Detachment

Detachment Quotes

A substitute teacher who drifts from classroom to classroom finds a connection to the students and teachers during his latest assignment.

Henry Barthes: How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you?
Henry Barthes: Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they're false.
Henry Barthes: Examples of this in everyday life: "Oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable." Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, shit on, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death.
Henry Barthes: So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds.
Henry Barthes: Whatever is on my mind, I say it as I feel it, I'm truthful to myself; I'm young and I'm old, I've been bought and I've been sold, so many times. I am hard-faced, I am gone. I am just like you.
Henry Barthes: We have such a responsibility to guide our young so that they don't end up falling apart, falling by the wayside, becoming insignificant.
Henry Barthes: I realized something. I'm a non-person, Sarah. You shouldn't be here, I'm not here. You may see me, but I'm hollow.
Henry Barthes: A child's intelligent heart can fathom the depth of many dark places, but can it fathom the delicate moment of its own detachment?
Meredith: Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Henry Barthes: I am money, I change hands like the dollar bill, that has been rubbed by a lamp; Then a genie appeared and cried loudly, with volume; But the tears were all for myself, and that's where it all went wrong
Henry Barthes: It doesn't take strength Meredith, you've gotta understand that, unfortunately, most people lack self awareness.
Henry Barthes: [DOUBLETHINK is on the blackboard, from Orwell's "1984". When none of the students knows what it means he tells them] It's deliberately believing in lies while knowing they're false.
Henry Barthes: Y'know it's funny, I spend a lot of time trying to not have to deal... to not really commit. I'm a substitute teacher, there's no real responsibility to teach. Your responsibility is to maintain order, make sure nobody kills anybody in your classroom, and then they get to their next period.
Henry Barthes: [In nursing home] Grampa, you doing any writing in your journal?
[Thumbs through empty journal]
Grampa: I don't remember much, I lost the habit. You can't think in this place, you can't make new memories.
Henry Barthes: Y'know you can't... you can't keep living on the street...
Erica: I'm not, I mean, I'm staying here with you.
Henry Barthes: Well, you can't continue to stay here with me. I'm not good for you...
Erica: That's not true. You're like, the only family I've ever had...
Henry Barthes: Well, I can't be your family, I can't give you what you need. You have to understand, you should be...
Erica: You're good and gentle, you're the most kind... I love you Henry. Don't let them take me, please nooooooooo, you're all I have, please don't let me go.
[Social workers take her away still protesting]
Mr. Wiatt: I was in my room for 2 hours and saw one parent. Where are they? Where is everybody? It's uncanny, no air raid sirens, not bombs. It doesn't happen that way. It starts with a whisper, and then nothing.
Henry Barthes: [agitated at assisted living nurse] Let me be very clear here, you stop neglecting his needs, or I will start fucking with yours! I will have you fired! Then it's going to be your family! Your children are gonna be at risk! You got it?

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