A Visit From The Goon Squad Quotes
"Bennie listened in agony, as if the words themselves might provoke a catastrophe. But they were neutralized the instant Sasha spoke them in her scratchy voice."
"What he felt for Sasha was love, a safety and closeness like what he’d had with Stephanie before he’d let her down so many times that she couldn’t stop being mad."
"Listening, I think, You will never know how much I understand you."
"The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them – listen to me."
"A thought has been troubling him. 'I wonder what will happen to the cubs,' he says."
"Lions tend to raise their cubs communally" – the pride will likely take care of them, even if the one killed was their mother."
"The strange, celebratory feeling unnerves Rolph."
"His mind bends again and again to the jeep, but his memories are a muddle."
"Women are cunts," his father says. "That's why."
"Structural Dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, finding that you can no longer tolerate them."
"You know, Dave," I said, "I think that's the point."
"The sun rose, big and shiny and round, like an angel lifting her head."
"I could do this only once; I would never have that card again."
"It had been a long time since anyone had thanked me for something."
"Is there some quality of warm spring air that causes birds to sing more loudly?"
"I’ve been somewhere, and I need my jacket cleaned."
"Entering Lulu’s bedroom, Dolly felt like Dorothy waking up in Oz: everything was in color."
"She wasn’t thread holding these girls together; it was steel wire."
"Overhearing her daughter on the phone with her friends, Dolly was awed by her authority: she was stern when she needed to be, but also soft. Kind."
"Dolly did feel like a black-and-white incursion into this bower of color, a refugee from the dinginess surrounding it."
"Lulu would emerge from an elevator flushed, smelling of perfume or freshly baked brownies, take her mother’s hand, and walk with her past the doorman into the night."
"You can’t find a person who wasn’t at that party," Kitty said. "And they’ve got proof. We’ve all got proof – who’s going to say we’re lying?"
"To hell with them, right?" Kitty said tenderly.
"I’ll always protect you, sweetheart," Dolly whispered into Lulu’s ear. "Nothing bad will ever happen to us – you know that, right?"
"I mean what do you imagine," Kitty said. "Or do kids not do that anymore."
"But I couldn’t forget I was lying, and when I told the truth I got punished."
"The acting?" she said. "Oh, I loved that, I still do – I miss it. But the people were monsters."
"She and Lulu shared the star fruit, licking their fingers under Arc’s watchful eyes. Dolly felt oddly buoyant."
"His enemies believe he is here, but he is far away."
"The two photons are responding to ‘local’ factors engendered by their former status as a single photon."
"In the presence of Kitty Jackson, the rest of us become entangled by our sheer awareness that we ourselves are not Kitty Jackson."
"Life affords you the time, the repose, the dolce far niente to ask the sorts of questions that go largely unexamined in the brisk course of ordinary life."
"Occasionally, life affords you the time, the repose, the dolce far niente to ask the sorts of questions that go largely unexamined in the brisk course of ordinary life."
"On a spring day almost four years ago, I noticed a girl with short thick legs and a long narrow torso, picking up dog poop with a Duane Reade bag."
"Why not simply erect checkpoints at the entrances to Central Park and demand identification from those who wish to enter?"
"Everyone we’ve lost, we’ll find. Or they’ll find us."
"In the presence of Kitty Jackson, we no longer are in possession of these traits."
"We’ll meet in that new place, all of us together, and first it’ll seem strange, and pretty soon it’ll seem strange that you could ever lose someone, or get lost."
"The answers were maddeningly absent – it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back."
"Physics is required. Three semesters. If you fail, you’re out of the program."
"How had ‘American’ become an ironic term? How had ‘democracy’ come to be used in an arch, mocking way?"
"Ethical ambivalence – we call it EA – in the face of a strong marketing action."
"It’s not about sound anymore. It’s not about music. It’s about reach."
"What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it."
"He’s a solitary person" - Bennie, explaining Scotty’s need for a trailer.
"He has a hard time with conversation" - why Scotty refused to do interviews.
"He hasn’t spent much time with children" - why Scotty might be troubled by ‘pointer noise’.
"He’s wary of technology" - why Scotty refused to narrate a stream or answer Ts sent to him by fans via the page Bennie had created for him.
"Up goes the building!" - Alex, trying to make a construction game exciting for Cara-Ann.
"If there are children, there must be a future, right?"
"Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?" - Bennie to Scotty.
"The goon won." - Scotty's response to Bennie.
"It happens once in your life, if you’re the luckiest man on earth, an event like that." - Bennie reflecting on the concert.
"You grew up, Alex, just like the rest of us." - Bennie to Alex.
"The blue night, the stars you can't see, the hum that never goes away."