I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“Once he called me therapeutic. I’d never heard that from anyone before.”

As the protagonist describes the beginning of her relationship with Jake, she mentions he has never called her sexy but has instead called her “therapeutic.” This quote demonstrates how Jake does not conform to the protagonist’s generalized expectations of men.

“How do we know when something is menacing? What cues us that something is not innocent? Instinct always trumps reason.”

The protagonist is describing the memory of the man outside her childhood bedroom window when she questions the way people perceive a threat. This quote not only foreshadows the protagonist’s uneasiness about Jake but serves to illustrate the novel’s entire narrative as a psychological thriller.

“It had the effect of malice, as if he were suggesting I could never be completely on my own, that he would be around, that he would be back.”

In her memory of the man watching her outside her childhood bedroom window and waving to her, the protagonist immediately senses the danger the man presents. This quote reflects her struggle with the feeling she is always being watched and the anxiety that stems from it, which is a theme explored in the novel.

“There’s no definitive border between the start and the end. We’ll never fully understand or know it. We can’t.”

Spoken by Jake as he and the protagonist discuss space during their drive to his parents’ house, this quote reflects the structure of the novel. In the final conversation between the Speakers, one Speaker tells the other to read Jake’s writing from the end: “But maybe start at the end. Then circle back” (210).

“The meaning of existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise, I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”

The protagonist’s driving instructor quotes this line from Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Jung is best known for his theory of the collective unconscious shared between every person living. In this quote, Jung presents identity as a question that must be answered by the subject before outside societal judgments decide that subject’s identity.

“He said that would mean we’d always need someone else. But what if there wasn’t someone else? What if we are all just alone?”

The driving instructor from the protagonist’s memory says this to the protagonist after she argues that his other student couldn’t be the best kisser in the world, as kissing requires two people. This quote reflects Jake’s struggle with loneliness as well as his intellectual competitiveness at being the “best.” Jake resents his own loneliness and the way it makes him depend on connections with other people.

“Stories are how we understand each other. But reality only happens once.”

After hearing the protagonist’s memory of her driving instructor, Jake claims that all memory becomes more fictionalized the more it is recalled. Jake makes the point that stories are the way we communicate with each other, but this communication is not completely truthful as memory becomes fiction.

“The idea that we are better off with one person for the rest of our lives is not an innate truth of existence. It’s a belief we want to be true.”

The protagonist considers the necessity of being in a relationship. She believes her solitude and independence feel more natural to her than sacrificing them for a relationship. Yet, societal pressure encourages her to consider that being in a committed relationship is necessary for one’s happiness.

“Getting to know someone is like putting a never-ending puzzle together. We fit the smallest pieces first and we get to know ourself better in the process.”

The protagonist reflects on the nature of relationships and how they help an individual better understand themselves through contrast with their partner. That the protagonist describes someone else’s identity as a “never-ending puzzle” suggests that she—and therefore, Jake—believes identity to be a constantly changing phenomenon. This is connected to Jake’s theory of the valency of relationships.

“The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfilment rely on the presence of others, even just one other.”

After introducing the idea of critical balance, Jake states that happiness and fulfilment in life rely on the personal connections one has. This contrasts with the protagonist’s need for solitude. Additionally, it introduces Jake’s deep loneliness and his belief that his life is neither happy nor fulfilled, as he is unable to connect to other people.

“But isn’t being alone closer to the truest version of ourselves, when we’re not linked to another, not diluted by their presence and judgments?”

The protagonist considers how relationships with others threaten the consistency of one’s identity. As she decides whether pursuing a relationship with Jake is worthwhile, the protagonist’s main hesitation is the sacrifice of her sense of self.

“Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing for eternity.”

The protagonist looks around Jake’s parent’s house and notices a collection of porcelain figurines. She notes how their actions—picking flowers, carrying hay, etc.—are frozen within the figurine itself. This reflects Jake’s concern that the suffering he experiences from his loneliness may not end with his suicide. He fears he will be stuck performing the same actions and experiencing the same emotions for eternity.

