Mary Shannon quotes from In Plain Sight

Mary

[voiceover] I once dated a guy who loved the independence of living on his own; chugging from the carton in the middle of the night. He said the isolation was a trade-off he could live with. I thought I'd hit the mother lode. Then he told me he was going to clown camp.

Mary

Holy Mary! Have you tried this potato salad? It's the mustard kind!

Mary

[voiceover] Split apart, reunited or adjusted for new conditions on the ground, family is a double edged sowrd. They are the best of times, the worst of times, your keys to the kingdom and the skeletons in your closet. If only we didn't have to eat dinner with them.

Mary

[voiceover] Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the others. The same goes for family. Or as we'd say on our side of the pond, nobody picks on my brother but me.

Mary

[Mary is threatening Brian about Sabrina] I'm gonna break it down for you. If you touch, talk or so much as accidentally glance at Sabrina, I will find you. I will hunt you down like a lioness looking for dinner. I will haunt you in your dreams til you wake up in your little race car bed with your Transformer sheets soaked through.

Mary

[voiceover] People say "you can't chose your family." What you can do is look deeper than the dinner table, beyond the DNA and redefine the word. No one knows that better than I do.

Mary

[voiceover] I am what many would call, often as accusation, a non believer. It's a charge I consider unfair, because all of us, no matter the connection we feel or don't, when sitting under the stars, or feeling the world closing in, doing what comes naturally or rearranging the furniture, all of us believe in something. I believe in many things. I believe in first impressions, and second chances. For strippers, priests, and hopeless, hapless sisters. I believe in telling the truth to the people you love at every possible turn. And lying, just a little, at what seems the appropriate time. I believe in finding people you'd run through a brick wall for, and making sure they know it, if not in so many words. But mostly, I believe in justice... sweet, street and otherwise. Justice. That's my church.

Mary

[voiceover] Make no mistake: buying a car or copping a plea, deal making is a bloodsport. When a witness lands on my doorstep he's trading in his testimony, his hometown, and everyone he ever knew for a life at the end of the road. So we set him up; a new name, address, a job we hope he won't hate, but the one thing I can't give him, the deal I've yet to strike, is the one that protects him from the guy in the mirror.

Mary

[voiceover] Whether it's secrets, justice or the Amazon rainforest, every one of us protects things a thousand times a day. It doesn't take a gun; for most of us, protection is as quiet and reflexive as a breath. For some, though, for knights in shining armor, the lone ranger, a boyfriend or a mom, protection can be a hard habit to break. As much as we thump the bible about the vital need to change, the fact is, we hardly ever do. We stay here, halfway to happy, in our old familiar places, with our feet stuck firmly on the ground.

Mary

[voiceover] In my experience, holding out for closure does nothing but prolong the pain. The stoics got it right. Lance the boil, rip off the band-aid. Man up and get on with it. I gotta go.

Mary

[voiceover] One of my earliest memories is of a beachfront and a flagpole, and of lightning flashes heading for the shore. As grownups ran around, frantic, gathering beach towels, flip-flops, and five-year-olds, one kid in particular went racing toward the storm. I watched that five-year-old at the beachfront, clinging wide-eyed to the flagpole, as pretty bolts of lightning lit the sky. Then his mom ran up, or a lifeguard, or an aunt, and pulled him down to groundedness, to live another day. As with most things, hanging on to flagpoles is, in the end, a matter of balance, but good to keep you steady while you stay alert for lightning, as it storms across the sea.

Mary

[voiceover] The little guy. The underdog. David as opposed to Goliath. These are who we're raised to root for, to climb every mountain, take on all comers, the shock the world with a win at Lake Placid, and once in a blue moon they do. But the unerring fate that every little guy will find love, bring home the gold, or slay the dragon is in reality the stuff dreams are made of, or rather fairytales. Just saying.

Mary

I mean, I've kissed more girls than this guy.

Mary

[speak to Winnie and Jimmy] Can I just say one thing? You people are idiots. Honestly, all you had to do, just one of you, was open your mouth when you were nine, and we could've avoided all of this... Albanians, self-inflicted car crashes, me being this annoyed. So can we please just cut to the chase? You love her, she loves you, get on the goddamn plane. As you wish.

Mary

[voiceover] From childhood we're fed a steady diet of 'once upon a time,' the ultimate lead-in to love conquers all. No wonder we wind up at bookstores and movies with stars in our eyes, or head in the clouds. Heathcliff, Scarlett, a farm boy, a princess, Affairs to Remember on the 85th floor, but the star-crossed who kiss right before Auld Lang Syne or played by a boombox held over their heads, they're a pain in the ass. Because love, no matter what the storybooks say, hardly ever conquers all. So when it does, and the grownups, the skeptics, the stable of mind, watch others blissfully fly into the sun, it churns up and riles something deep down inside. We feel something foreign and fleeting, something hard to admit: we hope.