Quotes from Jonathan Tropper

wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands.

Everything I touch turns to shit, he thinks, not with self-pity, but with an almost scientific fascination at the truth of it.

There is a sense of violation in learning that, unbeknownst to me, my mind has maintained such a strong connection with the town, as if my brain's been sneaking around behind my back.

Besides, I came from the eighties, a neon, hair-sprayed decade from which very little music made it out alive.

There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there's not a thing you can do about it.

When did being right become worthless, and being at fault irrelevant?

Our parents can continue to screw us up even after they die, and in this way, they're never really gone.

The cop looks annoyed, like we're giving him a headache. I want to explain everything to him that its really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is.

Forgiveness is a comfort, but it doesn't bring back what you lost

It wasn't that she didn't love me, I knew that she did, and that actually made it worse. If someone leaves you because they don't love you, it's a tough break, but as they say, life's a bitch, get a helmet. But if someone loves you and leaves you anyway, you enter a whole new realm of self-doubt and recrimination, what psychologists call the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me syndrome.

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.

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.

I'm tired of having a plan. I've been planning my whole life, and it isn't working. I just want to sit back and breathe for a minute, figure out who the hell I am.

I was as sure as I could humanly be, and still, I failed. So what do you think your chances are if you've already got serious doubts?

anger you have locked up in you, and that's healthy. I just think you could be a little more judicious

The reason wisdom is meant to be imparted is because you acquire it only after it's too late to apply to yourself.

We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't.

People love to do that, to point to some single phenomenon, assign it all the blame, and wipe the slate clean, like when overeaters sue McDonald's for making them fat pigs.

If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.

If anything, love is just a starting point. Then life intrudes, along with the personal baggage you've spent years packing, and things get royally and irrevocably fucked up. You can get bitter or you can keep trying. Most people do some of each.

There are some things you can never say out loud, even to yourself, sins of the mind that you can only file away in the hopes of absolution at some later date.

We have always been a family of fighters and spectators. Intervening with reason and consideration demonstrates a dangerous cultural ignorance.

Being an official divorce brought late-night channel-surfing up to a staggering new level of depressing. I just wanted to belong to someone already.

Oh, people will come, Ray," Phillip intones, doing his best James Earl Jones. "People will most definitely come.