Explore Quotes by 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.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

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

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.

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.

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

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.

It's like the human race has been programmed for misery.

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

Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.

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.

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.

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.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

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.

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 the 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.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.

There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.

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.

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.