’ll say, I’ll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I’ll feel better, and you’ll close them. And when you open them there’ll be no wall any more.
Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn’t fill it, and there you’ll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.
Yes, one day you’ll know what it is, you’ll be like me, except that you won’t have anyone with you, because you won’t have had pity on anyone and because there ain’t be anyone left to have pity on.” Samuel Beckett

I'll pity you if you'll pity me.

“It is a kind of dizzying comfort to contemplate the open abyss when, at the bottom of that abyss, lies nothingness.” Alexandre Dumas

Or Alexander Dumbass, right Heywood?

“Under ground, under ground! Down in the safe soft womb of earth, where there is no getting of jobs or losing of jobs, no relatives or friends to plague you, no hope, fear, ambition, honour, duty - no duns of any kind. That was where he wished to be.
Yet it was not death, actual physical death, that he wished for. It was a queer feeling that he had. It had been with him ever since that morning when he woke up in the police cell. The evil, mutinous mood that comes after drunkenness seemed to have set into a habit. That drunken night had marked a period in his life. It had dragged him downward with strange suddenness. Before, he had fought against the money-code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself - to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being underground. He liked to think about the lost people, the underground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition.” George Orwell

Anyone here ever been there?

"Survival became the sole focus. Their faces all reflected the same ashen daze of despair.” Cathy Burnham Martin

Anyday now?

[iambiguous]

Drugstore Cowboy

Bob: Upon entering my vein the drug would start a warm edge…Until the brain consumed it…I felt such pleasure that the whole world sympathized…It was grand then…Your worst enemy wasn’t so bad…The ants in the grass were just doing their thing…Everything took on a rosy hue of unlimited success…You could do no wrong…And as long as it lasted life was beautiful.

Wow, not unlike exchanging philosophy!

Bob: Diane was my wife. I loved her, and she loved dope. So we made a good couple.

Out of the sack, anyway.

Bob: I tell ya, no construction stiff working overtime endured more stress and strain than we did just trying to stay high.

Just say no?

Bob: A sheriff’s convention no less! Why couldn’t it have been a Tupperware convention?
Diane: Better yet an undertakers.

Nadine. Dead as a doornail up in the attic.

Bob: Well, to begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody, can talk a junkie out of using. You can talk to 'em for years but sooner or later they’re gonna get ahold of something. Maybe it’s not dope. Maybe it’s booze, maybe it’s glue, maybe it’s gasoline. Maybe it’s a gunshot to the head. But something. Something to relieve the pressures of their everyday life, like having to tie their shoes.

Uh, maybe it's serious philosophy?

Bob: [about Tom] I bet he shot a million dollars in his arm.

On and offscreen, in fact.

[iambiguous]

Cheaters

Jolie: Why did Adam and Eve get in trouble in the first place?
Student: They ate the apple, baby.
Jolie: They ate from the tree of knowledge. They just wanted knowledge.
Jerry: God was testing them.
Jolie: But He didn’t tell them why. He was just, “I’m in charge here. Do what I say.” He said, “you can eat from any tree, just don’t eat from this one.” So, of course, what are they going to do? It’s human nature.

Yeah, what about that, God?

Mother: How could you do this? How could you betray those kids?
Jerry: It’s not that simple, Mother.
Mother: Yes, it is. It’s that simple. Teachers don’t teach kids how to cheat.
Jerry: Believe me, those kids didn’t need any instruction.
Mother: Yes! Yes they did. They needed someone to tell them that it was wrong…Your father was so proud when you became a teacher. He never cared how much money you made…He lived a decent honest life.
Jerry: Yeah, and look what happened to him. He got screwed. He had this bullshit immigrant notion that if he worked hard enough and wanted something bad enough, all his dreams would come true!
Mother: No! All your dreams would come true. That’s why he worked so hard in that factory…inhaling those diesel fumes so you wouldn’t have to.
Jerry: The minute he got sick, they laid him off! They took his pension, they took his medical insurance! They killed him! They fucking killed him! That was his reward! That was the reward he got for all his hard work!

Yeah, what about that, Mom?

Jerry: Why don’t you go upstairs and tell those kids if they want to be in a basketball tournament, we’ll throw money at ‘em, but if they wanna be in an academic tournament, they are on their own.

Uh, human nature?

