Best James Frey Quotes & Sayings

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag full of mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can. — James Frey

For the worst things of our lives, it is sometimes the best way, to never speak of them again. — James Frey

[...]that's how it works most of the time; we say the things that matter to people when it's already too late. — James Frey

Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains. — James Frey

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. — James Frey

he sits and waits and hopes that at some — James Frey

Twenty-nine cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on law enforcement. Fifteen cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on sewage collection and treatment. Eight cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on road maintenance. One-point-five cents of every tax dollar collected is spent on education. — James Frey

I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend. — James Frey

Did you hurt yourself? Sort of. Why'd you do that? I didn't do it on purpose. It's just the cost of doing business. Her Grandmother smiles and she gently touches my face with her free hand. I hope that's a business you're leaving, James. I smile, enjoy the warmth of her hand. We'll see. She nods. Her eyes and her hand understand my words, have seen and felt this type of damage before. There is no judgment and no condescension. Just hope. — James Frey

Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. — James Frey

We ask for progress, not perfection. Just do your best. — James Frey

I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me. — James Frey

I go to my Room and I drink and I smoke some cigarettes and I think about her. I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me. — James Frey

When something is staring you in the face in your life and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within your heart only a fool doesn't believe it to be true. — James Frey

I want to see you tomorrow, but I don't know what this thing with my parents is going to be like. When you go to lunch, sit so you can see into the Men's section. If my back is turned, I can't meet you. If I'm facing you, I can meet you and the number of plates on my tray is the time I'll be here.
What if you can't come till midnight?
Then I'm going to look like a fucking idiot. — James Frey

Hate me if you must, but know that I will never hate you. — James Frey

Fiction writers come up with some interesting metaphors when speaking of plot. Some say the plot is the highway and the characters are the automobiles. Others talk about stories that are "plot-driven," as if the plot were neither the highway nor the automobile, but the chauffeur. Others seem to have plot phobia and say they never plot. Still others turn up their noses at the very notion, as if there's something artificial, fraudulent, contrived. — James N. Frey

Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it.
Cry.
Cry.
Cry. — James Frey

Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world. — James Frey

I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography. — James Frey

Unlike most of the other crayons, Black has hardly been used. People probably avoid Black because it isn't considered a happy color [ ... ] I, however, like Black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience [ ... ] I like Black, goddamnit, and I am going to give it its due. — James Frey

In 1935, the Los Angeles Police Department, via mayoral directive, sends a battalion of police officers to the Nevada border to stop hitchhikers, primarily Mexican nationals, from entering the state of California. They return after four days and report that they were unable to stem the flow of immigration. — James Frey

The best stories are universal stories that have been told for as long as humanity has existed it's just figuring out new ways to do it, with language, with structure. And so I'm always trying to do that. — James Frey

Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says.
Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it. — James Frey

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be. — James Frey

To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict. — James N. Frey

The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone. — James Frey

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

There is one thing. One thing that haunts me from page one to page twenty-two. I have never spoken of it. I have never told another person — James Frey

They say confront the difficult while it is easy, accomplish the great one step at a time. They say let things come and let things go and live without possession and live without expectation. — James Frey

I always felt I had a hole in my heart, this big black hole that made me feel lonely and empty and worthless. I tried to fill it, everybody tries in some way, and it just got bigger and bigger. — James Frey

I don't believe she's in Heaven and I don't believe she's in a better place. She's dead and when we're dead, we're gone. There are no blinding lights, there is no happy music, there are no Angels waiting to greet us. — James Frey

There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live. — James Frey

I know people might think I'm strong or tough, but I'm really not. I'm a sheep in wolf's clothing. — James Frey

And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind. — James Frey

Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got. — James N. Frey