Irrational Man (2015)

Joaquin Phoenix: Abe Lucas

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Quotes 

• Abe : Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

• Abe : So much of philosophy is just verbal masturbation.

• Abe : I couldn't remember the reason for living, and when I did it wasn't convincing.

• Abe : It's very scary when you run out of distractions.

• Abe : Kant said human reason is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss but also cannot answer.

• Abe : Fifty-fifty odds is better than most people get in life.

• Abe : I set out to be an active world changer and wound up a passive intellectual who can't fuck.

• Jill : Despair is what Kierkegaard called the sickness unto death, Abe. And you suffer from despair.

  Abe : I'm well aware of what Kierkegaard thought. But he was, in the end, a Christian. How comforting that would be.

• Abe : I'm asking you to put our everyday assumptions aside, and trust your experience of life. In order to really see the world, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it.

• [first lines] 

  Abe : [narrating]  Kant said human reason is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss, but also cannot answer. Okay, so, what are we talking about here? Morality? Choice? The randomness of life? Aesthetics? Murder?

  Jill : I think Abe was crazy from the beginning. Was it from stress? Was it anger? Was he disgusted by what he saw as life's never-ending suffering? Or was he simply bored by the meaninglessness of day-to-day existence? He was so damn interesting. And different. And a good talker. And he could always cloud the issue with words.

  Abe : Where to begin? You know, the existentialists feel nothing happens until you hit absolute rock bottom. Well, let's say that when I went to teach at Braylin College, emotionally, I was at Zabriskie Point. Of course, my reputation, or should I say a reputation, preceded me.

• Abe : I'm Abe Lucas and I've murdered. I've had many experiences and now a unique one. I've taken a human life. Not in battle or self defense, but I made a choice I believed in and saw it through. I feel like an authentic human being.

• Abe : Life's ironic isn't it? One day a person has a morass of complicated, unsolvable problems then in the batting of an eye, dark clouds part and she can enjoy a decent life again. It's just astounding.

• Rita : How's it coming?

  Abe : I'm... blocked. I can't write.

  Rita : Why?

  Abe : I don't know, I... I can't *write* 'cause I... I can't breathe.

  Rita : What would get you breathing again?

  Abe : [sighs]  I... you know... I don't... I'm too... *the will to breathe*, inspiration you know.

  Rita : You need a muse.

  Abe : I've never needed a muse before.

  [sighs] 

  Rita : I hope you're not going to send me back out into the rain without sleeping with me.

  Abe : I'm trying to write.

  Rita : You're blocked. I'm going to unblock you or are you becoming infatuated with that student you spend so much time with?

• Abe : The dizziness and anxiety had disappeared and I was happy and enjoying the joy of living.

• Abe : Everything about killing Judge Spangler turned me on. The idea of helping this woman, of taking action, of ridding the world of the kind of vermin that makes the world an extra hell for all of us. I was intrigued by the creative challenge of bringing off a perfect murder. It was a high-stakes risk, but the risk made me feel alive.

• Abe Lucas : Jill had been right in her appraisal of me. I was teetering on the brink of some kind of breakdown, unable to deal with my feelings of anger, frustration, futility. They say that drowning is a painless way to go.

• Abe : My writing was flowing, the creative juices unblocked. I was happy and enjoying a sense of well being and had begun an affair with Jill, something I had been determined not to do and yet was carried along in the sudden momentum of the sheer joy of living. The thought that I had once been indifferent to existence seemed preposterous.