129 Quotes by Tom Perrotta

On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date---not that she was going on a lot of dates these days---let alone to work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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