- Peggy: [joining him in front of a painting] What do you think?
- Daniel Holden: What do I think? Well, I think I have looked at this painting for so long in a in a book that somehow my brain has trivialized it. And, uh, now as I stand here in front of the real thing, I feel, if anything, disappointment.
- Peggy: Oh, that's too bad.
- Daniel Holden: Well, not at the painting itself. More at my brain, I guess.
- Peggy: I think the brain's afraid of being in a state of constant wonder. It's for safety reasons or something.
- Daniel Holden: I suppose it's inevitable.
- Peggy: Usually by the time we're four.
- Daniel Holden: Then there's the the issue of great expectations.
- Peggy: Something the brain doesn't seem the least bit interested in protecting us from.
- Daniel Holden: [chuckles] No.
- Peggy: Well, I think we should reinstate wonder, banish expectation.
- Daniel Holden: I concur.
- Ted Talbot Jr.: Why does everything got to be so goddamn polite in this relationship?
- Tawney Talbot: Do you want me to start talking like you, Teddy? That make you happy?
- Daniel Holden: Mrs. Whitman?
- Mrs. Whitman: Yes, Daniel.
- Daniel Holden: Thank you for, um well, for Kerwin. He was a good person, and he was my friend. I miss him every day.
- Florine: Donald, are you in A.A.?
- Daniel Holden: Uh, no.
- Florine: Well, thank God. We've lost so many to them.
- Florine: Why on earth would you memorize Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the brain"?
- Peggy: It's a short story, Florine.
- Florine: I don't care if it was a haiku. It was sad enough to read. It'd be torture to memorize.
- Daniel Holden: No, it was it was calming, actually.
- Florine: Okay. More please.
- Daniel Holden: I don't know why, exactly. Well, it was it was during a period of my life where I was having some difficulties dealing with the passage of time, in a traditional sense. And since Mr. Wolff's short story deals partly with the bending of time, well, in memorizing it, or in taking the action of memorizing it, I too was able to bend time, in a way. Or at least... experience... it differently.
- Peggy: Nicely defended, Donald.
- Ted Talbot Jr.: He may have patted them down some to keep them in place, but this felt more like some kind of symbolic thing, all right? Not like he was trying to shove a pound of grounds up my b-hole! I mean, it's all in hindsight, Carl.
- [Carl stifles a grin]
- Ted Talbot Jr.: Really?