Tommy Wallach Quotes & Sayings

Do you think it's better to fail at something worthwhile, or to succeed at something meaningless? — Tommy Wallach

Young people feel things so deeply, don't they?' she said quietly, almost to herself. 'Everything's happening for the first time. — Tommy Wallach

Exactly. The dots guy. I've always thought getting older was a bit like looking at those paintings. You're born, and that's when you're standing right up next to the canvas. Nothing makes any sense. There's just a lot of light and color. But as you get older, you begin to back away, and that's when the image starts to cohere. All those little spots of color turn into flowers, or people, or dogs. You gain perspective. — Tommy Wallach

On the other side of the rock, some words were carved: AND GOD SAW THAT THE WICKEDNESS OF MAN WAS GREAT IN THE EARTH — Tommy Wallach

Why is it that the bad shit in our lives always seems to take up so much more mental space than the good stuff? I wrote. Is that part of being a person, or just part of being me?

I think about that question all the time.

Do you have an answer?

I don't think that questions like that have answers. An optimistic person would probably say that the bad things stick out because they're not as common as the good things.

Are you an optimistic person?

No. — Tommy Wallach

Was life too short? Of course- there was never enough time to do all the things you wanted to do. And of course not- if it were any longer, you'd appreciate it even less than you already did.

Was it better to live primarily for the good of yourself, or for the good of others? For the good of yourself, of course- it was madness to take responsibility for other people's happiness. And for others, of course- selfishness was just another way to isolate yourself, when everyone knew that true happiness was all about friendship and love. — Tommy Wallach

He was one of those guys who got mystical and hazy when he was high, and his conversation with the pizza place was one for the ages: "Do we want pepperoni? Oh, man, I don't even know. Hold on. Guys, do we want pepperoni? No, we don't pepperoni, even though I have no idea why, because pepperoni is delicious. Actually, I'm going to ask one more time. Guys, do we really not want pepperoni? No? Man, that's CRAZY — Tommy Wallach

My mom told me once that she wouldn't be a kid again for a million bucks. She said things hurt more when you don't have any perspective on pain.

That's true.

But doesn't everyone want to be young and hot forever?

They only think they want it, Parker. But nobody really wants anything forever. Just for longer than they get it. — Tommy Wallach

In my opinion, the best time to be alive is always right now. People are aways whining about how they were born in the wrong century, but they really haven't thought things through. They picture the old castle they wish they could live in, but they don't think about the drafts in the winter or the pitch darkness at night, or all the spiders and the lice. They can't imagine the everyday pain of a life without movies or recorded music or... or... Interet videos about cats. And don't even get me started on women who idealize the past. Do you have any idea what it was like to be a woman even a hundred years ago? Horrible! And a hundred years before that, the situation practically defies description. We might as well have been slaves. Trussed up in hoop skirts and corsets, married off like racehorses. Good riddance to history, I say! — Tommy Wallach

Life isn't sugarcoated. Why should coffee be? — Tommy Wallach

You don't wanna go out of this world with regrets. If there's some-
thing you want to do, you do it. You take this life by the balls and you tell it that you existed. — Tommy Wallach

They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he'd soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold. — Tommy Wallach

The popular shall become unpopular. The freak shall inherit the Earth. — Tommy Wallach

As a little kid, Peter had figured that once you reached a certain age, somebody just handed you all the knowledge you'd need in order to be an adult. But it turned out that wasn't how it worked. — Tommy Wallach

Do you think it is better to fail at something worthwhile, or succeed at something meaningless — Tommy Wallach

He thought he would choke to death on it, on the harsh truth he'd been trying to ignore his entire life: that no matter how bad he wanted it or how he hard he tried to get it, he would never be worthy of anyone's love. — Tommy Wallach

Why had he assumed time was some sort of infinite resource? Now the hourglass had busted open, and what he'd always assumed was just a bunch of sand turned out to be a million tiny diamonds. — Tommy Wallach

I think that kids have a knack for detecting happiness, but they lose it as they get older. They have to. Otherwise they'd notice how unhappy everybody else is, and they'd never be able to be happy themselves. — Tommy Wallach

Back on the beach, everyone was tearing off their costumes piece by piece. It was like some kind of crazy dream, the sight of all those people emerging from their disguises, shedding the fake muscles and plastic armor, the fairy wings and angel wings, and devils horns, all of it piled up like a mass grave for make-believe. — Tommy Wallach

Today was just another shit day in a life that sometimes felt like a factory specializing in the construction of shit days. — Tommy Wallach

Life would take everything from you eventually. So who would be so stupid to leave someone they loved by choice? — Tommy Wallach

She didn't look back, but she did break her stride for half a second, which was really the most you could hope for with a girl like that. — Tommy Wallach

She'd prepared herself for any amount of awkwardness or anger, but no for a hug that was probably the longest she'd ever received from a boy, one of those hugs that made it clear how much the person hugging you was in need of a hug, or believed YOU to be in need of a hug. — Tommy Wallach

