Life’s a mess… It’s… it’s chaos personified

And if you’re smart enough, you learn from your mistakes. 

You figure it out. You… you think. 

You realize that life isn’t some elaborate 

stage play with directions for the actors. 

Life’s a mess… It’s… it’s chaos personified

But empty space and silence...

There are few things sadder in this life 

than watching someone walk away after they've left you, 

watching the distance between your bodies expand 

until there's nothing... but empty space and silence

I know it hurts. I know...

Eddie: 

It's over. Why can't you just let it go?

Jane: 

I can't.

Eddie:

 Why?

Jane: 

Because I was happy.

 Because if this theory is wrong, 

men don't leave all women, Eddie. 

They leave me.

Eddie: 

I know it hurts. I know. 

It's so hard to believe that something that wonderful 

can ever happen to us again, but it can

Meet me in Montauk Tatto♥

Meet me in Montauk... ♥ 

We all have a soulmate...

God of Love ♥

The Lost Thing

Hævnen - In a Better World

Best Foreign Language Film:

In a Better World

I think she’s so desperate and insecure...

The only way Clem thinks she can get people to like her, 

is to fuck them. Or at least dangle the possibility of 

getting fucked in front of them. 

And I think she’s so desperate and insecure that 

she’ll sooner or later go around fucking everybody

His eyes used to be so filled with love...

He just stared at me as if I didn't exist.

 As if I had never existed...

His eyes used to be so filled with love. 

 But it was gone.

 How can I go back to being alone after seeing love? 

 I was alone for so long. 

 What had I done with my life?

 I was alone so long...

Someone has to remember...

Stan:

I don't know. I just there are a lot of really confused people showing up at the office.

Mary:

They have a right to know. Howard is a thief. He steals the truth.

I can't remember my baby! I can't remember my baby. It existed and 

I can't even remember. Do you understand that?

Stan:

Mary, people come to him voluntarily.

Mary:

I won't allow it. 

 Those who cannot remember the past 

are condemned to repeat it. 

 What do you think of that? That's from my quote book.

Stan: 

The office is filled with people who want their memories re-erased.

Mary: 

Remember the Alamo! Remember the Alamo!

Stan:  

Mary... please. This is hurting people.

Mary: 

I don't want to hurt people. 

But these things happened! 

 All these little sadnesses, the big ones. 

 What if no one remembers? 

 What does that do to the world?

 Someone has to remember, Stan.

I have and enormous crush on you ♥

Joel:

Listen, did you want to make love?

Clem: 

Make love?

Joel: Have sex. Y'know

Clem: Oh, um...

Joel: 

Because I just am not drunk enough or stoned

 enough to make that happen right now.

Clem: That's okay. I...

Joel: 

I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that. This seems 

like the perfect romantic exotic place to do it and...

Clem: 

Hey, Joel 

Joel: 

 and I'm just too nervous around you right now.

Clem: I'm nervous, too.

Joel: 

Yeah? I wouldn't have thought that.

Clem: 

Well, you obviously don't know me.

Joel:

 I'm nervous because... 

I have and enormous crush on you ♥.

Clem: 

Show me which constellations you know.

You made me have you erased!

Mary:

I need this signed, Howard.

(He takes it, unable to make eye contact. He signs it, hands it back.)

Thanks. So... do we talk about this... or what?

Mierzwiak:  

I don't know what I'm supposed say, Mary.  I want to do the right thing here.

Mary: Do you love me? Did you love me? Something. I listened to my tape. I can't believe I've been sitting right in front of it for a year. It's like listening to someone else's story. I mean, I hear myself talking about having sex with you and I can't even imagine you naked. I can't even say "naked" to you!

Mierzwiak: I have a family, Mary

Mary: You made me have an abortion.

Mierzwiak: It was a mutual decision.

Mary: You made me have you erased! I loved you. I love you! How could you...

Mierzwiak:

I didn't make you. You thought it best. But, look, I take full responsibility.

