Jonathan Tropper Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jonathan Tropper.
Famous Quotes By Jonathan Tropper
That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant. — Jonathan Tropper
It's hard to know where to start. Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts. All you can ever really know is that it's wrapped around you, sometimes a little tighter than you'd like.
But clearly there have been some mistakes. Bad ones. You can tell that just by looking at him. — Jonathan Tropper
You're just the sperm donor, Norm," he says, heading for the door. "That's all you were ever good for. Fucking sperm. — Jonathan Tropper
Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts. — Jonathan Tropper
Screenwriting you don't necessarily have to do the job of the costume designer and the prop master and the set designer. It's more just about finding the visuals and finding these characters through dialogue. — Jonathan Tropper
It wasn't that she didn't love me, I knew that she did, and that actually made it worse. If someone leaves you because they don't love you, it's a tough break, but as they say, life's a bitch, get a helmet. But if someone loves you and leaves you anyway, you enter a whole new realm of self-doubt and recrimination, what psychologists call the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me syndrome. — Jonathan Tropper
People brush past us on the street in endless waves, leaving somewhere, headed somewhere else, laughing, smoking, speaking into cell phones, completely oblivious to the holocaust of an entire world casually imploding in their midst. — Jonathan Tropper
When you're younger you just take it as a given that things will fall into place on their own. Relationships, family, careers, the whole deal. They might not come as you picture them, but they come in some form. You just never figure that they might not come at all. And then you hit thirty and ... shit! You suddenly realize that they're not necessarily coming and you panic. — Jonathan Tropper
I wake up like this, this sense that I've somehow been transported to an alternate universe where my life took a left instead of a right beacuse of some seeemingly insignificant yet cosmically crucial choice I've made, about a girl or a kiss or a date or a job or which Starbucks I went into ... something. — Jonathan Tropper
And even as she holds on to him, like she's drowning, she can feel the familiar anger returning, like an old song that you've heard so many times it's not even a song anymore, just a wasted pathway in your brain that you can never reclaim. — Jonathan Tropper
I blame Hollywood for skewing perspectives. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily ever-after is a forgone conclusion. — Jonathan Tropper
When I was sixteen, I wrote the first hundred or so pages of a novel about a piano that was haunted by the ghost of an evil blues musician. — Jonathan Tropper
It's an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. — Jonathan Tropper
If anything, love is just a starting point. Then life intrudes, along with the personal baggage you've spent years packing, and things get royally and irrevocably fucked up. You can get bitter or you can keep trying. Most people do some of each. — Jonathan Tropper
One day you just wake up and discover that you got old while you were sleeping. — Jonathan Tropper
I loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet's tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks. — Jonathan Tropper
It's sort of an organic process when you're adapting any book, not even just your own. You want to preserve the heart of the story and you want to preserve who the characters are, but film requires a lot of compression. — Jonathan Tropper
It's amazing how harmless the world can sometimes seem. — Jonathan Tropper
Nobody wants to rock their own life. But, on the other hand, when your life does get rocked, it affords you a certain level of emotional honesty. It liberates you to be who you really are. — Jonathan Tropper
You OK?" she says, raising her eyebrows. "You're teetering."
