236 Quotes by Jonathan Tropper

When I’m writing novels, even screenplays, it’s never an actor I have in mind; it’s always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

Pity, I’ve learned, is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can’t stand anyone else’s.

Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn’t very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you’ll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations.

And even as she holds on to him, like she’s drowning, she can feel the familiar anger returning, like an old song that you’ve heard so many times it’s not even a song anymore, just a wasted pathway in your brain that you can never reclaim.

It’s hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it’s impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.

What do you mean by that, Paul?” We are ending our sentences with names, which is the equivalent of fighters circling, looking to throw the first punch.

This is just your time, son, that’s all. Your time to hurt and bleed and tear apart your notion of what makes you who you are. Life knocks us all on our ass at some point. And then we get back up, and we make some changes, because that’s what men do. We adapt. And when we’re done adapting, we’re better equipped to survive.

And as the room starts to fill with the first somber-faced neighbors coming to pay their respects, it becomes clear to me that the reason for filling the shiva house with visitors is most likely to prevent the mourners from tearing each other limb from limb.

You’re thinking about one woman while trying to reach another, and despite this apparent abundance of women, you feel lonely and desolate as hell, and, almost unconsciously, you drive to the house of a third, and the third woman is your mother.