“This isn’t a gag impersonation. He’s taking this seriously, too seriously. He’s becoming me in front of everyone.”

During dinner with Jake’s parents, the protagonist and Jake are encouraged to play a game of impersonation. Jake’s uncanny impersonation of the protagonist signifies their shared identity and the protagonist being a figment of Jake’s mind within the writing he composes just before his death.

“You guys are a good match. Not that you need me to tell you. Certain things like math and music, go together well, don’t they?”

Spoken by Jake’s father to the protagonist in Jake’s childhood bedroom, Jake’s father believes the protagonist to be Steph, Jake’s high school love. This serves as the first example of Jake writing the protagonist to stand-in for the relationship he could have had with Steph.

“It’s not what I’m scared of. It’s who I’m scared for.”

At the Dairy Queen, the third teenage girl, who hands the protagonist her frozen lemonade, makes this statement. The Dairy Queen worker is scared for the protagonist. As a figment of Jake’s identity and part of the story he writes before killing himself, this Dairy Queen worker is expressing his fear and apprehension toward the thought of suicide.

“If he were an asshole or stupid or mean or ugly or anything, then it would be his fault that I end things, kind of. But he’s not any of those things. He’s just a person.”

Following their stop at the Dairy Queen, the protagonist draws closer to making her decision about ending things with Jake. The compassion for Jake reflected in this quote explains the nature of Jake’s character as being normal and unaffected. Still, the protagonist as a figment of Jake’s identity does not regard his normalcy as a reason to not end things.

“‘No,’ he snaps. ‘That’s what it is. Someone is in there. Someone who wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have to be. If he could be somewhere else, anywhere else, that’s where he’d be.’”

While sitting outside the high school, Jake becomes angry that the protagonist won’t agree with him that there is a janitor inside the school. This quote reflects his own frustrations with working as a janitor and his desire to end his life to move on from his frustrations and loneliness.

“Did he call me Steph? Did he?”

While kissing, Jake calls the protagonist “Steph,” prompting her to ask these questions to herself. Being an unnamed character, the protagonist does not stop or correct Jake, merely wonders if “Steph” is supposed to be her name.

“We’re never inside someone else’s head. We can never really know someone else’s thoughts. And it’s thoughts that count. Thought is reality. Actions can be faked.”

The protagonist makes her decision to end things with Jake after Jake displays unexpected and uncharacteristic anger toward the man in the high school’s window. In this quote, she returns to the novel’s theme of the truthfulness of thoughts over actions as the basis for her decision.

There’s something familiar about this room. I knew how it would look before I got here.”

The protagonist enters the janitor’s office and immediately feels the space is familiar to her. As she wanders through the school looking for Jake, the protagonist’s identity begins to harmonize with that of the janitor Jake, starting with this quote.

“Something that disorients, that unsettles what’s taken for granted, something that disturbs and disrupts reality—that’s scary.”

The protagonist relates her most frightening memory, that of her mother’s friend Ms. Veal. In it, the protagonist reveals how frightening seemingly ordinary interactions between two people can be as well as the impossibility of preparing for someone’s actions. This connects to the novel’s theme of faking an action and the truthfulness of thoughts in that the protagonist never knew what Ms. Veal was thinking but could deduce the evil of her actions.

“It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing.”

The protagonist has decided to end things and thus believes it is impossible to fully know another person without also knowing their thoughts. Therefore, Jake believes his loneliness could never have been helped by another person because that relationship would inevitably hold some degree of falsehood.

“If it was harder to perceive or accept, if there was more room for doubt, I would be less scared.”

As the protagonist runs through the high school, she considers how fearful normal life has always been. This is reflected in Jake’s lifelong struggle with social anxiety and isolation, in which the ordinary interactions people have between one another seem suspect to him. The memory of Ms. Veal potentially poisoning his mother provide a foundation for these fears.