Jerry: Guys, this is crunch time. Nothing is supposed to get in the way of your studying. If you have to stay here all night, then…
Darius: Wait a second, Dr. Plecki, I don’t know what world you’re living in…I appreciate your optimism but the fact of this is no matter how hard we study and work for this Young is going to take this thing for the tenth year in a row. So if Dominik wants to keep his job and Agnieska wants to make sure her sister gets fed tonight instead of studying cytoplasmic binding proteins all day, that’s just…[long pause] Look, I love the dream you gave us. No, I really do. But there’s a certain point where you just have to wake up and realize, you know, it’s just a fuckin’ dream. It’s just a dream.

Damn! The real world!!

Jerry: I’m a teacher so I’m supposed to spout the same platitudes you’ve heard a million times before: “Cheaters don’t prosper.” “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” Well, this may not be approved curriculum, but guess what. Winning does matter. Cheaters do prosper. I used to run a business importing Irish crystal and let me tell you what happens when you don’t pay off the right people or inflate sales claims or be creative with your accounting. You don’t stay in business very long. Try telling the truth on your loan application, you won’t get one. This is a results oriented world.

Capitalism, let's call it.

Do you think Bill Gates fired the guys who brought him the Apple operating system code? He probably promoted them. Do you think he would ever send his kids to a Chicago public school?

Let's pin that down.

Jerry: Obviously, we made some mistakes.
Jolie: Getting caught for one.
Jerry: No, no, no. This isn’t about getting caught or being punished. I look at what we did as a kind of civil disobedience. Or maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I owe you an apology. I don’t know anything anymore. I just know that sometimes you need to break the rules in order to change them. And things will change because of this.
Paul: They’ll make the tests harder to steal.
Jerry: Yeah, probably…But they’ll also have to justify holding a competition that isn’t a real competition where the same team wins year after year. They’ll have to justify warehousing you while a chosen few get a quality education.

Of course those in power have always been particularly adept at rationalizing what they do not do for the poor and the working class.

Jolie [narrating]: People always ask me, “Having gone through everything you went through would you do it again?” And I always give the same answer. “In a heartbeat.” I learned more about the way the world really works from my nine months on the decathlon than most people will learn in a lifetime.

Certainly more than most of us will learn up in the clouds here.

[iambiguous]

Suicide

“What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside.” Jasmine Warga

On the other hand, what if it's both?!

“In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning for suicide: that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision. Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn 22 had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner?” Julian Barnes

There you go!

“It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his own point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two were sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast, perhaps?” Franz Kafka

Different strokes for different folks here too.

“Strangman shrugged theatrically. 'It might,' he repeated with great emphasis. 'Let's admit that. It makes it more interesting—particularly for Kerans. 'Did I or did I not try to kill myself?' One of the few existential absolutes, far more significant than 'To be or not to be?', which merely underlines the uncertainty of the suicide, rather than the eternal ambivalence of his victim." He smiled down patronisingly at Kerans as the latter sat quietly in his chair, sipping at the drink Beatrice had brought him. 'Kerans, I envy you the task of finding out—if you can.'” J.G. Ballard

The postmodern suicide?

“Poor little place,' he murmured with a sigh.
She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.” Virginia Woolf

Human psychology. Really, go figure.

“I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of.” Julian Barnes

Rebuttals?

[iambiguous]

Singles

Salesman: This is the Genie Classic. You can’t go wrong with this garage door opener. Here’s the Liftrex series. We have the Liftrex and the Liftrex Super. Might be more opener than you need. And of course the Linear pocket-pager-beeper-garage-door-opener combo.
Linda: Just give me the best one you have. I’ll never lose it again.

Lesson learned, as it were.

Janet: Are my breasts too small for you?
Cliff: Sometimes.

Or:
Cliff: Is my penis too small for you?
Janet: Sometimes

Debbie: Hey, guys, I’m gonna use that video date you got me last Christmas.
Bailey: It was a joke.

All's well that ends well?

Young Steve: The man keeps moving until something squirts out of his penis.
Friend: What? What squirts out?
Young Steve: Spam!

Your spam or mine?

Steve: My friend and I have a long-running argument. He says that when you come to a place like this you can’t just be yourself you have to have an act. So, anyway, I saw you standing there so I thought: a] I could just leave you alone b] that I could come up with an act or c] I could just be myself. I chose c. What do you think?
Linda: I think that, a) you have an act, and that, b) not having an act is your act.

Modern love.

Janet: So I’m not an Amazon woman?
Steve: You’re from the high plains, Janet.

Tell that to Hedra?

[iambiguous]

Slavoj Žižek

I do all my work to escape myself. I don't believe in looking into yourself. If you do this, you just discover a lot of shit. I think what we should do is throw ourselves out of ourselves. The truth is not deep in ourselves. The truth is outside.

