Cashback

Ben Willis:
I've always wanted to be a painter, maybe have my work hung in a gallery one day.

Sharon Pintey:
I've always wanted to meet a painter.

Ben Willis:
Why?

Sharon Pintey:
I think it might have something to do with their ability to see beauty in everything.

Ben Willis:
Once upon a time, I wanted to know what love was. Love is there if you want it to be. You just have to see that it's wrapped in beauty and hidden away in between the seconds of your life. If you don't stop for a minute, you might miss it.

Ben Willis:
You see, I've always wanted to be a painter, and like many artists before me, the female form has always been a great source of fascination. I've always been in awe of the power they posses.

Ben Willis:
I read once about a woman whose secret fantasy was to have an affair with an artist. She thought he would really see her. He would see every curve, every line, every indentation and love them because they were part of the beauty that made her unique.

Sean Higgins:
Two halves, please.

The Barman:
What was the other one?

Sean Higgins:
Two halves.

The Barman:
Oh, yeah.

Sean Higgins:
I just found the world's stupidest barman.

Ben Willis:
Are you and Matt seeing each other?

Sharon Pintey:
No. We went to the cinema the other night, but just as friends.

Ben Willis:
Hmm.

Sharon Pintey:
Why? What has Matt said?

Ben Willis:
He said he slept with you.So you didn't?

Sharon Pintey:
No, of course not! What do you take me for?

Ben Willis:
Sorry.

Sharon Pintey:
Did he say if I was any good?

Ben Willis:
I think it was the best sex he's never had.

Ben Willis:
I could feel a faint shift in a faraway place. A current of unknown consequences was on its way, moving towards me like an unstoppable wave of fate.

Ben Willis:
Being Swedish, the walk from the bathroom to her room didn't need to be a modest one.

Ben Willis:
Crush. It's funny how the same word for the feeling of disappointment can be used for the feeling of attraction. The Oxford English Dictionary states one of the meanings for the word crushed as "a strong and unreasoning, but transitory attachment."

Ben Willis:
This is the haunting period. The time when the demons of regret come for you.

Ben Willis:
I wanted to freeze time. I wanted to savor that moment, to live in that moment for a week. But I couldn't stop it, only slow it. And before I knew it, she was gone. After the door closed I felt like the last person on Earth.

Ben Willis:
The bad news is that time flies. The good news... is that you're the pilot.

Ben Willis:
She caught the wrong second of a two-second story.

Ben Willis:
Within this frozen world I'm able to walk freely and unnoticed. Nobody would even know that time has stopped. And when it started back up again, the invisible join would be seamless except for a slight shudder. Not unlike the feeling of somebody walking over your grave.

Ben Willis:
You can speed it up. You can slow it down. You can even freeze a moment, but you can't rewind time. You can't undo what is done. I thought about what she had seen. I thought about what she hadn't seen. I thought about how I could explain, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew nothing I could say would make her anger go away. How long could I just wait here, delaying the inevitable?

[first lines]

Ben Willis:
It take approximately 500 lbs to crush a human skull. But the human emotion is a much more delicate thing. Take Suzy, my first real girl friend. My first real break-up, happening right in front of me. I never thought it was going to be similar to a car crash. I've slammed the breaks, and I'm skidding toward an emotional impact. So, is this all my fault? Me, Ben Willis. It's funny what goes through your mind at a time like this. The two and a half years we spent together. The promises we made. The holidays we took with her parents. The lamp we bought at IKEA together.

Ben Willis:
It was my final year at art college. And in the weeks that followed the break-up, I tried to figure out what went wrong. Why did we break-up? It's funny, but when I think back now, the reasons seem so small. One day she's with me and she's saying I love you, and the next week she's with someone else, probably saying the same thing. So did she really love me? What is love, anyway? And is it really that fleeting?

Ben Willis:
There is an art to dealing with the boredom of an 8-hour shift. An art to putting your mind somewhere else while the seconds slowly tick away. I found that all the people working here had perfected their own individual art. Take Sharon Pintey. Sharon knows rule #1, the clock is the enemy. The basic rule is this: the more you look at the clock, the slower the time goes. It will uncover the hiding place of your mind, and torture it with every second. This is the basic art in dealing with the trade of your time.

Ben Willis:
I had just become immune to sleep. I suddenly found I had 8 extra hours. My life had been extended by a third. I wanted time to pass quickly but instead I was forced to witness the passing of every second of every hour. I wanted the hurt I felt to go away but in some cruel trick of events I now had even more time on my hands.

Ben Willis:
My first year at art college was boring to say the least, but it helped to appreciate the fundamentals of still life.

Ben Willis:
For me, this fascination with beauty started at a very young age. I was 6 or 7 and my mom and dad had taken on a foreign student. She was in her late teens and was studying English at a nearby school. Being Swedish, the walk from the shower to her room didn't need to be a modest one. It was at that moment that something very profound came to me. I was exposed to the female form in a way I had never experienced. I felt fascination and wonder at the beauty of her nakedness and I wanted to freeze the world so that I could live in that moment for a week. I have never had a feeling of such completeness. To this day I still think it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.