129 Quotes by Tom Perrotta

It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.

The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.

You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption.

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."

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.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

She was the kind of woman who always surprised you with the realization that she was just as lovely as you remembered, though it hardly seemed possible in her absence.

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

Today was the dance contest, the one where Squidward takes over Spongebob’s body... During the competition, Squidward gets a cramp and Spongebob’s body ends up writhing on the floor in agony. The audience thinks this is pretty cool and gives him First Prize. Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?