The Anderson Tapes Quotes

I cannot abide red tape. It never strangles bad ideas, only good ones.

At some point you have to park your past and put yellow caution tape around it so you don't keep going back to it. Because there's nothing like lounging around in your past and all that self-pity.

David's tape recorder is allowed in the class to document "potential future violations." The secretary doesn't sound too upset at the idea that Mr. Neck could get canned. I bet she knows him personally.

She flipped through the notebook. In most places, Murphy’s large, crooked handwriting ate up the pages greedily, as if she couldn’t write large enough to get her point across. Occasionally Birdie’s more graceful handwriting appeared, adding asides or participating with Murphy in some kind of list she had thrown together, like favorite Leeda moments, or most unknown things about Leeda, or Leeda’s top five best articles of clothing. Mostly, though, it was all Murphy. Listing albums Leeda had to own before she died, like Janis Joplin’s Pearl. Copied scraps of her favorite poetry: about nature and despair and cities and even one or two about love that Murphy had annotated with words like Sickening, but she’s good and Horrible but worth reading. Dried leaves---pecan, magnolia, and, of course, the thin slivered shape of the peach leaf---taped in messy crisscrosses. A cider label Birdie had once kissed. A diagram of Leeda---outlined sloppily with colored-in blond hair, with words on the outside pointing to different parts of her: brainy pointing to her head, good posture pointing to her back, hot gams pointing to her legs, impenetrable (ha ha) pointing to her heart.

It’s true I sometimes imagine my life is different. That I’m somebody else. Maybe more than sometimes. But I’m not the only one around who makes stuff up. Adults are always telling you you can be whatever you want when you grow up, but they don’t mean it. They don’t believe it. They just want you to believe it. It’s a fairy tale. Like the tooth fairy. Something they tell you that gets you excited about something not so fantastic. If you think about it, it’s pretty gross—your teeth just falling out of your head, leaving bloody sockets for your tongue to poke through. But the story makes it better and the dollar makes it worth it. Then one afternoon you sneak into their bedroom and open the drawer of their nightstand, looking for the DS that they confiscated as punishment for your jumping on the roof of the car again, and you find the little Tupperware full of a dozen jagged pearls, caked brown with your own dried blood, your name written in black Sharpie across a piece of Scotch tape, and you stare at them for a moment in disbelief, wondering if maybe they aren’t what you think they are. Maybe they are somebody else’s teeth. They can’t be yours, because your teeth are in Neverland. Or Toothtopia. Or outer space. Or wherever kleptomaniac fairies live. So you confront them, your lying, scheming parents. Over breakfast, you ask your mom about the tooth fairy: where she lives, what she does during the day, how she manages to collect so many teeth each night, and how come some kids’ teeth (like Robbie Dinkler’s) are worth five bucks when yours only fetch a dollar apiece. And you see her search for some explanation that is at once both magical and believable, but you know she’s just making it up as she goes. It’s the same with all grown-ups. They tell you what they think you want to hear and let life tell you the truth later. You can be an astronaut or the president of the United States or second baseman for the White Sox, but you can’t really because you hate math, aren’t rich, and can’t even hit the ball. It’s just another fairy tale. So when your next tooth falls out, you figure you’ll just ask them if they’d like to keep it or throw it away, because you’re not buying it anymore. Or maybe not. Maybe you won’t tell them. Maybe you’ll still put your teeth under your pillow. Because sometimes it’s better to believe in the impossible. To believe you are a secret agent or a private detective or a superhero and not just a kid with freckled cheeks and gangly arms who is too clumsy to leap a tipped-over garbage can in a single bound. Until you are lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with a throbbing ankle and bloody chin, wishing you hadn’t even tried.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.” – George Carlin, Author, Actor and Comedian

ANDERSON: Who copped your cherry? MRS. EVERLEIGH: My brother Ernie. Does that shock you? ANDERSON: Why should it? I’m from Kentucky.

First, let me say that it is hardly new to suggest that sexual aberrations are the underlying motivations for sexual behavior. What I would like to suggest at this time is a much closer relationship between sex and crime. In fact, I suggest that crime - in modern society - has become a substitute for sex.

It has all gone so fast, Duke. Like a dream. How is it the days crawl by and yet the years fly?

- My brain tells me this is nothing. But my blood wants it. I am sorry. -Why be sorry? You think this is a good thing to be all brain and no blood? It is as bad as being all blood and no brain. The right mixture - that is what is important.

These pictures. A hundred years. My great-grandparents. The Civil War. My parents. The world wars. My brothers. I just think of what all these people went through. To produce me. Me. I'm the result. Ah, Jesus, Duke, what happened to us? How did we get to be what we are? I just can't stand thinking about it - it's so awful. So sad.

The only crime in this world is to be poor. That is the only crime. If you are not poor, you can do anything.

I have stopped wanting. It is very important to know when to stop wanting.

Not all the men and equipment I had requisitioned had arrived by that time. However I felt it better to proceed with what I had rather than await optimum conditions which rarely, if ever, seem to arrive.

- You are some woman. - It is my occupation, Schatzie. It is not my sex.

I think criminals - most criminals - do what they do so that they may cause pain to someone. Also, so that they may be caught and punished. To cause pain and to feel pain. That is why they lie, cheat, steal, and kill.