Tom Perrotta Quotes

Because it was just too creepy to consider the alternative: nothing changing at all, everything shrinking into the sad belated recognition that the best days had come and gone without her even realizing it. ~ Tom Perrotta

It was surprisingly crowded, a bunch of middle-aged people, mostly women, moving enthusiastically, if a bit awkwardly, to Prince's "Little Red Corvette," trying to find a way back to their younger, more limber selves. ~ Tom Perrotta

I've matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom. ~ Tom Perrotta

Things change all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn't do you that much good, apparently. ~ Tom Perrotta

We read fiction to satisfy a more basic need - to imagine our way into other lives, to explore characters and situations that tell us something new about the world, and maybe about ourselves, or to remind us of something important that we may have forgotten. ~ Tom Perrotta

It was like traveling back in time, meeting the person you used to be, and recognizing her as a friend. ~ Tom Perrotta

Some subjects mixed well with weed, but Chemistry wasn't one of them. ~ Tom Perrotta

He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he'd known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace. ~ Tom Perrotta

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while. ~ Tom Perrotta

Laurie herself was more focused on the years when her kids were little, when she felt so necessary and purposeful, a battery all charged up with love. Every day she used it up and every night it got miraculously replenished. Nothing had ever been as good as that. ~ Tom Perrotta

These days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection. ~ Tom Perrotta

Was it possible that they'd crossed without realizing it, each one rounding the corner of the aisle the other one had just vacated at exactly the same time? ~ Tom Perrotta

She took care of evyone with the same no-nonsense air of friendliness and good cheer that made her seem so paradoxically wholesome, as if she were convinced that being a slut and being a really nice person were just two things that naturally went together. ~ Tom Perrotta

Eve still marveled on a daily basis at the speed with which her own life had changed. A year ago, she'd been lost and flailing, and now she was found. She wanted to call it a miracle, but it was simpler than that, and a lot more ordinary; she'd met a kind and decent man who loved her. ~ Tom Perrotta

I would probably have to say that reading fiction - those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I've gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there's always another perspective. ~ Tom Perrotta

I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.' ~ Tom Perrotta

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. ~ Tom Perrotta

It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs. ~ Tom Perrotta

Kissing her just then felt perfectly normal and completely self-explanatory, the only possible course of action. ~ Tom Perrotta

It's like the human race has been programmed for misery. ~ Tom Perrotta

Next time she'd have to ask him to keep the light on while he did it, so she could watch his face. That was the best part of the whole thing as far as she was concerned, the way a guy's face contorted so violently and then relaxed, as if some terrible mystery had just been solved. ~ Tom Perrotta

A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result. ~ Tom Perrotta

If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst. ~ Tom Perrotta

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots. ~ Tom Perrotta

She was the kind of woman who always surprised you with the realization that she was just as lovely as you remembered, though it hardly seemed possible in her absence. ~ Tom Perrotta

Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything. ~ Tom Perrotta

When your words are futile, you're better off keeping them to yourself, or never even thinking them in the first place. ~ Tom Perrotta

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. ~ Tom Perrotta

No matter what she was doing-baking cookies, walking around the lake on a beautiful day, making love to her husband-she felt rushed and jittery, as if the last few grains of sand were at that very moment sliding through the narrow waist of an hourglass. Any unforeseen occurrence-road construction, an inexperienced cashier, a missing set of keys-could plunge her into a mood of frantic despair that could poison an entire day. ~ Tom Perrotta

WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE GUILTY REMNANT. WE HAVE TAKEN A VOW OF SILENCE. WE STAND BEFORE YOU AS LIVING REMINDERS OF GOD'S AWESOME POWER. HIS JUDGMENT IS UPON US. ~ Tom Perrotta

I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about him, but it's not gonna do much good, is it? You never smelled his hair after he just got out of the bath, or carried him from the car after he'd fallen asleep on the way home, or heard the way he laughed when someone tickled him. So you'll just have to take my word for it: He was a great kid and he made you glad to be alive. ~ Tom Perrotta

