Quote 1
"Naturally I don't believe books and I don't believe teachers. […] but I do believe—it's important after all for me to believe you. Christ, I've got to believe you, at least. I know you better than anybody" (11.84).
Oh, irony. Or is it? DOES Finny, maybe, in some way, know Gene better than everyone else? After all, he does perhaps at some level know that Gene caused the accident and why…
Quote 2
"What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love." I didn't think that this was true, […] but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true. So I didn't argue (8.59).
Look at Gene's reaction to this notion: it should have been true. He's enticed by Finny because he's enticed by the world Finny has created – a world of youth and peace.
Quote 3
"It's you, pal," Finny said to me at last, "just you and me." He and I started back across the fields, preceding the others like two seigneurs.
We were the best of friends at that moment (1.38-9).
From the start, Gene's friendship with Finny isolates them from others.
Quote 4
"What makes you so special? Why should you get it and all the rest of us be in the dark?"
The momentum of the argument abruptly broke from his control. His face froze. "Because I've suffered," he burst out (8.103-4).
This questions the notion of Gene growing older and wiser while Finny remains left behind in a world of youth. It reminds us that, in some ways, Finny has learned lessons that Gene has not.
Quote 5
"I just fell," his eyes were vaguely on my face, "something jiggled and I fell over. I remember I turned around and looked at you, it was like I had all the time in the world. I thought I could reach out and get hold of you."
I flinched violently away from him. "To drag me down too!" (5.25-6).
As their identities continue to mesh, Gene begins to identify elements of himself – and not such nice elements, at that – in Phineas.
Quote 6
"If a war can drive somebody crazy, then it's real all right. Oh I guess I always knew, but I didn't have to admit it" (11.84).
Here we see another example of Finny's rules. His fantasy world, in which there was no war or enmity, turned out to be precariously balanced on his delicate system of principles.
Quote 7
Finny turned toward me. "You were down at the bottom, weren't you? he asked, not in the official courtroom tone he had used before, but in a friend's voice (11.147).
Finny so much fears his friend's betrayal that he has altered the past in his mind to avoid facing the truth.