182 Quotes by Jess Walter

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.

I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.

You have to do disappointment twice.

All we have is the story we tell.

You take something from your past that you're somewhat ashamed about and you write about it from another character's point of view.

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.

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.

I realized the structure in a collection is how they're put together. Structuring the collection became the art of it for me. Because the stories had all been written.

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