Alissa Nutting Quotes & Sayings

Luckily I'm on prescription drugs that prevent me from worrying about anything too much. — Alissa Nutting

There was something repulsive (and revealing) about talking on a cell phone while handling garbage. Why did anyone pretend human relationships had value? — Alissa Nutting

With surgical insight, Inside Madeline delves into the most complex female territory imaginable and dissects until every honest bone is revealed. Bomer's prose doesn't flinch, doesn't filter-the bravery of these stories left me breathless. — Alissa Nutting

A lot of people who know about the view from the tip-top of a bridge or tall building are dead, because they climbed up in order to jump off. But sometimes I wonder if they truly planned on jumping or if the view was just so beautiful that they realized what a wide big net beauty is, and then wanted so badly to be caught by it. — Alissa Nutting

Like most pronounced flaws, it did not live in isolation. — Alissa Nutting

My poor family. I try to protect them from my work. My parents are very religious, and my brother and sister are very normal. We have an understanding, I think, that what I do isn't quite down their alley. — Alissa Nutting

You want to do all of these preventative things to make sure you always look as young as possible, you don't want to look your age. Looking young and attractive matters, even more than the type of person you are, even more than the actions you commit. — Alissa Nutting

Janet stood and began a wide navigation of turning one hundred and eighty degrees to enter her vehicle, her slow toddles calling to mind a sleepwalking badger. Her weak forearms often came alive to shoo away invisible hindrances, pawing the air with disgruntled choler. Before beginning the climb up the van's two carpeted steps, the most athletic portion of her adieu, she unceremoniously dropped her cigarette butt to the ground without extinguishing it. I got the feeling she hoped it might roll beneath the vehicle's gas tank and give her a true Viking burial. — Alissa Nutting

You know how some people are unlucky in love? I was always unlucky in exercise. I'd get into a relationship with a workout program or guru, we'd go steady for a few intense months, and then we'd have a really ugly breakup. — Alissa Nutting

Exercise will never be my lover. Or even my friend. For me, a workout is more like an annoying coworker I have to see a few times a week. — Alissa Nutting

I won't tell," he said, his arms holding my waist with amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he'd become and all the things he'd try with me for the very first time. I'd be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he'd have afterwards would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naivety would be subtracted from my experience to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible. — Alissa Nutting

I think that in our culture there is this message to males that any time you can have sex with an attractive female, you should do it. But for females you always have to guard yourself against it, sort of keep sex at bay. You don't want to get a reputation, especially when you are under age. — Alissa Nutting

My writing circle isn't too full of people who fall into the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Tuesdays With Morrie" category. — Alissa Nutting

Despite being told he could step down, Jack stayed for a moment,crying, then looked over at me. It wasn't at all the look of hatred I'd expected. Instead it was a look of mutual knowledge, Jack conveying to me his new understanding that the world could be a terrible place. His eyes said that no one at all was looking out for him or able to fix this essential flaw in life's fabric; my eyes stared back and told him that he was right. — Alissa Nutting

I was like a turd inside someone who'd accidentally swallowed an engagement ring: I was nothing, yet I carried something uniquely special. — Alissa Nutting

Las Vegas is incredible. Either you love it or you're a classy person with morals. I fall into the former category. It's definitely bled into my writing. — Alissa Nutting

The screams echoing through Janet's class were hard to bear. She was attempting a lecture on the Treaty of Paris while Mrs. Pachenko walked between the rows of desks insisting upon calm, raising a finger to her lips and whispering to individual students to please sit all the way down in their desks. In the back of the of the room, several kids were cheering as one of them, a young man whose shirt bore a flaming skull, stood hunched atop his desk like a motocross biker, sliding it forward in small hops. Students appear enthusiastic and are communicating well together, I wrote on the evaluation form. — Alissa Nutting

I'm a big people pleaser; I had a very awkward adolescence. Part of me is still that person who wants everyone to like me. — Alissa Nutting

If you're a beautiful Caucasian woman, and you commit a heinous crime, it's like people don't want to acknowledge the reality of your actions. — Alissa Nutting

It was just such a complete shock to turn on the news one day and see someone that you know, someone you have passed in the halls of your high school. It got me thinking, 'Well, what are some novels that are about female sexual psychopaths? I really didn't have many references for that, and I felt like that was a void in transgressive literature that I wanted to fill.' — Alissa Nutting

I don't consider myself attractive. I'm an academic, and in academia, people will write you off if you look younger. — Alissa Nutting

Keeping a diary is advanced-level living. I spend way too much time trying not to curl up in the corner like a giant fetus & weep to keep a diary. — Alissa Nutting

His eyes took in the details of my body with a conflicted gaze that I knew well: even having seen all the facts of the case, he still wanted me. He wanted me despite knowing what that meant about him. — Alissa Nutting

...occasionally some of the mothers did see fit to bring their young children along to practice the valuable life skill of standing on the side of the road with indignation. — Alissa Nutting

I think humor is like a shield that lets you get as close to the sad sad flame as possible - far closer, oftentimes, than drama. — Alissa Nutting

During my MFA, I was lucky to be surrounded by a really supportive group of peers. And now I get feedback pretty exclusively from freaks only. — Alissa Nutting

I found that sometimes it was a relief to do something unattractive in private, to confirm that I'm deeply flawed when so many others imagine me to be perfect. People are often startled by my handwriting; because I'm pretty, they assume everything I do is pretty. It's odd to them that I write like I have a hook for an arm, just as Ford would be startled to learn I have a hook for a heart. — Alissa Nutting

I've seen men in $5,000 suits urinate in public fountains here. Las Vegas is the best place on earth. — Alissa Nutting

It's a challenge of to write a narrator who is doing something that is really unlikeable and morally questionable. A lot of times, you read a book because you like the character, you are cheering for the character; you want the best for the character. — Alissa Nutting

That erasure was the gift I gave myself. — Alissa Nutting

Her breasts have a soft expanding look about them, like rising bread. — Alissa Nutting

Do you know what broccoli is like to your body? It is like a hundred-dollar bill. When you eat it, you are paying yourself with health. Do you know what a cookie is like? It is Monopoly money! You're giving your body fraudulent currency. — Alissa Nutting

How can I wear a leather suit that does not carry the stains of wine and blood?" asks CT, and Gustav does not answer; of course it was rhetorical — Alissa Nutting

I really want readers to put themselves into the shoes of each character. So the opening lines are an orienting technique: this is where you are, this is who you are. Go. — Alissa Nutting

I take my old seat by the window and start rapidly boozing. The lights change colors in ways that suggest I'm going too fast, and that is the speed I want to go. — Alissa Nutting

I've worked hard on my doctorate, and I want to be acknowledged for that. But I also wanted to comment on this message that women get that the most important thing they can do is police their appearance. — Alissa Nutting

I think what tends to embarrass me most is how much I struggle at the little things that seem to come so easily to most people, mainly involving routine and self-care. It's hard for me to do things like cook a meal, not be in a constant apocalyptically late rush everywhere I go, to put something back when I'm finished with it. I seem to be hardwired for chaos and disorganization. — Alissa Nutting

My attorney rubbed his hand across his mustache and the corners of his lips several times, as though the allegation was a piece of cake he'd just eaten that had deposited crumbs all over his mouth. — Alissa Nutting