Quotes from Jess Walter

Great fiction tells unknown truths.

Taft himself had visited as secretary of war in '07, before becoming president. He called the camps a "sewer of sin" and "a sore on an otherwise beautiful national forest." In response, the Montana side gleefully voted to take his name.

Why can't we talk about what we think instead of just all the stupid shit we've done?

And do you have opinions that John Locke didn't write first?

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.

I could write for days about the disappointment of politics.

I won't pretend that I didn't like the voice, the power that changing horoscopes gave me.

What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he is dead?

A bum wanders and drinks. A tramp wanders and dreams. A hobo wanders and works.

buried by random events, ruined by confusion and grief.

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

Go with it. Be confident and the world responds to your confidence, rewards your faith.

I think there are only two things you can do with your hometown: look for ways to make it better, or look for another place to live.

They have no idea if the paintings have faded away, or have been spray-painted with graffiti, or if the bunker still exists – or, for that matter, if it ever existed at all – but they are young and the trail is wide and Easily traveled. And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?

but in Claire's mind it would always be Holly Golightly who stole her daddy. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us.

The current criminal administration is riffling the pockets of this dying patient, thieves stealing all they can while gutting environmental regulations and, for good measure, opting out of the Paris Accord, giving the finger to a world just beginning to understand the danger.

Watch! I called out. I cannot say why I yelled this except that I imagined that if I were witnessed now, I might continue to exist, even if only as a tale the boy thrilled his children with--the scoundrel who stole a ferry and rode it over the falls.

imagine never leaving North Idaho again. He's got his coffee and he's got his ritual, his work around the cabin, and with the new satellite dish Lydia buys him for his birthday, he's got nine hundred channels and he's got Netflix

In fact, he talked about his painful and insidious cancer so plainly and without affect that to this day, I consider matter-of-factness a form of courage.

When he had asked [her]if the man she loved felt the same way, she had answered quickly that yes, the man loved himself as well.

God, this life is a cold, brittle thing. And yet it's all there is.

We want what we want

Os hospitais tentam vender centros de parto, os infantários vendem amor, as escolas vendem sucesso... os vendedores de carros promovem o luxo, os conselheiros a autoestima, as massagistas oferecem finais felizes, os cemitérios anunciam o repouso eterno... É interminável, esta febre de vender, promover, exaltar - constante, esgotante, e implacável como a morte.

He had never really mastered English, but he'd studied enough to have a healthy fear of its random severity, the senseless brutatlity of its conjugations; it was unpredictable, like a cross-bred dog.