1. “(…) And the world they did live was one suggesting that a permanent soul mate was one little strip of celluloid away: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they have their troubles which are resolved by Act III, fade to black, and the credits roll. That world was maddening…”
2. “(…) And what greater source of guilt could there be than the guilt that arises from finally trying to decide if what you want to do - which seems momentarily and superficially selfish - is also the right thing to do? How can you tell if you’re really being honest or just trying to talk yourself into dealing with the situation in a way that meets with your own desires?”
3. “Any fool can make splatters and call it art,” she had said. “That’s not what this course is all about. You’re here to put part of yourself on canvas, to reveal who you are through your composition, your choice of colour, your sense of balance. The struggle is to know what’s been done before and push beyond it. The job is to select an image but to paint a concept. I can give you techniques and methods, but whatever you produce ultimately has to come from your self if you want to call it art. And - “ She smiled. (…) “- if you have no real self, or if you have no way of discovering it, or if for some reason you’re afraid to find out who and what it is, then you’ll still manage to create something on canvas with your paints. It will be pleasant to look at, and a pleasure to you. But it’ll be technique. It won’t necessarily be art. The purpose - our purpose - is to communicate through a medium. But in order to do that, you must have something to say.”
4. “He wanted to tell her that there was, in the end, no real taking of an eye for an eye and no real satisfaction to be found at any bar of justice. For even if the most barbarous kind of punishment were meted out against the perpetrator of a crime, the rage and grief of the victimised remained.”
5. “(…) He was thinking of patterns: patterns of words, patterns of images, patterns of behaviours. He was thinking of what a person learns, and when he learns it, and when it emerges into practical use. He was thinking of knowledge and how it ultimately, inevitably combines with experience and points to what is incontrovertible truth.”
6. “How often he’d tried to explain to her mankind’s essential dilemma: We are born of parents and into families, so we have connections, but we’re ultimately alone. Our primitive sense of isolation creates a void within us. That void can be filled only through the nurturing of the spirit.”
7. “How often we want the love object to be an extension of ourselves, he thought. And when that doesn’t happen - because it never can - our frustration demands that we take action to alleviate the turmoil we feel.”
8. “If you don’t spend your time looking for something in particular, what you end up finding suits you just fine.”
9. “If you’re looking for signs, you can find them in anything. They don’t tend to change reality, however.”
10.“In the end, life is all about seeking reassurance, she thought, we’re all engaged in looking for some kind of sign that will tell us we’re not really alone. We want a bond, an anchor that will hold us fast to a landmass of belonging somewhere, of being close to someone, of having something more than the clother on our backs or the houses we live in or the cars we drive. And in the end we can only gain that reassurance through people. No matter how we fill our lives with the trappings of a carefree independence, we still want the bond. Because a vital connection with another being always carries the potential to act as a viable approbation of the self. If I am loved, I am worthy. If I am needed, I am worthy. If I maintain this relationship in face of all difficulties, I am somehow whole.”
11.“My longings are the same as every other man’s,” he said. “I want a home, a wife. I want children, a son. I want to know at the end that my life hasn’t been for nothing and the only way I can know that for a certainty is to leave something behind, and to have someone to leave it to. All I can say right now is that I finally understand what kind of burden that places in a woman, Helen. I understand that no matter how the load is shifted between partners, or divided or shared, the woman’s burden will always be greater. I do know that. But I can’t lie to you about the reality that remains. I still want those things.”
12.“Some artists, he knew, make their work a mere show-case for a clever technique in which little is risked and less is communicated. Some artists merely become experts in their medium, working clay or stone or wood or paint as proficiently and effortlessly as any ordinary craftsman. And some artists try to make something out of nothing, order out of chaos, demanding of themselves that they ably communicate structure and composition, colour and balance, and that each piece they create serve to communicate a predetermined issue as well. A piece of art asks people to stop and look in a world of moving images. If people take the time before canvas, bronze, glass or wood, a worthy effort is one which does something more than act as a nonverbal panegyric to the talents of its creator. It doesn’t call for notice. It calls for thought.”
13.“Sometimes the right thing to do is also the most obvious thing to do (…).”
14.“Some things one knows through osmosis, Sergeant, through exposure to a common cultural experience that slyly becomes part of one’s stockpile of knowledge. I call it subliminal assimilation.”
15.“(…) Words aren’t reality, you know. They’re only expressions of what people see.”
