Matthew Thomas Quotes

There's more that's happened than what's in your memory.

Life, she thought, was like that sometimes; for years, things were a certain way, and then in an instant, almost without conscious thought, they weren't that way any longer, as if all the hidden pressure on their having been the way they'd been had found release through a necessary valve.

what was rational about a midlife crisis? Weren't they always a little absurd? They were beginning the next phase of their lives together. She was not afraid of it. Let it come, she thought. He'll be in good hands.

Life is going to give you things to be angry at. I don't want you to be consumed by that anger or forget how much you're capable of.

The point wasn't always to do what you want. The point was to do what you did and to do it well.

This was life; you went down with the ship. Who was to say that wasn't a love story?

The little sedimentary deposits of his need had piled at her feet until they blocked her view of him.

There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were.

A stronger deterrent to infidelity even than love was the desire to maintain a stable household, a stress-free life.

Don't ever love anyone," her mother said, picking the papers up and sliding them into the bureau drawer she'd kept her ring in. "All you'll do is break your own heart.

There was the obvious answer--it was random, senseless, genetic, environmental--but she didn't like that one. She also knew she couldn't sign on to any system that said it has all happened for a reason. So she took a third path, the pragmatic one. It hadn't happened for a reason, but they would find something to glean from it anyway.

The fact that they were there, that everything they owned wasn't enough somehow, disturbed her, suggesting a bottomlessness to certain kinds of unhappiness. She

He was smarter than most, more sensitive. In that regard he was more prepared for the loneliness of senescence than she was. He'd been a stranger in the world for most of his life.

Sometimes he thought his real goal wasn't to teach them to write better essays but to get them to think more about what it meant to be human.

She wanted a man whose trunk was thick but whose bark was thin, who flowered beautifully, even if only for her.

It was time now to be smart–smart and strong. She wondered whether she'd ever have a chance to be foolish and weak.

He threw all his affection at them and hoped that some of it would stick, maybe even come back to him, though if it didn't he gave it anyway; he gave it more, even, because everyone had something that needed to come out.

...he had impressed her as a man delightfully open to suggestion, with an imagination large enough to find time, even in the depths of despair, for the important things in life, those accidents without which our existence was little more than a schedule of dry routines.

every day could bring the breaking of a new record, but the larger world would persist undisturbed. There was always news, even if little of it was newsworthy. Every pitch was different, every swing, and yet they all were variations on a familiar theme. The lines on the field, the fences around it, the neat geometry suggested that these, for a discrete but somehow infinite period, were the limits of the world.

The people who lived in this building had figured out something important about life, and she'd stumbled upon their secret. There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were. She imagined more places like this, hidden behind walls or stands of trees, places where people kept their secrets to themselves.

She wondered if she'd taken the first step on the road away from her dreams. What scared her was how easy it had been to do it.

Negative thoughts back you into a corner," her mother said to her, smiling, one afternoon after returning from a picnic with the baby in Flushing Meadow Park. "They multiply and surround you. Don't think of what you don't have. Try to focus on the simple pleasures.

For a moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, not just about Tom, but about her, and himself, and all of life, and she liked the way he saw things. She could spend her life tuning into the calming frequency of his thoughts.
He wasn't a stiff, and he wasn't a weakling either. What was the word for it? Sensitive was the only one that came to mind, amazing as that was to consider; he was a sensitive man. He soaked up whatever you gave him.

You want much from life, and life will give you much, but there are things it won't give you, and victory today is one of them. This will be one defeat; more will follow. Victories will follow too. You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. You are loved with your head down. You will be loved whether you finish or not.