Matthew Thomas Quotes & Sayings

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

For now, while he breathed and moved, while he felt and thought, there was still, between this moment and the one of his dying, the interval allotted to him, and there was so much to live for in it . . . — Matthew Thomas

He wanted, one day, to be a person who went out of his way to find out what made other people happy. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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

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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

She saw that he couldn't live in a way other than the one he thought was right, and when he saw what the right thing was, like now, he cared about it as if it were the only thing that mattered. — Matthew Thomas

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

You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. — Matthew Thomas

Sometimes, she thought, life makes you grow up early. And some people never grow up at all. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

Sometimes--as it was happening now--the music on the radio matched the rhythm of the bridge. The cables climbed toward the second arch, and she felt herself in the uncanny presence of beauty. Nothing else in her day stirred her to the contemplation of abstract ideas. The bridge was making an argument for its own soundness as she drove over it. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

...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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

The world of adults seemed to budget for the carelessness of children. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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

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

When life seems too cruel, and there seems too little love in it. When you feel you have failed. When you don't know what the point is. When you cannot go on. I want you to draw strength from me then. I want you to remember how much I cherished you, how I lived for you. When the world seems full of giants who dwarf you, when it feels like a struggle just to keep your head up, I want you to remember there is more to live for than mere achievement. It is worth something to be a good man. It cannot be worth nothing to do the right thing. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

So much of life was the peeling away of illusions. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

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 — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas

The kids who thought of snappy things on the spot never had to worry about being fat or smart or pussies. You had to have a little meanness in you to do it. You had to be willing to embarrass other people sometimes. — Matthew Thomas

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. — Matthew Thomas