Either that or, like this, it's gibberish?

The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie—the truth lies outside, in what we do.

Of course, he's only paraphrasing Benjamin Button.

One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.

In other words, it's the deep state all the way down.

The same philantropists who give millions for AIDS or education in tolerance have ruined the lives of thousands through financial speculation and thus created the conditions for the rise of the very intolerance that is being fought. In the 1960s and '70s it was possible to buy soft-porn postcards of a girl clad in a bikini or wearing an evening gown; however, when one moved the postcard a little bit or looked at it from a slightly different perspective, her clothes magically disappeared to reveal the girl's naked body. When we are bombarded by the heartwarming news of a debt cancellation or a big humanitarian campaign to eradicate a dangerous epidemic, just move the postcard a little to catch a glimpse of the obscene figure of the liberal communist at work beneath.

Next up: how that works here.

Liberals insist that children should be given the right to remain part of their particular community, but on condition that they are given a choice. But for, say, Amish children to really have a free choice of which way of life to choose, either their parents’ life or that of the “English,” they would have to be properly informed on all the options, educated in them, and the only way to do what would be to extract them from their embeddedness in the Amish community, in other words, to effectively render them “English.” This also clearly demonstrates the limitations of the standard liberal attitude towards Muslim women wearing a veil: it is deemed acceptable if it is their free choice and not an option imposed on them by their husbands or family. However, the moment a woman wears a veil as the result of her free individual choice, the meaning of her act changes completely: it is no longer a sign of her direct substantial belongingness to the Muslim community, but an expression of her idiosyncratic individuality, of her spiritual quest and her protest against the vulgarity of the commodification of sexuality, or else a political gesture of protest against the West. A choice is always a meta-choice, a choice of the modality of choice itself: it is one thing to wear a veil because of one’s immediate immersion in a tradition; it is quite another to refuse to wear a veil; and yet another to wear one not out of a sense of belonging, but as an ethico-political choice. This is why, in our secular societies based on “choice,” people who maintain a substantial religious belonging are in a subordinate position: even if they are allowed to practice their beliefs, these beliefs are “tolerated” as their idiosyncratic personal choice or opinion; they moment they present them publicly as what they really are for them, they are accused of “fundamentalism.” What this means is that the “subject of free choice” (in the Western “tolerant” multicultural sense) can only emerge as the result of an extremely violent process of being torn away from one’s particular lifeworld, of being cut off from one’s roots.

Yeah, what about that?

Wearing a mask can thus be a strange thing: sometimes, more often than we tend to believe, there is more truth in the mask than in what we assume to be our 'real self.' Slavoj Žižek

Indeed. And I just muddy the waters here all the more.

[iambiguous]

Resorvior Dogs

Mr. Pink: I can say I definitely didn't do it because I know what I did or didn't do. But I cannot definitely say that about anybody else, 'cause I don't definitely know.

Of course, he's only paraphrasing Rene Descartes.

Mr. White: If you shoot this man, you die next. Repeat. If you shoot this man, you die next.

Little does he know let's say.

Mr. Orange: What happens if the manager won't give you the diamonds?
Mr. White: When you're dealing with a store like this, they're insured up the ass. They're not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a customer, or an employee, who thinks he's Charles Bronson, take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after that. You might get some bitch talk shit to you, but give her a look like you're gonna smash her in the face next, watch her shut the fuck up. Now if it's a manager, that's a different story. Managers know better than to fuck around, so if you get one that's giving you static, he probably thinks he's a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a bitch in two. If you wanna know something and he won't tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb's next. After that he'll tell you if he wears ladies underwear.

Good to know?

Nice Guy Eddie: Let me say this out loud, 'cause I wanna get it straight in my head. You're saying that Mr. Blonde was gonna kill you, then when we got back, he was going kill us, take the satchel of diamonds, and scram. I'm right about that, right? That's correct? That's your story?
Mr. Orange: [weakly] I swear on my mother's eternal soul that's what happened.
Nice Guy Eddie: The man... Mr. Blonde... . who you just killed was just released from prison. Four years ago, he got caught at a company warehouse full of hot items. He could've fuckin' walked. All he had to do was say my dad's name, but he didn't; he kept his fucking mouth shut. And did his fuckin' time, and he did it like a man. He did four years for us. Four years. So, Mr. Orange... you're tellin' me this very good friend of mine, who did four years for my father, who in four years never made a deal, no matter what they dangled in front of him... you're telling me that now, that now this man is free, and we're making good on our commitment to him, he's just gonna decide... out of the fucking blue... to rip us off? Why don't you tell me what really happened?
Joe: [walks in] What the hell for? It'd just be more bullshit.