He nods and steadies himself against the wall. "Aren't we all," he says. — Jonathan Tropper
I want to explain everything to him, show him that it's really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is. — Jonathan Tropper
I could report the rest of the conversation, but it's just more of the same, two people whose love became toxic, lobbing regret grenades at each other. — Jonathan Tropper
He was right here and nowhere to be found. — Jonathan Tropper
The sky is fucking with me. It's one of those militantly perfect spring days, the kind that seems to be trying just a little too hard, the kind you want to smack in the face, and the sky is bluer than it has any right to be, really, an obnoxious, overbearing blue that implies that staying home is a crime against humanity. Like I've got anywhere to go. The neighborhood is alive with gardeners mowing lawns and trimming hedges, the mechanized hiss of twirling sprinklers and for those just joining us, it's a beautiful day and Hailey is dead and I have nothing to do, nowhere to be. — Jonathan Tropper
Oh, people will come, Ray," Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. "People will most definitely come. — Jonathan Tropper
You never know when you're going to die, but maybe something in you does, some cellular consciousness that's aware of the cosmic countdown and starts making plans, because on the last night of her life, Hailey surprised me by wearing a blood red dress, cut low and tight in all the right spots. It was almost as if she knew what was coming, knew that this would be our last night together, and she was determined to keep herself from fading too quickly into the washed-out colors of memory. I — Jonathan Tropper
As soon as he saw her face, he knew what it would look like when she ended it. — Jonathan Tropper
Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn't very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you'll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations. — Jonathan Tropper
Moments later, there was a loud, protracted crashing sound. "Motherfucker!" "What was that?" "I just backed through the garage door." "Jesus. You okay?" "I'm fine," she said. "The whole damn door came down. I'll just drive over it." "Drive carefully. — Jonathan Tropper
I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful. — Jonathan Tropper
I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have tried in vain, every day, to not think about you, and what could have been. What should have been. I would have tried to convince myself that there's no such thing as true love, except for the love you yourself make work, even though I know better ... The bottom line is I never had any business marrying anyone who wasn't you. — Jonathan Tropper
[T]here are some people out there who don't wait for what comes next. They decide what should come next and they go and make it happen. — Jonathan Tropper
You have to question the originality of your life when it can be captured perfectly in the lyrics of a rock song. — Jonathan Tropper
There is nothing sadder than sitting in a car and having absolutely nowhere to go. — Jonathan Tropper
The point is, people become possessive of their grief, almost proud of it. They want to believe it's like no one else's. But it is. It's exactly like everybody else's. Grief is like a shark. It's been around forever, and in that time there's been just about no evolution. You know why?" "Why?" "Because it's perfect just the way it is. — Jonathan Tropper
You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you're not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don't know anything about them at all. — Jonathan Tropper
The life you build feels like the entire world, and when it's suddenly gone, the world doesn't make sense for a while. Or, in his case, ever again. — Jonathan Tropper
Anger you have locked up in you, and that's healthy. I just think you could be a little more judicious — Jonathan Tropper
In high school, if you can find a girl who will kiss you and maybe let you touch her breasts and a guy who likes the same movies as you, your world is pretty much complete. — Jonathan Tropper
Good sex requires many different things, but in most cases, efficiency isn't one of them. - Judd Foxman — Jonathan Tropper
Jen was in turmoil; she was grappling with self-esteem issues and a failed attempt at anorexia. I was in the right place at the right time, and the gods were finally ready to cut me some slack. — Jonathan Tropper
At some point you lose sight of your actual parents; you just see a basketful of history and unresolved issues. — Jonathan Tropper
It's just hard to see people from your past when your present is so cataclysmically fucked. — Jonathan Tropper
You never have to change a book for budget. — Jonathan Tropper
When did being right become worthless, and being at fault irrelevant? — Jonathan Tropper
Silver is forty-four years old, if you can believe it, out of shape, and depressed - although he doesn't know if you call it depression when you have good reason to be; maybe then you're simply sad, or lonely, or just painfully aware, on a daily basis, of all the things you can never get back. — Jonathan Tropper
And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it. — Jonathan Tropper
Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost. — Jonathan Tropper
A lot can go wrong in twelve hours. — Jonathan Tropper
She got on a plane to see a client in California and somewhere over Colorado, the pilot somehow missed the sky. — Jonathan Tropper
I may not be old but I'm too old to have this much nothing — Jonathan Tropper
Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything. — Jonathan Tropper
I'm generally somebody who hopes for the best. It's not what one ought to do in my line of work [screenwriting], but it is what I do. — Jonathan Tropper
You get married to get an ally against your family. — Jonathan Tropper
Relationships don't come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending. — Jonathan Tropper
Loneliness doesn't exist on any single plane of consciousness. It's generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you're reminded of what this baby's carrying under the hood. — Jonathan Tropper
The cobbler's children go barefoot, — Jonathan Tropper
I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet. — Jonathan Tropper
Driving a Porsche is like fucking a model," he says, and he would know. "It will never feel as good as it looks. — Jonathan Tropper
Few things are more pathetic than an unemployed man with a business card.
