Tom Perrotta Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Tom Perrotta.
Famous Quotes By Tom Perrotta
Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything. — 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
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
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
I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle. — 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
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
Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us. — 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
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
There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. (67) — Tom Perrotta
You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption. — Tom Perrotta
No, it's just like when you're dead and you try to remember being alive, it'll be like thinking of winter on the hottest day of the year. You'll know it's true, but you won't really believe it. — Tom Perrotta
I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences. — Tom Perrotta
Oddly emphatic, as if she'd been waiting all day for a chance to discuss the weather. — 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
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
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
The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel. — Tom Perrotta
She wasn't a tragic widow, after all, just another woman betrayed by a selfish man. It was a smaller, more familiar role, and a lot easier to play. — 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
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
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
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
It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis. — 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
You talk to them. And look at their faces. Cows have very expressive faces.
I knew her well enough at that point not to be surprised by this. The first few months we'd worked together, I'd found her distant and intimidating, not just because she was Professor Preston's girlfriend, but also because she'd cultivated a very adult reserve that made her seem years older than the rest of us. She was all business at our editorial-board meetings, holding herself conspicuously aloof from the atmosphere of manic jocularity that dominated the proceedings. The more time we spent together, though, the more I'd come to realize that her reserve was rooted as much in shyness as in confidence, and that her quiet sophistication masked a powerful streak of girlish sincerity. — Tom Perrotta
She felt strong and blissfully empty gliding through the crisp November air, enjoying the intermittent warmth of the sun as it filtered down through the overhanging trees, which were mostly stripped of their foliage. It was that trashy, post-Halloween part of the fall, yellow and orange leaves littering the ground — Tom Perrotta
Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while. — 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
Today was the dance contest, the one where Squidward takes over Spongebob's body ... During the competition, Squidward gets a cramp and Spongebob's body ends up writhing on the floor in agony. The audience thinks this is pretty cool and gives him First Prize. Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon? — Tom Perrotta
I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years. — 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
They were good listeners, worldly yet easily shocked, hungry for details, curious and nonjudgmental at the same time, always happy to give advice, but only if it was requested. — 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
We don't smoke for enjoyment. We smoke to proclaim our faith. — Tom Perrotta
My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life. — Tom Perrotta
Something that had possibly caused the distance between us, but might also bring us back together. — 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
We're agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don't know if there's a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don't. — Tom Perrotta
I've matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom. — Tom Perrotta
Done properly," she said, "cunnilingus and fellatio should be more pleasant, and a lot cleaner, than kissing a toilet seat. I hope that answers your question. — Tom Perrotta
Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish. — 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
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
NO SHOES? WE LOVE YOU! — Tom Perrotta
Sharon had moved to Springdale in November of our senior year. She just appeared out of nowhere in four of my classes ... I couldn't stop staring at her. I had this weird feeling she was going to be important. — 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
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
Except for a small strip of shin that poked out from between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants, his legs were purely theoretical. — 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
On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date
not that she was going on a lot of dates these days
let alone to work. — 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
After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they'd actually made some sort of choice. — 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
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 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
He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling. — Tom Perrotta
Actually, he hadn't just complained; she'd come home from school one afternoon and found him stabbing his paperback edition with a steak knife, the tip of the blade penetrating the cover and sinking far enough down into the early chapters that he sometimes had trouble pulling it out. When she asked him what he was doing, he explained in a calm and serious voice that he was trying to kill the book before it killed him. — Tom Perrotta
The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this." — Tom Perrotta
I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.' — Tom Perrotta
I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action. — 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
Just a dark shape against an even darker background. — Tom Perrotta
Found him stabbing his paperback edition with a steak knife, the tip of the blade penetrating the cover and sinking far enough down into the early chapters — 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
As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama. — 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
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
The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years. — Tom Perrotta
Blissfully unaware of the beautiful tradition they'd been chosen to uphold. — Tom Perrotta
It's a bad dream: my English teacher is standing naked at the foot of this slightly lumpy bed, clutching a pair of not-quite-white underpants in his hand, studying me with this creepy look on his face, the one he gets when he's reading aloud in class and wants us to think he's moved by the passage. — Tom Perrotta
The world she'd been raised to live in no longer existed. — 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
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
Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good. — 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
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
Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault. (341) — Tom Perrotta
It's like the human race has been programmed for misery. — Tom Perrotta
It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs. — Tom Perrotta
I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance. — 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
It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs. — Tom Perrotta
Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another? — Tom Perrotta
What a beautiful bird, they kept telling one another, which was a weird thing to say about a dead thing without a head. — 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
These days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection. — Tom Perrotta
There was no dignified way to answer a question about your underwear. — Tom Perrotta
It had expanded in a nice, welcoming way, becoming ever rounder and softer without losing its essential shapeliness — Tom Perrotta
It's a matter of dignity," the Chief explained. "At a certain point, that's all you have left. — Tom Perrotta
I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade. — Tom Perrotta
Memory has a way of distorting the past, of making certain events seem larger and more significant in retrospect than they ever could have been at the time they occured. — Tom Perrotta
He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood. — Tom Perrotta
these leftover memories — Tom Perrotta
From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise. — Tom Perrotta