How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
One of the reasons I like working with Dr. Malone is that his facial expressions are so clear and easy to understand. That one he just made, for example, is a textbook example of "baffled." (1.23)
Marcelo sees the world as one giant "how are you feeling today?" poster. You know, the ones with the happy faces, most of which aren't actually happy?
Quote #2
She's actually speaking faster than I would have preferred. There are words and phrases that elude me. But one of the things I learned at Paterson was to let people talk even though I don't understand every single thing I hear. As they go on the meaning becomes clear. (6.98)
The Real World must be so exhausting for a guy like Marcelo. To him, trying to survive outside Paterson and his family is like trying to survive alone in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and there are no horses to help you out.
Quote #3
Despite hours of practicing at Paterson, initiating "small talk" is still a formidable challenge for me. "You play squash," I finally think to say. Only I'm aware that I did not enunciate the phrase in the form of a question. (7.59)
Think about the difference between how people from America ask questions vs. the way people from England do. American questions have a rising inflection on the last word; English questions have a rising inflection on the next-to-last word. Marcelo might have to learn to recognize questions all over again if he traveled to the U.K.
Quote #4
I hear a lot of "Then he said" or "Then she said" and this reporting of what other people have said is retold with a lot of emotion. This I think is the law firm's equivalent of large talk, since emotion is not something that accompanies small talk. (8.4)
It's often the bottling up of emotion that accompanies small talk. For example, when someone asks you how you are, you may be really awful, but you say you're fine because that's what you're supposed to say. Plus you don't want to totally freak them out by bursting into sobs.
Quote #5
Even when she is angry, like at Juliet for example, you can tell that the anger does not affect her. The reason I can tell is that her breathing never alters. A person who is truly angry has physical reactions that last for a while, even after the event that caused the anger is gone. (8.27)
Can you imagine having to learn about human emotions not by feeling them, but by observing how they affect other people physically? Would it be more frightening to witness anger as Marcelo, or as a "normal" person?
Quote #6
Actually I am asking myself if conversations between friends always feel like this—two minds bound together by their focus on the same subject. (9.40)
Conversations do feel this way—if they're good. Otherwise, why would Marcelo get teary-eyed for the first time when Jasmine makes a list for him like the kind he makes for himself? And how would Jasmine have known what kind of list to make?
Quote #7
I am thinking about how hard it is for me to communicate with my father. He is the one person I would most like to "chat" with. We could sit in our backyard and talk small talk or large talk. It wouldn't matter. (10.42)
Unfortunately, Arturo's only willing to communicate on his own terms. He's more concerned with Marcelo being "normal" than with actually understanding him.
Quote #8
"You are raising your voice. I haven't seen you do that in a very long time. That's interesting. Anyway, I will get Jasmine the help she wanted to begin with. She'll be all right." (15.54)
In noticing that Marcelo's raising his voice but failing to process the emotion behind it, Arturo's behaving way more Aspergerishly (adverb of the day!) than his son. It's an odd moment where a similar behavior shows just how little these two understand each other.
Quote #9
I sign I love you with my hand, the way I learned at Paterson.
She touches her heart with her hand and then she touches my chest. (22.24-25)
American Sign Language has its own sentence construction, vocabulary, and slang. To learn more about Deaf culture and why some people choose to sign rather than speak, check out the documentary Sound and Fury. (Have the tissues handy.)
Quote #10
"If you knew how much of what people say and do I fail to understand, you would not call me smart. I stop myself from asking what something means because otherwise no one would talk to me. I'm not smart. I have been trained. It is training and concentration. Years of learning how to communicate." (23.102)
As Stewart Copeland, the famous drummer for The Police, once said about playing the drums, "Any fool can do it. All you've got to do is practice."