「Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.」
「I don't wanna cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know, or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons. Or growing, or coming to like each other, or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know? I mean... The book isn't like that and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't.」
「Anybody who says he's got "the answer" is going to attract desperate people, be it in the world of religion...」
「Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way.」
「I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants. But... it isn't part of my constitution. I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I wanna know what it feels like to care about something passionately.」
「"Should one be lucky enough to see a ghost orchid, all else will seem eclipsed."」
「If you'd really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it linger? Evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute. He just moved on. I sometimes wished I could do the same.」
「I think people were spending time with me because they were lonely. And you know why I like plants? Because they're so mutable. Adaptation's a profound process. It means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
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Yeah, but it's easier for plants. I mean, they have no memory. You know, they just move on to whatever's next. But a person, now... adapting's almost shameful. It's like running away.」
「There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
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Such sweet, sad insights. So true.」
「Her voice-over begins, "I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately."」
「Most people yearn for something exceptional, something so inspiring that they’d want to risk everything for that passion, but few would act on it. It was very powerful and it’s intoxicating to be around someone so alive.」
「Life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid. Wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with, but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.」
「What if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens? Where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated, and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world.
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The real world?
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Yes, sir.
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The real fucking world. First of all, you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears.Secondly, nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!」
「You are what you love, not what loves you.」
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