Jess Walter famous quotes

I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.
-- Jess Walter

#Life #Real #Character

Who isn't crazy sometimes? Who hasn't driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn't haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn't toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence email, watched the phone praying it will ring; who doesn't lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?
-- Jess Walter

#Crazy #Block #Taken

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.
-- Jess Walter

#Life #Two #Forever

There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.
-- Jess Walter

#Men #America #Two

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life.
-- Jess Walter

#Life #Dream #Sleep

And if a moment exists only in one's perception anyway, then perhaps the rush of feeling he has now is THE MOMENT, and not merely its shadow.
-- Jess Walter

#Feelings #Perception #Shadow

He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.
-- Jess Walter

#Mother #Men #Would Be

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
-- Jess Walter

#Simple #People #Imagination

He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.
-- Jess Walter

#People #Boredom #Contentment

He thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.
-- Jess Walter

#Fall #Afternoon #Might

I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.
-- Jess Walter

#Crazy #Ghetto #Divorce

Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life--not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.
-- Jess Walter

#Moments #Instant

Some memories remain close; you can shut your eyes and find yourself back in them. But there are second-person memories, too, distant you memories, and these are trickier: you watch yourself in disbelief.
-- Jess Walter

#Memories #Eye #Finding Yourself

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story...your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for awhile, we're less alone.
-- Jess Walter

#Father #People #Lucky

You have to do disappointment twice.
-- Jess Walter

#Disappointment

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our ***** story!
-- Jess Walter

#Motivation #Real #Believe

At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?
-- Jess Walter

#Sweet #Regret #Thinking

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.
-- Jess Walter

#Block #Coffee #Writing

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.
-- Jess Walter

#Insane #Looks #Answers

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe Im attuned to current events.
-- Jess Walter

#Events #Newspapers #Currents

There was a time when self-promotion was considered so verboten, especially for authors.
-- Jess Walter

#Self #Promotion

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.
-- Jess Walter

#Years #Fiction #Stories

I think most Hollywood meetings are silly and I truly despise pitching. It's insane to expect someone to come in and tell you the story before they've written it, and buying an idea from someone who can explain it rather than write it is like choosing a mechanic based on his ability to draw a picture of your car's problem.
-- Jess Walter

#Silly #Writing #Thinking

All we have is the story we tell.
-- Jess Walter

#Stories

If a police officer arrests a mime, does he need to tell him he has the right to remain silent.
-- Jess Walter

#Police #Doe #Needs

A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.” Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.
-- Jess Walter

#Disappointment #Wine #Greatness

Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same. Pasquo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.
-- Jess Walter

#Space #Desire #Want

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.
-- Jess Walter

#Imagination

What business does memory have with time?
-- Jess Walter

#Memories #Doe

And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?
-- Jess Walter

#Together #Enough #Sunlight

No one gets to tell you what your life means!
-- Jess Walter

#Mean #Life Means

And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking--how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe--Pasquale Tursi said, only, "Yes.
-- Jess Walter

#Regret #Thinking #Dexterity

Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of just where she is.
-- Jess Walter

#Home #Track #Worry

What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?
-- Jess Walter

#Father #Wife #Kind

Maybe every couple lived in the gaps between conversations, unable to say the important things for fear they had already been said, or couldn't be said; maybe every relationship started over every time two people came together.
-- Jess Walter

#Couple #Two #People