Quotes from Jess Walter

Put the fire out? Hell no. What we need to do is stoke it.

cruelty and hope should never be served together.

Elena reminds him that without his dad's union job, he wouldn't have had a roof over his head, but he's one of those men of fragile confidence who needs to always believe that he's made his own way in the world.

Maybe it's being close to the end, but I have this desire to pull Greg aside—to pull all my children aside, and my grandchildren—and to whisper something profound, to pass on the great wisdom I've acquired. Something that would open their hearts and create in them an unassailable courage, a generosity of spirit, faith in humanity.

He wondered if the German girl ever knew that someone had loved her so much that he painted her twice on the cold cement wall of a machine-gun pillbox.

Bit yells, Homeless Hungry? Dude, I invented Homeless Hungry. The kid just waves.

People expect a story to always mean the same thing, but I have found that stories change like people do.

Stories are nations, empires.

Even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?

This is a life, he thought, smooth skipping stones bounding across the surfaces of time, with brief moments of deepened consciousness as you hit the water before going airborne again, flying across the carpool lane, over weeks at a desk, enjoying yourself when the skipping stopped, and spending the rest of your life in a kind of drifting contentment, slipped consciousness, lost weekends, the glow from the television sets warming placid faces, smile lines growing in the glare of the screen.

Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains?

No, no, we are definitely writ on water. Or cognac -- if we've any luck at all.

It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start. Do you know what I mean, Pasquale?

Alarmingly, though, on top of the bookcase there is also a family portrait of Bea with two just-as-striking blond-and-blue-eyed sisters and a pair of handsome proud Nordic parents, whose stares make me aware of the vast age difference between Bea and me, and I am profoundly ashamed to be here buying drugs in this girl's apartment. What I'd really like to do, I think, is lie down on this couch and take a nap.

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story . . . your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

my money guy Richard is going without a tie now, like a politician who wants to appeal to the suffering common man (or perhaps every morning his firm takes the ties and shoelaces away from the brokers and financial planners to keep them from offing themselves)

Zo gaat het wanneer je je verliest in dromen, dacht hij: je droomt van het een, je droomt van het ander en voor je het weet heb je je hele leven verslapen.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell.

What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?

The eye sees everything upside down," the artist explained, "and then the brain automatically reverses it. I'm just trying to put it back the way the mind sees it." Alvis

Something about the memory caused him to tear up, to think again about the unknowable nature of the people we love.

And we want car wrecks. We say we don't. But we love them. To look is to love. A thousand people drive past the statue of David. Two hundred look. A thousand people drive past a car wreck. A thousand look.

our lives have a way of eddying back on themselves, offering us the same view over and over, daring us to get it right just once.