Quote

There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant — sail for Asia and stumble on America — and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along.

Jess Walter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jess Walter
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: July 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spokane
Washington
Find
Sought
Serendipitous
Thing
Asia
Savant
Good
Sail
Savants
Men
Outcomes
Scarecrow
Like
Along
Tin
Hope
Stumble
Two
Quests
America
Quest

More quotes by Jess Walter

Image
I doubt the terrorists saw 9/11 as a teaching opportunity. And we're not really a culture geared to anything as humble as 'learning.' But I was disappointed in how quickly everyone wanted to get back to normal. It was as if we watched terrorism on TV for a while, then got bored and turned back to 'American Idol.'
Jess Walter
Image
If you come from money and you become an addict, you go to the Betty Ford Clinic, you get treatment. If you're living on the street and you're an addict, it's much harder to find your way out.
Jess Walter
Image
His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.
Jess Walter
Image
Maybe every couple lived in the gaps between conversations, unable to say the important things for fear they had already been said, or couldn't be said maybe every relationship started over every time two people came together.
Jess Walter
Image
All we have is the story we tell.
Jess Walter
Image
I think suspense should be like any other color on a writers palette. I suppose Im in the minority but I think its crazy for literary fiction to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.
Jess Walter
Image
I quickly decided my zombies weren't really zombies. It was instead something you called people who were on this club drug, who then exhibited aggressive behaviors. And then like everyone who writes about zombies, I found it was so much fun.
Jess Walter
Image
The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.
Jess Walter
Image
I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.
Jess Walter
Image
No one gets to tell you what your life means!
Jess Walter
Image
And even if they don't find what they're looking for, isn't it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?
Jess Walter
Image
He wished he could reassure his 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.
Jess Walter
Image
I'm certainly eclectic in my writing.
Jess Walter
Image
He thought it might be the most intimate thing possible, to fall asleep next to someone in the afternoon.
Jess Walter
Image
Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.
Jess Walter
Image
Because I'm a novelist, I think in terms of structure. The way I keep going is through structure. It's what inspires me and pushes me through.
Jess Walter
Image
And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking--how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe--Pasquale Tursi said, only, Yes.
Jess Walter
Image
I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. 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.
Jess Walter
Image
Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of just where she is.
Jess Walter
Image
He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.
Jess Walter