"Without movies, I would have cracked. I would have lost what little piece of me I still had left."
Quinton was dedicated to movies after experiencing loss in his life. Instead of talking and sharing his feelings with other people he opted to watch movies. The movies enabled him to distract himself from the memories that he had his best friend and grandfather. The dedication to movies confirms that Quinton was isolated from other people around him.
"They say the first step toward healing is identifying the problem, and I’ve learned that through recognizing other people's problems, I not only gain insight into my own, but I fell a whole better in general."
Here, Quinton identifies with the movie renters who just like him arrive at the video store with the aim of renting movies. He thinks about what motivates the other movie renters to borrow the videos, and concludes that they could be having difficulties in life that can be forgotten temporally by watching the movies.
"I read somewhere that the initial concept of love is narcissistic search of one’s soul, where individuals project themselves onto other individuals, who in turn are projecting their residual self-image onto us."
Quinton suffers immensely after breaking up with his first girlfriend. He believes that it was her first love because no matter how much he drinks, he still thinks about her and has memories of her. Quinton finds it difficult to love another woman because he feels that his soul was intertwined with the soul of his first girlfriend.
"I was lying awake when my housemate, the Idiot, came home. I'd finished a movie but [was] still unable to rest."
Quinton experiences insomnia. He cannot sleep because he is haunted by sad memories. He watches movies with the hope of dozing odd and sleeping, but still, he cannot sleep. Quinton is troubled deep down, and this sense of unease makes him restless.