P.15 — Jonathan Tropper
You want to move on, but to do that you have to let her go, and you don't want to let her go, so you don't move on. — Jonathan Tropper
I was sprawled out in my usual position on the couch, half asleep but entirely drunk, torturing myself by tearing memories out of my mind at random like matches from a book, striking them one at a time and drowsily setting myself on fire. — Jonathan Tropper
Our parents can continue to screw us up even after they die, and in this way, they're never really gone. — Jonathan Tropper
The reason wisdom is meant to be imparted is because you acquire it only after it's too late to apply to yourself. — Jonathan Tropper
And nothing can be resolved until each of you has come to appreciate the other's position — Jonathan Tropper
Life, for the most part, inevitably becomes routine, the random confluence of timing and fortune that configures its components all but forgotten. But every so often, I catch a glimpse of my life out of the corner of my eye, and am rendered breathless by it. — Jonathan Tropper
You're terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you. — Jonathan Tropper
She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over. — Jonathan Tropper
And beneath the chaos of the moment, Denise becomes aware of a painful truth about herself: she is never as deeply in love with a man as she is in the moment he leaves her. — Jonathan Tropper
It's funny, or tragic, really, how an ordinary act like helping someone with their homework could be the inadvertent trigger for almost a decade of silent suffering. — Jonathan Tropper
As far as rapprochements go, it's awkward and vague, but the advantage of being as emotionally inarticulate as we are is that it will do the trick. — Jonathan Tropper
The first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack. — Jonathan Tropper
Back (thank god for office accessorizing, the last playground of the reluctant adult). — Jonathan Tropper
Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you. — Jonathan Tropper
Adapting your own book is like performing open-heart surgery on your own child. — Jonathan Tropper
Arms stop me from crumpling like a rag doll. Sometimes you don't need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them. — Jonathan Tropper
Due to some mental hiccup I can't explain, when I think of God, I picture Hugh Hefner: a thin, angular man with a prominent chin in a maroon smoking jacket. — Jonathan Tropper
You remember the old Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote would run off a cliff and keep going, until he looked down and happened to notice that he was running on nothing more than air?"
"Yeah."
"Well," he said, "I always used to wonder what would have happened if he'd never looked down. Would the air have stayed solid under his feet until he reached the other side? I think we're all like that. We start heading out across this canyon, looking straight ahead at the thing that matters, but something, some fear or insecurity, makes us look down. And we see we're walking on air, and we panic, and turn around and scramble like hell to get back to solid ground. And if we just wouldn't look down, we could make it to the other side. The place where things matter. — Jonathan Tropper
The future just isn't what it used to be — Jonathan Tropper
The self-help books and websites haven't come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have officially ratified your personal tragedy. — Jonathan Tropper
In my family, we don't so much air our grievances as wallow in them. Anger and resentment are cumulative. — Jonathan Tropper
Then I'm telling it wrong." "Bad?" "Yes. Divorce shouldn't be friendly. It just makes everything that much more confusing, — Jonathan Tropper
We knew marriage could be difficult in the same way that we knew there were starving children in Africa. It was a tragic fact but worlds away from our reality. — Jonathan Tropper
I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, "Do you believe in God?"
"Not really," he said. "No."
"Then why do we come here?"
He sucked thoughfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said.
And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home. — Jonathan Tropper
I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones. — Jonathan Tropper
I want someone who will love me and touch me and understand me and let me take care of them, but beyond that, I don't know. — Jonathan Tropper
Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they're being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube - guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy melange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I'll make a real go of it this time. — Jonathan Tropper
This is probably as good a time as any to mention that I was holding a large birthday cake. — Jonathan Tropper
I occasionally experience the discomfort of people assuming my work is autobiographical. — Jonathan Tropper
Attractive women in the early stages of disrepair, fighting to keep age at bay with facials, compression undergarments, and aggressively fashionable skirts bought off the rack at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They run on treadmills, these women, work out with personal trainers and play tennis at the club, but still their hips widen, their legs thicken, their breasts sag. Genetics help some more than others, but they are all like melting ice cream bars, slowly sliding down the stick as they come apart. — Jonathan Tropper
Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people. — Jonathan Tropper
At this point in my life, I'm not looking for any happy endings. I'm just looking to get things started. — Jonathan Tropper
The only thing worse than not having your dream come true is having it come true for a little while. — Jonathan Tropper
I'm not the same person I was. I'm fucked up." I give her a sideways glance. "I am," she says. "You haven't even scratched the surface."
"I find that most people worth knowing are fucked up in some way or another. — Jonathan Tropper
She holds on to a rung of the ladder while I tread water a foot or so in front of her. After a few moments, my eyes have adjusted to that I can look into hers. I flash back to Horry and Wendy, looking at each other in this exact spot a few hours ago, this haunted pool that seems to pull dead and buried love to its surface. — Jonathan Tropper
You could fill an airlift to Africa with all the food generated by one dead Jew. — Jonathan Tropper
I haven't seen her in a while, haven't returned her calls or stopped thinking about her. — Jonathan Tropper
In my defense, I was young and there was an open bar. — Jonathan Tropper
If there's a perk to having such a fucked up father, it's that he's in no position to judge. — Jonathan Tropper