I love that poem. It breaks my heart.

Clem:

Have you ever read any Anna Akhmatova?

Joel:

I love her.

Clem: Really? Me, too! I don't meet people

who even know who she is and I work in a

book store.

Joel:

I think she's great.

Clem:

Me too. There's this poem 

Joel: Did this conversation come before or

after we saw the house?

Clem: 

I think, before.

Joel:

Seems too coincidental that way.

Clem:

Yeah, maybe.

Joel and Clementine wander near 

some beach houses closed for the winter.

Clem: 

Do you know her poem that starts

 "Seaside gusts of wind, And a house in which we don't live...

Joel: 

Yeah, yeah. It goes 

"Perhaps there is someone in this world to 

whom I could send all these lines"?

Clem: 

Yes! I love that poem. It breaks my heart.

 I'm so excited you know it.

And I just liked you so much...♥

Clem:

I saw you sitting over here. By yourself. I thought, thank God, someone normal, who doesn't know how interact at these things either.

Joel:

Yeah. I don't ever know what to say.

Clem:

I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that. I mean, I don't mean I'm happy you're uncomfortable, but, yknow... I'm such a loser. Every time I come to a party I tell myself I'm going to be different and it's always exactly the same and then I hate myself after for being such a clod.

Joel: Even then I didn't believe you entirely. I thought how could you be talking to me if you couldn't talk to people? But I thought, I don't know, I thought it was cool that you were sensitive enough to know what I was feeling and that you were attracted to it.

Clem: 

But, I don't know, maybe we're the normal ones, y'know? 

 I mean, what kind of people do well at this stuff?

Joel:

And I just liked you so much ♥

Your hair was lime green. Green revolution. ♥

Joel:

Your back to me. In that orange sweatshirt 

I would come to know so well 

and even hate eventually. 

 At the time I thought, how cool, an orange sweatshirt.

I remember being drawn to you even then. 

I thought, I love this woman because 

she's alone down there looking out at the black ocean.

But I went back to my food. The next thing I remember, 

I felt someone sitting next to me and 

I saw the orange sleeve out of the corner of my eye. 

I was so nervous. 

 What were you doing there, I wondered. 

 Your hair was lime green. 

 Green revolution ♥.

My 1st memory of her is now my last memory of her

Joel:

I'm sorry Naomi couldn't make it. You okay?.. You seem quiet.

Just a little overworked, maybe.

The trip to the party where I met Clementine. 

 My first memory of her is now 

my last memory of her.

"Joel looks out the window. Carrie turns around and says

something to Joel. She is backlit, her hair a halo of frizz."

Joel:

I remember you turned around. 

 Your face was dark and your hair was backlit 

I could see a halo of frizz 

you asked me if things were okay between Naomi and me.

Carrie:

I did. You said, things were fine.

Joel:

I remember.

Carrie:

This is the night you met Clementine, Joel.

 I remember watching you walk down the beach 

with her and I thought, oh shit.

Joel:

Yeah, you told me that later.

Carrie:

I told you that later.

So you don't mind?..

Joel: So you don't mind?

Naomi: I've got to finish this chapter anyway.

Joel: Okay. I wish you could come.

Naomi: Me, too.

Say hi to Rob and Carrie. Have some fun!

Joel: I hope you get your work done.

Naomi: Yeah.

There is something alive about her ♥

I met someone tonight at a party on the beach.

 Her name is Clementine. 

 There is something alive about her.

I don't know what to do about this. 

 I've been feeling so alienated and numb lately. 

 Forever. 

 The thought of not acknowledging 

my feelings again seems self-destructive.

How can I continue on this path toward a living death, 

a life filled with obligation and guilt and responsibility

but joyless, hopeless? 

 I need to speak with Clementine.

Don't say "we" when you mean "you."

Naomi: So what's going on, Joel?

Joel:

I don't know, I've just been thinking,

maybe we're not happy with each other.

