Then We Came To The End Quotes
"I'm wearied. That's what it is, Marilynn. I'm really very wearied. If you make me go inside, I'm going inside like this."
"We all had the same thought: thank god it wasn't me."
"We had to think that by coming into work the day before surgery, she was refusing to let the specter of death distract her from the ordinariness of life."
"It was the cost of doing business, but some of us feared it was an indication that the end was near, like the profligacy that preceded the downfall of the Roman Empire."
"What we didn’t consider was that in a downturn, we were the mismanaged inventory, and we were about to be dumped like a glut of imported circuit boards."
"We didn’t judge him for that, so long as he didn’t judge us for our custom of easing into a new workweek."
"Nobody wants pity. They just want to get the hell out of there, out of sight, to alleviate the sting of ridicule, and then they want to forget about the entire miserable experience."
"You have never seen someone weep until you have witnessed a mother at the funeral of her murdered child."
"We drank too much on the weekends. We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war."
"Imagine the stories he might have told! Set in burning villages during darkest night—flares over riverbeds—choppers landing in rice paddies."
"We suggested alternative topics on subjects that mattered to us. 'But those don’t interest me,' he said. 'The fact that we spend most of our lives at work, that interests me.'"
"Dan Wisdom had gotten encouragement in college from Miles Buford, the painter, who said in his twenty-year teaching career he had never seen a talent like Dan’s."
"Deliver us! You could practically hear that plea crying out from the depths of our souls, because none of us wanted to end up like Old Brizz."
"His coming around to fare us well, so calm, so self-controlled—it was a little unnerving."
"I have every confidence you’ll get to it. I was asking because I’ve been having trouble coming up with something myself."
"Joe’s spot said nothing about treating or curing—he just managed to make the cold sore sufferer a sympathetic person."
"The irony of the view from the Michigan Room was that it drove us mad with desire to be out there, walking the city sidewalks, looking up at the buildings, joining the swell of other people and enjoying the sun."
"The entire family was welcoming. They liked the guy. They shook hands with him. It was funny, but the subject of the fun was embraced. Cold Sore Guy was the hero."
"Most of us honestly had no idea what Genevieve was talking about."
"Oh, give me a break, Karen. That’s ridiculous and you know it."
"You guys are sick in the head," said Genevieve.
"He didn’t seek names or run to Lynn Mason. He just placed the tape in his wastebasket."
"Because all of our jobs were located on one central server, if one person had a job open on his or her computer, nobody else could open that job."
"When was the last time," Genevieve asked us, "that any of you asked Joe to lunch?"
"I don’t think he prays to it. I just think he likes it."
"It sounds to me like you don’t know much of anything on the subject."
"I think I can finally explain it," she said. "It comes down to this. And it’s so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…"
"I want to see myself as Shakespeare," Max said.
"That right there," he concluded, "is why I didn’t miss my calling. That’s a use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate."
"What is it fear of, exactly?" he said. "Fear of death? No, you tell me that’s not it. You don’t fear death. Is it that they might tell you something’s wrong? You know something’s wrong. It’s not that either. So what is it?"
"I cannot physically enter that building," she said. "I cannot get out of this car and enter that building. See that building? I can’t. I won’t."
"I’ve changed my mind," she says. "I need you to go with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I won’t be able to do it without you."
"If I had had to place odds," said Carl, "I would have said Marcia Dwyer would have gone to her grave with that old haircut. I never would have thought, not in a million years, that she would wake up out of it and realize how crappy she’s looked all this time."
"She has a cute face, don’t you think?" said Benny.
"She said let’s make a change. Benny, it’s inspiring! It inspires me to want to lose some of this weight—I mean, look at this thing," he said, looking down at his belly as if it were something quite independent of himself.
"It was like a fire alarm we weren’t even getting paid for."
"Proof of life! Nothing funny coming to him, he shook the coffee cup and watched the butt bounce around until that activity brought out stale and unpleasant fumes, which reminded him of Old Brizz."
"That’s exactly what we’re saying," said Karen Woo.
"I’m sorry if I offended you," said Benny. "I was just trying to say it looked nice."
"They got you by the balls," said Jim Jackers.
"That’s the one thing we no longer have," she said. "Our first priority is to win this new business for the agency. We can’t waste any more time on charity work."
"I would have preferred never to have stepped foot in this dreary hell."
"The last thing we wanted was to expire between cubicle partitions or in the doorways of the offices where we spent our days."
"It was madness to leave without your useless shit."
"We had no desire to expose it for what it was, and so we all agreed it was a good thing that she could finally stop being a bitch."
"Their nights, their weekends. Vacations, activities. I’ve never been able to do that."
"What did I find you doing instead? You were working. You were… I don’t know what. If it had been me, I’d have been hollering at someone every five minutes until they came with a goddamn can of paint and covered over that fucker, because who likes to be called a fag? But you? You didn’t care. It couldn’t touch you."
"We’re such sad creatures at heart, us clowns."
"Would it have killed you to practice your expression in the mirror before coming in here, Benny?"
"You guys just don’t know anything about advertising."
"I’m telling you I came up with these ads on my own."
"I feel so blue... For the way I treated you."
"They can’t take any chances since the incident," Roland tried to explain for the hundredth time. "I’m not even supposed to be conversing."
"Please, Benny, I’m just trying to do my job."
"Come on, man," said Benny. "I thought you and me were friends?"
"You think this is easy for me?" asked the older man.
"I miss Old Brizz because I got ten bucks a pop from all you Charlton Heston hopefuls when poor Old Brizz kicked off."
"What is this, Jim, what’s wrong with you? I was just having some fun."
"Who doesn’t have ten minutes to hear a good story?"
"What happened to Tom?" Jim asked, looking around.
"He called this country the best republic that ever began to fade."
"So work, fun, and total dedication to something bigger than myself, something greater—my work, golf, the Red Sox—none could be everything."
"I’m an Ulm," he said. "That’s why I’m going to Israel. I’m an Ulm, and so are you!"