Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

“...and say hello and good show..." (Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist 8).

(Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist CH. 12).

(Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist CH. 13).

“As we're driving across Houston, Norah reaches over and turns on the radio. A black-lipstickeblack-lipsticked oldie: The Cure, ‘Pictures of You'--track four of my Breakup Desolation Mix" (Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist 43).

“We sit in silence for a second. She takes a drag. She's cinematic and I'm a fucking sitcom. The silence doesn't bother her at all, bit it freaks the hell out of me" (Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist 98).

“‘The real things?'
‘Yeah. Try.'
She thinks for a second. ‘Okay. There's one part of Judaism I really like. Conceptually, I mean. It's called tikkun olam.'
‘Tikkun olam,' I repeat.
‘Exactly. Basically, it says that the world has been broken into pieces. All this chaos, all this discord. And our job--is to try to put the pieces back together. To make things whole again.'
‘And you believe that?' I ask. Not as a challenge. As a genuine question.
She shrugs, then negates the shrug with the thought in her eyes. ‘I guess I do. I mean, I don't know how the world broke. And I don't know if there's a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken--I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute--every single second--there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world--don't you just feel we're becoming more and more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces--they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that.'
‘Do you really think it's getting worse?' I ask. ‘I mean, aren't we better off than we were twenty years ago? Or a hundred?'
‘We're better off. But I don't know if the world's better off. I don't know if the two are the same thing.'
‘You're right,' I say.
‘Excuse me?'
‘I said, ‘You're right.''
‘But nobody ever says, ‘You're right.' Just like that.'
‘Really?'
‘Really.'
... But still somehow it feels like an accident--us being here, this night. As if she's reading my mind, she says, ‘I appreciate it.'
... ‘Maybe we're the pieces,' I say.
... ‘Maybe that's it,' I say gently. ‘With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn't that we're supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we're the pieces.'
... I feel like I'm understanding something for the first time, even if I'm not entirely sure what it is yet.
‘Maybe,' I say, ‘what we're supposed to do is come together. That's how we stop the breaking.'
Tikkun olam" (Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist 145).

“No--when the rain falls you just let it all and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. ... I don't know why we say the sky is opening up when it rains--like the sky has been holding back all this time, and then this is its release" (Cohn & Levithan Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist 156).