Naomi: What?

Joel: 

Y'know, we've been, I don't know, sort

of, unhappy with each other and

Naomi:

Don't say "we" when you mean "you."

Joel:

I think maybe, we're both so used to operating at this level that How can one person be unhappy? If one person is unhappy, both have to be... by definition.

Naomi:

Bullshit. Who is it? You met someone.

Joel:

No. I just need some space, maybe.

Naomi:

The thing is, Joel, whatever it is you think you have with this chick, 

once the thrill wears off, you're just going to be Joel 

with the same fucking problems.

Joel:

It's not somebody else...I hate myself.

I told myself we weren't happy...

On the couch. Dark. Quiet. 

 I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake.

 I almost reached for the phone about a thousand times. 

 I thought I could take it back, erase it, explain

 I had momentarily lost my mind. 

Then I told myself we weren't happy. 

 That was the truth. That what we were was safe. 

It was unfair to you and to me to stay 

in a relationship for that reason. 

 I thought about Clementine and the spark when I was with her, 

but then I thought what you and I had was real

 and adult and therefore significant even if it wasn't much fun. 

 But I wanted fun. I saw other people having fun and I wanted it. 

Then I thought fun is a lie, that no one is really having fun;

 I'm being suckered by advertising and movie bullshit... 

then I thought maybe not, maybe not. 

 And then I thought, as I always do at 

this point in my argument, about dying.

I projected myself to the end of my life 

in some vague rendition of my old man self. 

 I imagined looking back with a 

tremendous hole of regret in my heart.

I didn't pick up the phone to call you, Naomi. 

 I didn't pick up the phone.

I knew something was going to happen...

Mierzwiak: Okay, so just tell me what you remember.

And we'll take it from there.

Mary: 

Um, I liked you immediately. At the job interview. 

 You seemed so... important and mature. 

 And I loved that you were helping all these people. 

 You didn't come on to me at all. I liked that. 

 I was tongue-tied around you at first.

 I wanted you to think I was smart. You were so nice. 

 I loved the way you smelled. I couldn't wait to come to work.

 I had these fantasies of us being married and having kids and just...

and so... then... when...that one day, when I thought you looked at me back... like... 

Oh, Howie, I can't do this? How can I do this?

Mierzwiak: 

It's what's best, Mary. You know that.

Mary:

Yeah, I know. Oh, God. Okay, well, I was so excited...

Remember you bought me that little wind-up frog?

And you said...  "This is for your desk. Just a little token"

I knew then... I knew something was going to happen... something wonderful.

This was our first time...

Joel and Clementine are in the midst of awkward shy sex.

Joel:

This was our first time.

The scene starts to fade. 

 Joel watches Clementine disappear.

I want to enjoy my little time left with you...

Joel:

I'm done, Clem. I'm just going to ride it out. 

 Hiding is clearly not working.

Clem: Yeah.

Joel:

I want to enjoy my little time left with you.

Clem: 

This is our first "date" date.

Joel:

Do you remember what we talked about?

Clem: 

Naomi, I guess.

Joel: Yeah.

Clem: 

What was I wearing?

Joel:

God, I should know. Your hair was red. 

I remember it matched the wallpaper.

Clem: Egad, were you horrified?

Joel: 

No! I think you were wearing that black dress, 

y'know, with the buttons.

Clem:

No, you were with me when I bought that. 

At that place on East 6th. It was later.

Joel:

Right. Something black though.

Clem:

I'll buy that. Black's always good.

Joel:

We did talk about Naomi.

Clem:

I said: Are you sure? You seem unsure.

Joel:

I'm sure, I said.

Clem:

But you weren't. I could tell.

Joel:

I was so nervous. 

 I remember I couldn't think of anything to say. 

 There were long silences.

I thought I was foolish. 

 I thought I'd mistaken infatuation for love. 

 You said:

Clem:

So what. Infatuation is good, too.

Joel:

And I didn't have an argument.