Quotes from Jonathan Tropper

The life you build feels like the entire world, and when it's suddenly gone, the world doesn't make sense for a while. Or, in his case, ever again.

I may not beleive in God, but I believe in guilt and no one wants to dick around with eternity, even if it isn't there.

But that's why you pay for insurance, right? If you never file a claim, then they've beaten you.

Nothing doesn't happen all at once. It starts slow, so slow that you don't even notice it. And then, when you do, you banish it to the back of your mind in a hail of rationalizations and resolutions. You get busy, you bury yourself in your meaningless work, and for a while you keep the consciousness of Nothing at bay. But then something happens and you're forced to face the fact that Nothing is happening to you right now, and has been for some time.

Few things are more pathetic than an unemployed man with a business card. P.15

Relationships don't come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending.

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.

The really good liars, the true grandmasters of bullshit, are so damn convincing because they actually believe their own lies.

Due to some mental hiccup I can't explain, when I think of God, I picture Hugh Hefner: a thin, angular man with a prominent chin in a maroon smoking jacket.

In The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper, Wayne is talking to Joe about "days that matter". Wayne says, "It's simple really. We were doing what we wanted to do, instead of what we expected ourselves to do.

One day you just wake up and discover that you got old while you were sleeping.

The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands.

If they're letting her cry anyway, I don't really see the point of the baby monitor, but that's one of those questions I've learned not to ask, because I'll just get that condescending look all parents reserve for non-parents, to remind you that you're not yet a complete person.

Love made us partners in narcissism

It's rare for someone to say something to you, just a few words, really, and actually make you see yourself from a completely different vantage point.

The point is, people become possessive of their grief, almost proud of it. They want to believe it's like no one else's. But it is. It's exactly like everybody else's. Grief is like a shark. It's been around forever, and in that time there's been just about no evolution. You know why?" "Why?" "Because it's perfect just the way it is.

To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it's too late is to become divinely fucked up.

The gravedigger looks like Santa Claus, and I don't believe for a minute he doesn't know it. With his long white beard and stout build, he has to know the effect of wearing a red and white anorak and how inappropriate the whole getup looks in the Mount Zion Cemetery.

And no matter which way you turn your desperate gaze, there's absolutely no land in sight, which is strange, because you didn't think you'd gone out that far to begin with.

He doesn't so much fall in love as dive-bomb it like a kamikaze pilot, fearless and at full throttle. He used to look at this propensity as a gift, then a curse, and now understands it to be just another way in which he is broken.

You want to move on, but to do that you have to let her go, and you don't want to let her go, so you don't move on.

even when someone is deserving of your anger, they're still deserving of compassion. It's hard to pull off, believe me—no one knows that more than me. And if you're only going to pull it off a handful of times in your life, why not for family?

I work for the Spandler Corporation. We are a three-hundred-million-dollar business, with offices in twelve states. We have over five hundred employees. We are known throughout the country as a leader in the industry. Our customers rely heavily on us. We produce nothing. We sell nothing. We buy nothing. If we didn't exist, Kafka would have to invent us.

he'd continue to cry passionately, long after he'd forgotten why he was crying to begin with.