Irv Harper quotes from Everwood

Irv

[voiceover] Sometimes it's easier to pretend that things are okay, rather than face a difficult truth. So we go through the motions, the rituals of everyday life. We hope the comfortable rhythms of familiarity will hold off the inevitable just a little longer; return things to normal, anything to buy us more time. Playing pretend, make believe, it might be the one thing we never outgrow.

Irv

[voiceover] Sometimes we don't know our own strength. It can be hard to tell just how much weight you can safely bear, or how much will crush you. I'd like to think you can shoulder as big of burden as you believe you can -- that it's all a matter of will. Certainly a comforting thought. Other times it's hard to remember you had any strength at all. Then you can only hope to have someone to remind you, you were once fierce and able.

Irv

[voiceover] There are things that go without saying and there are things better left unsaid. There are things that should never be uttered out loud and there are things you've got to hear to believe. But the ones that stay with us are the things we long to say, but don't.

Irv

[voiceover] Dreams are our world turned upside down. Gravity, logic, time rendered meaningless. The world of dreams is not our world. Although in the dead of night, it tempts and deceives. This is what makes dreams so dangerous.

Irv

[voiceover] People came from far to the mountain towns, I came from the North to find purpose but Doctor came from a city to escape regret. Fate had other plans for both of us. You could argue its better to be neglected by fate than well attended. When it marks you for favor, you can bet your life will change, rarely for the better, though always deeper. The most costly casualty is always the heart; nothing hurts so much as that. Like sacrificing your queen, you can still play, only you can’t help feel that the gain is already lost. But strangely, cruelly, a distraught heart keeps beating no matter how much you wish it would stop. So you take another breath. Another step. You wake again to the unsympathetic sun. You go through the motions, pretending for all the world to be a warm-bloody creature. The doctor and I, we both knew a lot about that, we both came a long way only to find that purpose doesn’t last… And regret can burn a hole through any happiness. And that, just when you think, fate is done kicking you around and maybe its time to hope again. That’s when the real surprises come.

Edna

[about Harold] Well, I guess it finally fell out.

Irv

What?

Edna

That stick up his ass.

Andy

My dad used to say there's a thin line between fishing and sitting in a boat getting drunk.

Irv

It's a fine line to straddle.

Irv

[voiceover] I wasn't there the day Colin Hart's life changed forever, but you could feel the earth shake a little from quite a ways off... at the end of it, the young boy and all who loved him would never be the same. In an opposite corner of the world another man's tragedy kept time with Colin Hart's... Andy Brown did what any man would do who felt he had lost everything, he disappeared. He fell apart, lost his center, lost his way... the girl took her chance when she saw it. She begged the doctor's son to help her in her cause, and he did because he loved her and could refuse her nothing. And so it came to pass that one man's tragedy and one boy's loss met... and the boy was saved, and the man was saved, at least for a time... although Colin had cheated death, a little death had crept inside. He was not whole. He was not himself. His own changed face frightened him. He pushed those he cared for far away. The good doctor believed that this boy could still be saved, and that he was the one who could save him, but the boy hadn't decided if life was worth dying for. The choice was all his own...

Colin

What can you promise me?

Andy

Nothing.

Colin

Okay, I'm in.

Irv

[voiceover] This is the story of Colin Hart and Andy Brown. It's the story of a town that lost its center and strove to regain it. This is the story of Everwood.

Irv

This thing you're doing with the stove. I don't understand.

Edna

I'm cooking for my children. Get over yourself.

Irv

But you don't cook. You don't even reheat.