People always said that photography is an attempt to capture something fleeting.
And suddenly everything is fleeting.
It's like Ardor is this special tone of light we've never had before, and it's shining down and infusinf every single object and person on the planet.
I just want to document that light, before it's gone.
-Eliza — Tommy Wallach

He was the kind of guy who had a unique facial expression dedicated to thinking. — Tommy Wallach

Then I'll just tell you that it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Blame is just a way to keep score, and adults don't play games like that. — Tommy Wallach

The best books, they don't talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you'd always thought about, but you didn't think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you're a little bit less alone in the world. You're part of this cosmic community of people who've thought about this thing, whatever it happens to be. — Tommy Wallach

When change loses its magic, then there really isn't anything left to live for. — Tommy Wallach

It occurred to Anita that hatred and dislike and even indifference were all luxuries, born of the mistaken belief that anything could last forever. — Tommy Wallach

Instead of a few months, the doctors gave him a year. That was how you could be lucky without being lucky. That was how you could be a winner and still lose. — Tommy Wallach

It was incredible, the way that people kept on going, whether they were dying of pancreatic cancer or drug addiction or the apocalypse itself. — Tommy Wallach

She believed photography to be the greatest of all art forms because it was simultaneously junk food and gourmet cuisine, because you could snap dozens of pictures in a couple of hours, then spend dozens of hours perfecting just a couple of them. — Tommy Wallach

Love is the exception to the law of diminishing returns. — Tommy Wallach

Fiction described reality better than non-fiction. — Tommy Wallach

Andy was speechless. He'd forgotten that there was actually another person in the room- someone with her own needs and desires and shit to freak out about. But it was funny, or better than funny, that sometimes two people could be feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time. — Tommy Wallach

This is the twenty-first century. The oceans are rising. Mad dictators have access to nuclear weapons. Corporatism and the dumbing down of the media have destroyed the very foundations of democracy. Anyone who isn't afraid is a moron." There — Tommy Wallach

And there in the darkness of the hotel room, scarcely more than twenty-four hours before the maybe end of the world, the three of them managed to laugh together. It turned out that no amount of terror could stop the great human need to connect. Or maybe, Anita thought, terror was actually at the heart of that need. After all, every life ended in an apocalypse, in one way or another. — Tommy Wallach

She realized she was smiling so broadly and sincerely that it embarrassed her. But she couldn't make the smile go away. She was just glad no one could see inside her, because her heart suddenly felt so heavy,m only heavy in a good way. And then she noticed the knowing expression on Peter's face, and it seemed like maybe he WAS seeing inside her after all. She pushed his head away so that he couldn't look at her. — Tommy Wallach

Peter put his arm around her waist and pulled her tight to his side. Eliza had already noticed that he did this whenever he was about to disagree wit her; it was yet another manifestation of his just-shy-of-ridiculous tenderness. — Tommy Wallach

The end of the world revealed the futility of all commemorative plaques. — Tommy Wallach

Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy.
















0 — Tommy Wallach

She looked up toward the sky, toward the implacable sparkle of good old Ardor, and saw that the two of them - she and the asteroid - were caught up I a battle of wills. In that moment, she stopped being afraid of it, even dared it to come, because she knew thre was mo way it could crave death as much as she craved life. — Tommy Wallach

Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love. — Tommy Wallach

Karass: A group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident — Tommy Wallach

There's a word in Portuguese that my dad wrote about in one of his books: saudade.
It's the sadness you feel for something that isn't gone yet, but will be. The sadness of lost causes. The sadness of being alive. — Tommy Wallach

Just another little piece of utterly irrelevant history, aspiring to permanence, doomed to oblivion. — Tommy Wallach

She was miserable because she kept hoping things would change. If she could eradicate the hope, she could eradicate the sadness. — Tommy Wallach

(the difference between coldness and coolness was, after all, simply a matter of degree). — Tommy Wallach

Why does anyone fall in love with anyone? I don't believe we each have some single special person waiting for us out there, if that's what you're getting at. I've been in love too many times over the years to buy into that old canard. It's more a question of timing you know? As if we all have these elaborate locks inside our hearts that are constantly changing shape, and every once in a while, someone happens along with the perfect key. Love is nothing more than a fortuitous collision of circumstances. And then you discover you've ended up spending fifty years with someone. — Tommy Wallach

People don't like getting older, but they do like changing. Staying the same is a kind of death. — Tommy Wallach

You didn't win the game of life by losing the least. That would be one of those-what were they called again?-Pyrrhic victories. Real winning was having the most to lose, even if it meant you might lose it all. Even though it meant you would lose it all, sooner or later. — Tommy Wallach

Paris? People always say Paris is the shit. "Yes, I've never understood the American obsession with that city. The food is actually quite terrible on the whole, and the people can be rather awful if you don't speak the language. — Tommy Wallach

the fundamental rule of life: Things were never so bad that they couldn't get worse. — Tommy Wallach

Fear swept in to fill the silence. Fear of disappearing, of the dark, of the unknown. Fear or being somewhere without this love to define him. 'Don't stop talking,' he tried to say. — Tommy Wallach