Leap Year Movie Quotes

But, if we want our churches to thrive and our devotional lives to flourish, we absolutely must let God be God. We cannot settle for warm, fuzzy, "feel good movie of the year" versions of God. We cannot settle for a God who exists only to meet our needs and make us happy. We cannot settle for a God who is boring and irrelevant. We cannot settle for a God of our own imagination. We must know the ferocious, untamable God. We must let God out of the boxes we have created. We must come face to face with God as he really is, with all his sharp edges and blazing glory and heart-rending beauty. We must encounter the God who makes mountains melt like wax and the angels cover their eyes and the rivers leap for joy. If we are going to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we must truly know God. We must know him as he truly is, not as we imagine him to be. We must come to grips with the God who has revealed himself in scripture.

Quickly I find another surprise. The boys are wilder writers — less careful of convention, more willing to leap into the new. I start watching the dozens of vaguely familiar girls, who seem to have shaved off all distinguishing characteristics. They are so careful. Careful about their appearance, what they say and how they say it, how they sit, what they write. Even in the five-minute free writes, they are less willing to go out from where they are — to go out there, where you have to go, to write. They are reluctant to show me rough work, imperfect work, anything I might criticize; they are very careful to write down my instructions word by word. They’re all trying themselves on day by day, hour by hour, I know — already making choices that will last too unfairly long. I’m surprised to find, after a few days, how invigorating it all is. I pace and plead for reaction, for ideas, for words, and gradually we all relax a little and we make progress. The boys crouch in their too-small desks, giant feet sticking out, and the girls perch on the edge, alert like little groundhogs listening for the patter of coyote feet. I begin to like them a lot. Then the outlines come in. I am startled at the preoccupation with romance and family in many of these imaginary futures. But the distinction between boys and girls is perfectly, painfully stereotypical. The boys also imagine adventure, crime, inventions, drama. One expects war with China, several get rich and lose it all, one invents a time warp, another resurrects Jesus, another is shot by a robber. Their outlines are heavy on action, light on response. A freshman: “I grow populerity and for the rest of my life I’m a million air.” [sic] A sophomore boy in his middle age: “Amazingly, my first attempt at movie-making won all the year’s Oscars. So did the next two. And my band was a HUGE success. It only followed that I run the country.” Among the girls, in all the dozens and dozens of girls, the preoccupation with marriage and children is almost everything. They are entirely reaction, marked by caution. One after the other writes of falling in love, getting married, having children and giving up — giving up careers, travel, college, sports, private hopes, to save the marriage, take care of the children. The outlines seem to describe with remarkable precision the quietly desperate and disappointed lives many women live today.

The necessary special effects are not in my possession, but what I’d like for you to imagine is Clementine’s white face coming close to mine, her sleepy eyes closing, her medicine-sweet lips puckering up, and all the other sounds of the world going silent—the rustling of our dresses, her mother counting leg lifts downstairs, the airplane outside making an exclamation mark in the sky—all silent, as Clementine’s highly educated, eight-year-old lips met mine. And then, somewhere below this, my heart reacting. Not a thump exactly. Not even a leap. But a kind of swish, like a frog kicking off from a muddy bank. My heart, that amphibian, moving that moment between two elements: one, excitement; the other, fear. I tried to pay attention. I tried to hold up my end of things. But Clementine was way ahead of me. She swiveled her head back and forth the way actresses did in the movies. I started doing the same, but out of the corner of her mouth she scolded, “You’re the man.” So I stopped. I stood stiffly with arms at my sides. Finally Clementine broke off the kiss. She looked at me blankly a moment, and then responded, “Not bad for your first time.

In the last few years, Meg had been to hell and back- literally. She'd sold her soul to the god of the Underworld and spent her days and nights fulfilling Hades's every demand. While she still walked in the land of the living, her life was no longer her own. Meeting Hercules had awoken something in her. Honestly, she wasn't sure what that something was, but she knew it felt important. Why else would she have leaped in front of a falling pillar to save him, causing her own demise in the process? That moment, and Wonder Boy's rescue of her afterward, was a blur now, like so many nightmares she tried hard to forget. The next thing she remembered was air filling her lungs as if she'd held her breath underwater for too long. Then there had been a crack of lightning, a flurry of clouds, and she and Wonder Boy were being whisked into the heavens toward Mount Olympus.

It was strange. It was painful. It was wonderful. It was something unique to the twentieth century. To sit in a theater in 1994 and fall in love with a woman from 1929 … that would be like sitting in a theater in 1929 and falling in love with someone from 1864 … or like watching 1994 from the year 2059. These leaps across time are fantastic. Yet it’s inevitable that soon people will think nothing of watching a movie from a century before, any more than we would consider it odd to read a hundred-year-old book.

And if you must cheat, then please cheat death. Because I couldn’t live a day without you.

Lara Jean?” I open my eyes. I’m not dreaming, and this is real. This is a nightmare. Peter Kavinsky is holding my letter in his hand. It’s my handwriting, my envelope, my everything. “How--how did you get that?” “It came in the mail yesterday.” Peter sighs. Gruffly he says, “Listen, it’s no big deal; I just hope you’re not going around telling people--” “It came in the mail? To your house?” “Yeah.” I feel faint. I actually feel faint. Please let me faint right now, because if I faint I will no longer be here, in this moment. It will be like in movies when a girl passes out from the horror of it all and the fighting happens while she is asleep and she wakes up in a hospital bed with a bruise or two, but she’s missed all the bad stuff. I wish that was my life instead of this. I can feel myself start to sweat. Rapidly I say, “You should know that I wrote that letter a really long time ago.” “Okay.” “Like, years ago. Years and years ago. I don’t even remember what I said.” Up close, your face wasn’t so much handsome as beautiful. “Seriously, that letter’s from middle school. I don’t even know who would have sent it. Can I see it?” I reach for the letter, trying to stay calm and not sound desperate. Just casual cool. He hesitates and then grins his perfect Peter grin. “Nah, I want to keep it. I never got a letter like this before.” I leap forward, and quick like a cat I snatch it out of his hand. Peter laughs and throws up his hands in surrender. “All right, fine, have it. Geez.” “Thanks.” I start to back away from him. The paper is shaking in my hand. “Wait.” He hesitates. “Listen, I didn’t mean to steal your first kiss or whatever. I mean, that wasn’t my intention--” I laugh, a forced and fake laugh that sounds crazy even to my own ears. People turn around and look at us. “Apology accepted! Ancient history!” And then I bolt. I run faster than I’ve ever run. All the way to the girls’ locker room. How did this even happen? I sink to the floor. I’ve had the going-to-school-naked dream before. I’ve had the going-to-school-naked-forgot-to-study-for-an-exam-in-a-class-I-never-signed-up-for combo, the naked-exam-somebody-trying-to-kill-me combo. This is all that times infinity. And then, because there’s nothing left for me to do, I take the letter out of the envelope and I read it.

Big Angel stood in the shadows of the living room, buffeted by stories of the past, things he remembered and things he had learned. Or maybe things he had dreamed. He could no longer tell the difference. The stories flew in like wind through an open window and whirled around him. He could feel them almost pull him off his feet. They seemed to come by their own volition, leaping over years, ignoring the decades. Big Angel found himself in a time storm. He saw it all as if the past were a movie in the Las Pulgas theater.