500 Days of Summer (2009)

Richard McGonagle: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : If Tom had learned anything... it was that you can't ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence... Tom had finally learned, there are no miracles. There's no such thing as fate, nothing is meant to be. He knew, he was sure of it now.

• Narrator : This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met "the one." This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total misreading of the movie 'The Graduate.' The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parent's marriage she'd only loved two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

• Narrator : Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin and they end with no lasting memory made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life.

• Narrator : As he listened, Tom began to realize that these stories weren't routinely told. These were stories one had to earn. He could feel the wall coming down. He wondered if anyone else had made it this far. Which is why the next six words changed everything.

  Summer : I've never told anybody that before.

  Tom : I guess I'm not just anybody.

• Narrator : Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. May 23rd was a Wednesday.

• Narrator : There's only two kinds of people in the world. There's women, and there's men. Summer Finn was a woman. Height, average. Weight, average. Shoe size, slightly above average. For all intents and purposes, Summer Finn was just another girl. Except she wasn't.

• Narrator : For Tom Hansen, this was the night where everything changed. That wall Summer so often hid behind - the wall of distance, of space, of casual - that wall was slowly coming down. For here was Tom, in her world... a place few had been invited to see with their own eyes. And here was Summer, wanting him there. Him, no one else.

• Narrator : Tom walked to her apartment, intoxicated by the promise of the evening. He believed that this time his expectations would align with reality...

• Narrator : In 1998, Summer quoted a song by the Scottish band, Belle and Sebastian, in her high school yearbook. "Color my life with the chaos of trouble."

• Narrator : Summer's employment at the Daily Freeze during her sophomore year coincides with an inexplicable 212% increase in revenue. Every apartment Summer rented was offered at an average rate of 9.2% below market value. And her round-trip commute to work averaged 18.4 double-takes per day. It was a rare quality, this "Summer effect." Rare, and yet something every post-adolescent male has encountered at least once in their lives. For Tom Hansen to find it now in a city of 400,000 offices, 91,100 buildings and 3.8 million people... Well, that could only be explained by one thing... Fate.