It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs. ~ Tom Perrotta

I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel. ~ Tom Perrotta

Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer - that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb. ~ Tom Perrotta

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control. ~ Tom Perrotta

Every night was a somber, adults-only slumber party - no giggles or whispers, just lots of coughing and farting and snoring and groaning, the sounds and smells of too many stressed-out of people packed into too small a place. ~ Tom Perrotta

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead. ~ Tom Perrotta

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college. ~ Tom Perrotta

A regimen of hardship and humiliation that at least offered you the dignity of feeling like your existence bore some sort of relationship to reality, that you were no longer engaged in a game of make-believe that would consume the rest of your ~ Tom Perrotta

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. (67) ~ Tom Perrotta

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not. ~ Tom Perrotta

It had expanded in a nice, welcoming way, becoming ever rounder and softer without losing its essential shapeliness ~ Tom Perrotta

Nora had been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them - not at all - but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos ... After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain. ~ Tom Perrotta

Something that had possibly caused the distance between us, but might also bring us back together. ~ Tom Perrotta

And right now he was feeling the weight of all those losses, and the weight of the years that were behind him, and the weight of the ones that were still ahead, however many there might be – three or four, twenty or thirty, maybe more. ~ Tom Perrotta

Blissfully unaware of the beautiful tradition they'd been chosen to uphold. ~ Tom Perrotta

I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time. ~ Tom Perrotta

She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who'd sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn't possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them. ~ Tom Perrotta

I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them. ~ Tom Perrotta

I think there have been a lot of writers who've been experimenting lately with really sprawling novels that will deal with a number of different characters and different points on the globe. I understand that as a method of getting at the global culture that we live in, and I understand writers who want to maybe juxtapose very different historical periods to make some larger points about how things have changed over time. I tend to like the sort of idea of the novel as a little village, and the novel as a microcosm, a smaller world standing in for a larger one. ~ Tom Perrotta

Ever since the development of the spine, the individual had become paramount, the group disregarded. Ghiselle was only following the downhill path of her species. ~ Tom Perrotta

That's why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories. ~ Tom Perrotta

I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta. ~ Lisa Cholodenko

Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures ... ~ Tom Perrotta

Safe from the Neighbors is a novel of unusual richness and depth, one that's as wise about the small shocks within a marriage as it is about the troubled history of Mississippi. Steve Yarbrough is a formidably talented novelist, shuttling between the past and present with a grace that feels effortless. ~ Tom Perrotta

Something had happened to him ove the past couple of years, something to do with being home with Aaron, sinking into the rhythm of a kid's day. The little tasks, the small pleasures. The repetition that goes beyond boredom and becomes a kind of peace. You do it long enough, and the adult world starts to drift away. You can't catch up with it, not even if you try. ~ Tom Perrotta

All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall. ~ Tom Perrotta

If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic. ~ Chris Bohjalian

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven. ~ Tom Perrotta

In the far corner of the yard, two squirrels raced up a tree trunk, their little feet scrabbling frantically on the bark. He couldn't tell if they were having a good time or trying to kill each other. ~ Tom Perrotta

She remained unreconciled to the loss of her electric toothbrush. She'd pined for it for weeks before realizing that it was more than the sensation of a clean mouth that she missed - it was her marriage, all those years of mindless domestic happiness, long, crowded days that culminated with her and Kevin standing side by side in front of the dual sinks, battery-operated wands buzzing in their hands, their mouths full of minty froth. ~ Tom Perrotta

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut. ~ Tom Perrotta

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore. ~ Tom Perrotta

NO SHOES? WE LOVE YOU! ~ Tom Perrotta

It was nothing really, just a passing shadow. And Eve had lived long enough to know that it was foolish to worry about a shadow, everybody had one, it was just the shape your body made when the sun came out. ~ Tom Perrotta

Your poor lungs." "We're not gonna live long enough to get cancer. The Bible says there's just seven years of Tribulation after the Rapture. ~ Tom Perrotta

