The Wonder Years Season 4 quotes

Narrator

That night, Paul Pfeiffer and I played the most important game of our lives. We both played hard. And we both played to win. And no game ever mattered more. To both of us. Maybe change is never easy. You fight to hold on. You fight to let go. But that night... after seven-hundred ninety consecutive loses... Paul finally beat me. Paul made the basketball team that year. And he had some loyal fans. But his biggest fan... was also his best friend. I guess sometimes you have to grow apart... to keep growing together.

Narrator

When you're a kid, it's simple. Christmas is magic. It's a time of miracles, when reindeer can fly, and Frosty never melts. Then you get older. Somehow, things change. The magic begins to fade. Until something happens that reminds you, at Christmas time... miracles still can be found. Sometimes in the most unexpected places.

Narrator

I stood there, helpless, outnumbered. And that's when it happened. Doug Porter looked first, directly into the eyes of the man who had taught him gym for three long years. Then Tommy Kisling looked, too, and Randy Mitchell. Those three skeptics gazed straight at that white beard, dead into the eyes of Coach Cutlip not thirty feet away. But all that they saw... was Santa Claus. It was a miracle. He stood there like some patron saint of all the lonely people holidays sometimes forget. And for that brief moment of Christmas magic, Ed Cutlip got his chance to be what he always wanted. And I never gave him away.

Narrator

Everybody know politics is a dirty business. Yet our greatest national heroes have always been politicians. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe it takes a certain kind of person to get down in the mud... and come out with the bricks of statecraft. After all, in America, they say any kid can grow up to be president. What they don't say... is how.

Narrator

Which only proved what I'd known all along. Simply stated... politics stinks. I never regretted running for president of the student council... or the three weeks of detention that followed. In fact... in many ways, I was a better man for it. Even though I lost to a duck. In any event... it was time to leave politics to the politicians. Let the ship of state sail on. At least they wouldn't have Kevin Arnold to kick around anymore.

Narrator

Young love is really pretty simple. It's about sharing little inside jokes when the teacher isn't looking. It's about passing notes in the hallway between classes. It's about all the really stupid things you share. It's about going through it, together. Winnie Cooper and I had been through it all. The good times, bad times, the ups and downs. And we were still together. We'd known each other since we were kids. And to me she was still the girl next door - even though she didn't live next door anymore.

Narrator

Back there on our seat... the ride home in the dark seat... there it was- the ring I gave to Winnie; the one she was giving back to me. I looked for her on the other bus but I couldn't find her, she was already lost in the crowd. I knew then that the girl next door was gone. And my life would never be the same again.

Narrator

Winnie Cooper was my first real love. She grew up in the house across the street. She was the first girl I had ever kissed. And now she had broken up with me. But it wasn't until the next day that I understood what it meant...

Kevin

It's just a big misunderstanding right?

Narrator

Love makes you do funny things. It makes you proud. It makes you sorry. That night we talked. About life. About our times together. Maybe we weren't the same two kids we had once been. But some things never change. Some things last. And even though I didn't know what was going to happen to us, or where we were going. I just knew I couldn't let her out of my life.

Narrator

I grew up in a neighborhood that was a lot like other neighborhoods. Where the boxes we lived in were distinguished only by the names on the mailboxes, and the cars in the driveways. It was a place where hard-working Americans circled their wagons to protect themselves from the outside world. Our lives were made up of little moments, all delicately intertwined.

I guess, uh... I guess my cousin, Rose, liked family gatherings more than anyone I've ever known. Even after she had trouble gettin' around, she always loved to have a chance to see the folks. As she liked to call us. Course, lately it seems like the only time we get together is, uh... when there's a wedding, or... or when somebody leaves us.

Narrator

As I stood there, listening to Grandpa's words, a lot of things began to become real for me. Aunt Rose. The loss Gramps was feeling. And why coming here was so important, for all of us.

But, I can tell you one thing, Rose is not gone from us. She never will be. She will always be a part of us, as long as we remain a family. Part of... the folks. Part of who we are. Even for those who really didn't know her very well.

Narrator

I guess that's when I understood what my grandfather had been trying to explain to me. That my life was bigger than the little neighborhood I lived in. And that these strangers who surrounded me, weren't just relatives, they were my family. And the death of one affected each of us in some way.

Narrator

I had never seen my grandfather turn into my dad, for lack of better words to describe how he lost his temper with me and Wayne. I'd never see that happen again, either...whether the other fellow deserved it or not. [first-draft line; shortened in rewrites]

Narrator

[first-draft epilogue, deleted in rewrites; the Arnolds are driving home from the funeral] ...Six years later, Albert Arnold himself passed away. His pallbearers at the funeral included Wayne and myself. I think we both owed our grandfather at least that much.

Narrator

Over the course of the average lifetime you meet a lot of people. Some of them stick with you through thick and thin. Some weave their way through your life and disappear forever. But once in a while someone comes along who earns a permanent place in your heart.

Narrator

[At] fourteen true heroism has less to do with actual logic and more to do with pure stupidity.