Quotes from Matthew Norman

Anna is the sort of woman who writers write about, Tom. Somewhere in the third act, women like her save characters like you and me from ourselves. She's the loveliest literary device in the world.

I've been thinking about your Father a lot lately, and I've realized something. I married Gary specifically for the fact that he wasn't Curtis. If your Father has an opposite, it's Gary. I just need to decide if I want to spend the rest of my life with someone I married by default.

She rarely lets me off the hook, holding me to a different standard of emotional intelligence than the other men in her life - even my Brothers. She allows them to behave like Gary, docilely going about their lives, content and happy and completely oblivious to the sticky, ugly things just a few inches below the surface of everything.

This house has endured three of my Dad's four wives, and so over the last few decades it's been a home-size mood ring, changing to the styles and temperaments of its female inhabitants.

Like pretty much every cat I've ever met, Jeter swings back and forth between loving me and trying to murder me, so I never know exactly what I'm getting.

I have to speak carefully now because I have this strange habit of imitating British people without even realizing that I'm doing it.

In most companies, no one really notices you until they need you. And even then, when someone wanders into your office or IMs you and finds that you're gone, they just assume you're doing something constructive. Sitting in some horrible, pointless meeting. Stealing office supplies. Weeping gently in a bathroom stall on the fourth floor. Once you've established yourself as reasonably competent, you can pretty much come and go as you please. And

Do you ever stop talking?" I say. "Seriously, it's like you have a superarticulate form of Tourette syndrome.

If a car can represent something, this one represents contradiction. For most of his life, my dad has been able to have any woman he wants. In response, he's gone through as many as possible, betraying each for someone younger and more absurd. Conversely, for most of his life he's been able to have any car he wants, too. In response, he's remained married to this, a 1982 Porsche with a tricky clutch.

Marriage isn't easy, Andy," he says. "You love someone in a specific time and place. But you have no idea what they'll become. People change. Sometimes, they change so much you hardly even recognize them anymore." For

There was no use in fighting. He'd lost. There are so many losses in parenting, strung together over many years.

But honestly, isn't that adulthood in a summary? Constant feelings of pure, overwhelming dread?

The delicate place. This pretty pink flower. The center of me. Secret spot. My thornless rose. The forbidden canal.   There must be fifty others. It's Daisy's wall of awful vagina euphemisms.   My forbidden garden. Her velvet slipper.   Yeesh.

I realize how utterly amazing it is that we're all able as humans to go about our daily lives without constantly obsessing over the fact that each of us will almost certainly be in a sterile bed someday, medicated and slowly dying. This officially marks the most depressing thing that has ever crossed my mind.

All the stuff she says on the radio. It's just fear. The world is leaving people like her behind, and it scares the shit out of her.

He arrived to find that she'd left, discovering then that he was all alone. Even the birds had gone. They'd abandoned their nest on the windowsill, and he was somehow certain that they'd never come back.

A woman never wants to be with someone else. Not really. That's the business of men, and for some reason we destroy things because of it. But not them. They're better than us. They only choose someone else when we push them away.

We're dealing with an entire generation of people who are absolutely committed to taking zero responsibility for their lives. Everything is somebody else's fault. Classic victim mentality. Don't worry, we'll clean up the mess for you. We'll pick up the check. We'll tip the waiter. You hear it day in and day out from the—

not sure, but I tell her that it does because I'm Midwestern and agreeable. She

Generally speaking, it's difficult not to be at least mildly terrified of a girl who might, at any moment, take her shirt off.

They're always like, 'Would my character really do this or really do that?' And I'm like, 'Who gives a shit? Just make them do it, you coward. Don't be so passive.' You and I, we're in charge of what we can do and what we can't do.

Two hours with my grandpa felt like eternity, but also like not long enough. I should have come sooner. I should have called him more this past year. I should have watched more Cubs games with him, and I should have been better at being his grandson.

Never trust someone who isn't miserable at least half of the time.

suspect scotch is something you have to convince yourself to enjoy, like sushi or the last few Radiohead albums, but I can't deny the result is nice.