You know what's next: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=c ... =620&dpr=1

Mr. White: How do you know all this?
Joe: He was the only one that I wasn't 100% sure on. I should have my fuckin' head examined for going on a plan like this when I wasn't a hundred percent!
Mr. White: [shouting] That's your proof?
Joe: You don't need proof when you have instinct!

Or, here, an "intrinsic self".

Nice Guy Eddie: If you fucking beat this p**** long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!

Bang, bang, he's dead.

[iambiguous]

The Sweet Hereafter

Mitchell Stephens: Something's happening that's taking our children away.

Both his and theirs as it turns out.

Mitchell Stephens: You'd make a good poker player, kid.

And here the pot was worth millions.

Mitchell Stephens: Well, enough rage and helplessness and your love turns to something else.
Alison: What...does it turn to?
Mitchell Stephens: It turns to steaming piss.

Mine certainly did.

[phone ringing]
Mitchell Stephens: That's my daughter. Or it may be the police to tell me they've found her dead. She's a drug addict.
Billy Ansell: Why are you telling me this?
Mitchell Stephens: Why am I telling you this, Mr. Ansel? Because we've all lost our children. They're dead to us.

Mine certainly is.

Mitchell Stephens: I can help you.
Billy Ansell: Not unless you can raise the dead.

For some it's just not about the money. For others, however, that's all it is about.

Mason: Nicole, did the Pied Piper take the children away because he was mad that the town didn't pay him?
Nicole: That's right.
Mason: Well, if he knew magic, if he could get the kids into the mountain, why couldn't he use his magic pipe to make the people pay him for getting rid of the rats?
Nicole: Because... he wanted them to be punished.
Mason: So he was mean?
Nicole: No, not mean, just...very angry.

You know, when you can tell the difference.

[iambiguous]

Time

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” Alan Watts

Or, here, by taking it up into the clouds?

“The future is uncertain but the end is always near.” Jim Morrison

How near though?

“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.” Eckhart Tolle

And if Now your life is a living hell?

“The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.” Neil Gaiman

But only if you're really, really lucky.

“And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” Milan Kundera

And absolutely no exceptions, right?

“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.” Ray Cummings

That's certainly true.

[iambiguous]

Sirens

Giddy: Did you know it's dangerous to wake somebody up if they're dreaming because, well, you leave part of your brain behind. And if it happens too many times, you go feeble in the head.
Sheela: Yeah. You're living proof.

She is a bit...naive?

Sheela: [Anthony has just gone to the outhouse] I should have warned him about the redbacks.
Estella Campion: What are they?
Sheela: Small spiders with big teeth. They live under toilet seats usually.
Estella Campion: How do you know if they're there?
Sheela: By the screams.

Nope, not this time.

Norman Lindsay: Now as for the suffering that my poor pictures will cause for the few people that will get to see them, it's nothing compared to the suffering that the Church has caused over the centuries. The burning of witches, the Spanish Inquisition, the slaughter of pagan tribes and so on. Anyway, there we are. Must get back to work.
Anthony Campion: Well, I don't think the Church can be blamed for everything that's been done...
[turns and sees Sheela and Pru posing naked]
Anthony Campion: [stutters] in-in-in-in its name but we'll take this up later.
[he walks out]

I'd have stayed myself.

Anthony Campion: Your characters all seem so ravenous. Can't love ever be a gentle thing?
Norman Lindsay: Yes, of course it can, but I'm not painting love scenes.
Anthony Campion: Sorry, yes, lust scenes.
Norman Lindsay: But there is a fierceness in desire, isn't there? In lovemaking? One of life's great conundrums.
Anthony Campion: Virtually the only one, according to your paintings.

Beautiful naked women. Practically from start to finish.

Sheela: Do you like your husband?
Estella Campion: Do people usually marry people they don't like?
Sheela: Quite often, I'd say.

It's basically the rule now, isn't it?.
Postmodern love let's call it.

Pru: Imaginations are a luxury.
Anthony Campion: Beg your pardon?
Pru: Most people can't afford them.
Anthony Campion: Well, I don't think imagination is dependent on economics, is it?
Pru: What if you're working in a factory doing exactly the same thing day after day?
Estella Campion: I think an active imagination is what allows people to do that kind of work.
Pru: Oh, well, you'd know, of course.
Estella Campion: I just think that's what you'd have to do. You'd have to be imagining other things.
Pru: Please don't start telling us what the working class does and doesn't think, thank you very much.

That's her job.