To this day, she’s still sad. Because there’s not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I’m just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn’t hurt me at all.

Tom Perrotta

Categorized in : Mind Hurt Pain

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.

Tom Perrotta

people looks thinking

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Tom Perrotta

genius world thinking

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

Tom Perrotta

breakup light dark

I was an English major in college, I went to a creative-writing program, and all my life, I really read and thought about fiction as a craft and an art form. I feel like I know a lot about it, and can trust my instincts.

Tom Perrotta

instinct college art

They both seemed to understand that describing it was beyond their powers, the gratitude that spreads through your body when a burden gets lifted, and the sense of homecoming that follows, when you suddenly remember what it feels like to be yourself.

Tom Perrotta

being-yourself motivational inspirational

After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

Tom Perrotta

choices children people

Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?

Tom Perrotta

minutes dark lying

I think I was always writing books that had very clear scenic structures. I do tend to write in scenes. I do tend to have a fair amount of dialogue. And I do tend to use stories that don't sprawl all over the place, that have a very sharp focus in terms of how they unfold in time.

Tom Perrotta

writing book thinking

It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.

Tom Perrotta

silence littles people

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

Tom Perrotta

expression writing directors

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

Tom Perrotta

lost-love stories school

I know very few writers who outline fully before they start. It just doesn't seem possible to do, because so many things don't come out until you're absolutely knee-deep in the world.

Tom Perrotta

world

As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.

Tom Perrotta

temptation writing drama

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

Tom Perrotta

honesty eye sympathy

I think I'm fascinated by the power of religion in our culture. Like a lot of secular, liberal people, I ignored it for a long time. Lately, of course, just from a political perspective, it's impossible to ignore.

Tom Perrotta

perspective people thinking

The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.

Tom Perrotta

writing two years

I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.

Tom Perrotta

cutting challenges two

I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.

Tom Perrotta

perfect writing people

Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.

Tom Perrotta

invisible broken forever

The lesson you have to learn as novelist is how to be collaborative, and how to say, "I don't get to dictate this."

Tom Perrotta

novelists lessons