Quotes from Jess Walter

And when our lives do begin? I mean, the exacting part, the action? It's all so fast.

and now there are two distinct phases to sex with Daryl: the first two minutes like an exam from an autistic gynecologist, the next ten a visit from the Roto-Rooter man.

Pasquale's eyes felt heavy and he thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.

Nothing kills suspicion like suspicion.

I remembered his saying that I really only lived in the perceptions of others, and suddenly it seemed painfully true. I couldn't think of a time when I'd acted on my own, when I wasn't driven by my grief

Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them, they lose their value, just like money. They begin to mean nothing.

I slipped the porter a buck for a whiskey, then another when the train slowed the last five miles, forest, foothills, farms, and finally, Spokane. I couldn't believe how the syphilitic town had metastasized. Smoke seeped from twenty thousand chimneys, pillars to an endless gray ceiling. The city was twice the size of the last time I'd hated being there. A box of misery spilled over the whole river valley.

I wondered if I even had a self. "I miss you," I said aloud. Surprised at myself, I looked around to see if anyone had heard, but no one was n

Here she was, barely twenty-eight, working on a studio lot, not doing what she'd dreamed, exactly, but doing what people did in this business: taking meetings, reading scripts, and hearing pitches—pretending to like everything while finding myriad reasons to make nothing.

Be patient. Be bold. Be humble. Be confident. Don't give in to the speed and surface banality of the culture. Don't give in to jealousy, commerce, or fear. Do charity work, or coach kids, or be a Big Brother or Sister, or something. Whatever it takes to get out of your own head and avoid authorial narcissism. And whatever you do, don't ever take advice from authors.

Too far, Mrs. Jones! You go too far! You go too far confusing the cause of labor with that of socialism

Io ti maledico a morire lentamente, tormentato dalla tua anima miserabile!" I curse you to a

Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same. The smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.

Each gray hair still seemed like a weevil in a flower bed.

The truth hurts only if you're comforted by lies.

And thus the sewer is man's greatest achievement, Carlo, the disposal of shit the apex of all this inventing and fighting and copulating).

They killed the world and called it progress.

Sometimes," she said, "what we want to do and what we must do are not the same." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Pasqo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.

Twenty meters away, Pasquale Tursi watched the arrival of the woman as if in a dream. Or rather, he would think later, a dream's opposite: a burst of clarity after a lifetime of sleep.

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about. "Please," Pasquale rasped to Tommaso. "Go." The

Sometimes, now, when she sees how content Pat and Lydia are, she feels like a spent salmon: her work here is done. But other times, honestly, the whole idea of being at peace just pisses her off. At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? 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?

There was nothing explicit between them, nothing more than that slightly open door. And yet . . . what could be more alluring? In

mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it. Pasquale waited until the

Imagine truth as a chain of great mountains, their tops way up in the clouds. Writers explore these truths, always looking out for new paths up these peaks.