Tiffanie DeBartolo

“There are things we never tell anyone. We want to but we can’t. So we write them down. Or we paint them. Or we sing about them. It’s our only option. To remember. To attempt to discover the truth. Sometimes we do it to stay alive. These things, they live inside of us. They are the secrets we stash in our pockets and the weapons we carry like guns across our backs. And in the end we have to decide for ourselves when these things are worth fighting for, and when it’s time to throw in the towel. Sometimes a person has to die in order to live. Deep down, I know you know this. You just can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess it’s a sad fact of life that some of us move on and some of us inevitably stay behind. Only in this case I’m not sure which one of us is doing which. You were right about one thing though. It’s not fate. It’s a choice. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again someday, somewhere up above all the noise. Until then, when you think of me, try and remember the good stuff. Try and remember the love.”

“Bottom line, Eliza— you’re my home and my family, and I don’t want to lose you.I could lose everything else, and as long as I still had you and a guitar I know I’d be all right. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Swear to God, for someone so obsessed with music, she’s borderline tone deaf. But trying to describe how I felt watching her dance around and sing would be like trying to build a skyscraper with my bare hands. It made me want to marry her. Made me want to buy her a magic airplane and fly her away to a place where nothing bad could ever happen. Made me want to pour rubber cement all over my chest and then lay down on top of her so that we’d be stuck together, and so it would hurt like hell if we ever tried to tear ourselves apart.”

“You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? Like, if either you or I wouldn’t have made it, where would the other one be right now? It was something I thought about all the time: how death changes every remaining moment for those still living.”

“Reach out and touch faith.”

“Life is short and a man should take pride in his work, even if his work makes him feel like a total loser”

“When dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they’ll never be good enough, and there’s something seriously wrong with that.”

“I need to know that wherever I end up, in the stars or in the gutter, you’re along for the ride.”

“one thing I’ve realized is that my life in its entirety is more important than any one aspect of it. And the sad truth is that until I met you I didn’t have anything else.”

“In his eyes I saw all the other possibilities. The dream-world possibilities. The fairytale possibilities. The seemingly impossible possibilities.”

“For what it's worth, I think happiness is a fleeting condition, not a permanent state of goddamn mind. I've learned that if you chase after moments of bliss here and there, sometimes those moments will sustain you through the shit.”

“When I asked Vera why Michael was so obstinate, she told me that some asshole had recently broken Eliza's heart. A drummer, no less. Hell, even I know girls should stay away from the goddamn drummers.”

“As usual, no one's ever around when you need them.”

“That's the only way I could describe the music. It was the sonic equivalent of flight”

“That's why you have to save the dying man. Because you want him around to keep saving you.”

“Popular music is a microcosm of the culture, Eliza. It reflects the mentality of the population.”

“I would have remembered the good stuff. Nobody ever remembers the good stuff.”

“I could actually see LOVE—not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing.”

“For the record, if I were Superman, a pale, scrawny guy holding a guitar would be Kryptonite.”

“He was waiting for something from me. Acknowledgement. Validation. Commiseration, perhaps. I couldn’t even look at him because I was afraid of feeling any more than I already did.”

“Maybe I’m weak for music men. Maybe I’m weak, period. But I couldn’t deny I was charmed by his arrogant, fool-ish guise.”

“Choice betrays character,” I said.“That’s not true.” Loring moved his finger along thesheet as if writing his name in cursive. “Eliza, you can’t judge a man solely on his actions. Sometimes actions are nothing more than reactions.”

“Dreams can change histories and songs can alter destinies.”

“Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor.”

“Eliza got vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce, whipped cream, and a cherry. She asked me to get chocolate ice cream with hot fudge and marshmallows. This way, she explained, we could share without overlapping flavors. Except she was pretty goddamn stingy with hers. She only gave me one bite. Meanwhile I was supposed to let her eat half of mine.”

“I know that if I ever have the audacity to blame fate or God for holding a gun to my temple, I also have the wherewithal to remind myself that if I end up with a hole in my head, I was the one who pulled the trigger.”

“For me, the release was a spot in time with no past and no future. Just the extraordinary simplicity of a moment— the kind of moment that has a funny way of making a person believe that life and love can last forever.”

“Fate is the magnetic pull of our souls toward the people, places, and things we belong with.”

“You try and act so tough, you think you're so damn hopeless and godless and faithless, but you don't fool me. People without hope aren't tormented by the world the way you are. People without hope don't give a shit. but I see it in you, in the way you look at things, even in the way you look at me sometimes, like I'm the coolest fucking guy in the universe, and I know it's in there. Reverence. Belief. Something. You have a lot more faith than you own up to. You just don't want to be let down. But I'm not going to let you down again. Not if I can help it.”

“And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.”

“Has the industry done to music what McDonald’s has done to eating?”

“I've got my girl and my guitar, and for me that's enough.”

“I try to find meaning anywhere I can. It's the only way I know how to validate my existence.”

“The days will always be brighter because he existed.The nights will always be darker because he's gone.And no matter what anybody says about grief, and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.”

“We didn't want to be presidents, or astronouts, or Bill Gates. We had pathetically simple dreams: to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy. That certainly wasn't too much to ask. Or was it?”

“It sounds silly, I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie.Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.And sometimes, when you're trying to find your way, one of those gods actually shows up and gives you directions.”

“Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.”

“...it's what life's all about.""what?""a search. we're all searching for something to fill up what I like to call that big, God-shaped hole in our souls. some people use alcohol, or sex, or their children, or food, or money, or music, or heroin. a lot of people even use the concept of God itself. I could go on and on. I used to know a girl who used shoes. she had over two-hundred pairs. but it's all the same thing, really. people, for some stupid reason, think they can escape their sorrows.”

“See that?" Paul said. "Ten goddamn seconds.""I don't get it.""You didn't even have to hear the whole song, just a few lines, and you got the chills and that swirly, happy-sad feeling in your gut, didn't you?" ... "That's the difference between the real stuff and the crap. I know which one you are and you know which one I am.”

“Break my heart? Is that what you just said? I have news for you; you didn't break my heart. My heart's fine. My heart's in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my soul open.”

“Did you really want to die?""No one commits suicide because they want to die.""Then why do they do it?""Because they want to stop the pain.”

“Personally, I don’t like inherently happy people. I don’t trust them. I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who isn’t at least a little let down by the world.”

“I just happen to comprehend the low standards of the majority of the music-buying public, and I don’t care how condescending that sounds, it’s true. They always go for the shiny gimmicks. Always.”

“I am of the theory that all of our transcendental connections, anything we're drawn to, be it a person, a song, a painting on a wall--they're magnetic. The art is the alloy, so to speak. And our souls are equipped with whatever properties are required to attract that alloy. I'm no scientist so I don't really know what the hell these properties are, but my point is we're drawn to stuff we've already got a connection to. Part of the thing is already inside of us.”

“We had pathetically simple dreams:to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy.”

“It seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death.”

“Tell me what you listen to, and I'll tell you who you are.”

“Just knowing you exist changed the world for me.”

“I hate that word, CAN’T. I wish it had never been dreamedup, spoken, or defined. I wish the concept of CAN’T could beeradicated not only from language, but more importantly fromthe psyche of a girl who I know is filled with so much CAN it seeps out of her pores and scents the air.”

“The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normalpeople with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’texist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark,godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days runtogether like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. Younever really know where you are or what time it is, and the outsideworld starts to fade away.It’s cool.”