Senior Ed Bloom: I've been nothin' but myself since the day I was born, and if you can't see that it's your failin', not mine.
Young Ed Bloom: Your last name is different. You married.
Jenny: I was 18, he was 28. Turns out it was a big difference.
Senior Ed Bloom: Tell me how it happens.
Will Bloom: How what happens?
Senior Ed Bloom: How I go.
Will Bloom: You mean what you saw in the Eye? I dunno that story, Dad, you never told it to me.
Young Ed Bloom: It was that night I discovered that most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in the social niceties.
Young Ed Bloom: She said that the biggest fish in the river gets that way by never getting caught.
Young Jenny: There's leaches in there.
Young Ed Bloom: Did you see that woman?
Young Jenny: What did she look like?
Young Ed Bloom: Well, she was, uh.
Young Jenny: Was she naked?
Young Ed Bloom: Yeah, she was.
Young Jenny: It's not a woman. It's a fish. No one ever catches her.
Senior Ed Bloom: Most men, they'll tell you a story straight through. It won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either.
Senior Ed Bloom: I was drying out.
Young Ed Bloom: This isn't how I die.
Senior Ed Bloom: I caught an uncatchable fish.
Will Bloom: You become what you always were - a very big fish.
Will Bloom: In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's what kind of story this is.
Young Ed Bloom: There are some fish that cannot be caught. It's not that they're faster or stronger than other fish. They're just touched by something extra.
Will Bloom: Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? And then you hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place.
Amos Calloway: Tell me, Karl, have you ever heard the term "involuntary servitude"?
Karl: No.
Amos Calloway: "Unconscionable contract"?
Karl: Uh, nope.
Amos Calloway: Great.
Wilbur (Age 10): Is it true she's got a glass eye? I heard she got it from the gypsies.
Young Don Price: What's a gypsy?
Ed Bloom (Age 10): Your momma's a gypsy.
Young Don Price: Your momma's a bitch.
Will Bloom: My father talked about a lot of things that he never did and I'm sure he did a lot of things that he never talked about. I'm just trying to reconcile the two.
Will Bloom: You know about icebergs, dad?
Senior Ed Bloom: Do I? I saw an iceberg once. They were hauling it down to Texas for drinking water. They didn't count on there being an elephant frozen inside. The wooly kind. A mammoth.
Will Bloom: Dad.
Senior Ed Bloom: What?
Will Bloom: I'm trying to make a metaphor here.
Senior Ed Bloom: Well you shouldn't have started with a question, because most people want to answer questions. You should've started with "the thing about icebergs is."
Jenny: I loved a man who could never love me back. I was living in a fairytale.
Senior Ed Bloom: What do you want, Will? Who do you want me to be?
Will Bloom: Just yourself. Good, bad, everything. Just show me who you are for once.
Chosen answer: Deregulation of the U. S. savings & loan industry in the early 1980's greatly reduced the restrictions on which federally-chartered S&Ls could invest their money. Since the depositors' money was insured by the federal government, the S&Ls had no incentives to minimize risk. This resulted in a major political scandal by the end of the decade, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars being lost through questionable investments, with taxpayers picking up the tab. Many of the most egregious violators were based in Sun Belt states, including Texas. The fashions do appear to be a bit out of date, however.