Perrotta Quotes & Sayings

Unburdening, she'd told Laurie about a vision she'd had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she'd tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family's tree, checking items off a list. He wasn't wearing a red suit - it was more like a blue bus driver's uniform - but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event - the Night Meg Saw Santa. — Tom Perrotta

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut. — 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

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

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

To this day, she's still sad. Because there's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I'm just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn't hurt me at all. — 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

We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared. — Tom Perrotta

The cause of what they called the "Sudden Departure" remained unknown, — 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

If we'd been on speaking terms, I might've told her that I'd come to think of sex as this long dark tunnel that turns friends into strangers, strangers into friends. — Tom Perrotta

She remained unreconciled to the loss of her electric toothbrush. She'd pined for it for weeks before realizing that it was more than the sensation of a clean mouth that she missed - it was her marriage, all those years of mindless domestic happiness, long, crowded days that culminated with her and Kevin standing side by side in front of the dual sinks, battery-operated wands buzzing in their hands, their mouths full of minty froth. — 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

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 would probably have to say that reading fiction - those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I've gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there's always another perspective. — 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

I was a garbage man in New Jersey in summers during college at Yale. Everybody else got to go to Switzerland and I got to go to the dump. — Tom Perrotta

Kissing her just then felt perfectly normal and completely self-explanatory, the only possible course of action. — 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

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while. — Tom Perrotta

A girl from his English class who'd overdosed on sleeping pills after learning of the disappearance of her identical twin. — Tom Perrotta

And when Aaron called out for him just then, right on time, there was something beautiful about that, too, the way a little kid needed you for everything and wasn't afraid to say so. — 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

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

Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures ... — 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

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

Some subjects mixed well with weed, but Chemistry wasn't one of them. — 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

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

these leftover memories — Tom Perrotta

I'm only human, she told herself. There's not enough room in my heart for everyone. — Tom Perrotta

I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta. — Lisa Cholodenko

Something that had possibly caused the distance between us, but might also bring us back together. — Tom Perrotta

I think there have been a lot of writers who've been experimenting lately with really sprawling novels that will deal with a number of different characters and different points on the globe. I understand that as a method of getting at the global culture that we live in, and I understand writers who want to maybe juxtapose very different historical periods to make some larger points about how things have changed over time. I tend to like the sort of idea of the novel as a little village, and the novel as a microcosm, a smaller world standing in for a larger one. — Tom Perrotta

We don't smoke for enjoyment. We smoke to proclaim our faith. — 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

These days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection. — 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

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

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

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 have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven. — 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

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life. — 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

I've matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom. — Tom Perrotta

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture. — 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

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

Travel plucks us out of the worn routines of our lives and plops us down into a new culture, language, or city, and lets us figure life out. It strips the excess away and melts us down to our core. It teaches us that stuff doesn't make us happy - only experiences and being present do that. — Fred 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

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college. — 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

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

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

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

It had expanded in a nice, welcoming way, becoming ever rounder and softer without losing its essential shapeliness — Tom Perrotta

It's like the Stone Age over there, just sand and rubble and IEDs. — 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

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

It was like traveling back in time, meeting the person you used to be, and recognizing her as a friend. — 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

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

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

It was a good day for a parade, sunny and unseasonably warm, the sky a Sunday school cartoon of heaven. — 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

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

Nora had been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them - not at all - but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos ... After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain. — 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

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 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

There was no dignified way to answer a question about your underwear. — Tom Perrotta

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. — 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

Here's why at the Jesus beds they can only talk about all the stupid shit they've done - because that's all they are now, all they're ever gonna be, a twitching bunch of memories and mistakes. Regrets. Jesus, Bit thinks. I should've had the decency to go when Julie did. — 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

If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic. — Chris Bohjalian

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