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them. ~ Tom Perrotta

She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good. ~ Tom Perrotta

The cause of what they called the "Sudden Departure" remained unknown, ~ Tom Perrotta

We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared. ~ Tom Perrotta

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence. ~ Tom Perrotta

My wife and I left New York when she got pregnant - we just thought it would be really hard to stay in the city. ~ Tom Perrotta

Just a dark shape against an even darker background. ~ Tom Perrotta

... Because that's what privilege is-the license to treat other people like shit while still getting to believe that you're a good person. ~ Tom Perrotta

To this day, she's still sad. Because there's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I'm just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn't hurt me at all. ~ Tom Perrotta

As if adult males were completely self-sufficient beings, as if a penis and a five o'clock shadow were all they would ever need to get by. ~ Tom Perrotta

And later, of course, she got too busy. She asks Royce if he heard anything from Grace, ever. "No. No. Why should I?" "I just thought." "No." "I thought you might have looked her up later on." "Not a good idea." She has disappointed him. Prying. Trying to get at some spot of live regret right under the ribs. A woman. ~ Tom Perrotta

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us. ~ Tom Perrotta

They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself. ~ Tom Perrotta

I'm only human, she told herself. There's not enough room in my heart for everyone. ~ Tom Perrotta

Unburdening, she'd told Laurie about a vision she'd had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she'd tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family's tree, checking items off a list. He wasn't wearing a red suit - it was more like a blue bus driver's uniform - but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event - the Night Meg Saw Santa. ~ Tom Perrotta

If we'd been on speaking terms, I might've told her that I'd come to think of sex as this long dark tunnel that turns friends into strangers, strangers into friends. ~ Tom Perrotta

There was no dignified way to answer a question about your underwear. ~ Tom Perrotta

The world she'd been raised to live in no longer existed. ~ Tom Perrotta

He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday
that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body. ~ Tom Perrotta

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love. ~ Tom Perrotta

The peace and justice movement has to expand and not run away from the plight of gang members. ~ Tom Hayden

I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitched - the scene, the line, the word - at the exact point where the audience has just the right amount of information. It's like Occam's razor. ~ Tom Stoppard

You can act like a policeman or a soldier, but not both. ~ Tom Clancy

Being a person is respect, because you're not a cat or a dog or a bunch of tulips, you're a human person and humanness isn't like something there can be different amounts of, it's maxed out from the start, total respect every time - kill one, kill a trainload, you're dissing the transcendental is all. ~ Tom Stoppard

There's something that's very human about 'Warriorv that brings you out. You're watching the movie and, yeah, there's fighting - there's a tournament at the end of the movie - but it takes a long time to get to know these people. ~ Tom Hardy

Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated. ~ Tom G. Palmer

Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with the syntax. ~ Tom Robbins

I think I found that when I was doing a show on a regular basis and just acting constantly, that was when I was at my happiest. ~ Tom Hopper

Jon had seen the lie immediately for what it was: diplomacy. He had a feeling that, given the chance, Tom would hold him close every night. Instead, the first mate chose to distance himself so as not to interfere with the captain's affection for Jon. A sacrifice. ~ Bey Deckard

Your petal from the salty rose ~ Tom Robbins

Pause, breathe, and lift, undefined, what is possible. Let the feeling of celebration come upon you, even if you do not comprehend cerebral reasons to justify it. For from that center, it will generate its own, able to carry you, until the original ones manifest, from that very portal you chose to fashion, unrestricted. ~ Tom Althouse

Don't look back, because someone might be gaining on you. ~ Tom Waits

My whole life long I have done nothing but interpret my dreams of ultimate masculinity, and draw them. ~ Tom Of Finland

SEPTIMUS: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire
LADY CROOM: Oh ... !
SEPTIMUS:
I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face.
(Pause.)
LADY CROOM: I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?
SEPTIMUS: She does.
LADY CROOM: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve. ~ Tom Stoppard