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His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.

Jess Walter

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Jess Walter
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: July 20
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spokane
Washington
Forever
Lives
Two
Would
Life
Wonder

More quotes by Jess Walter

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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. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!
Jess Walter
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I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.
Jess Walter
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I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.
Jess Walter
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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
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I'm certainly eclectic in my writing.
Jess Walter
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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
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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
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I've been a dad since I was nineteen, so I think a lot about fatherhood and the power of that sacrifice in your life.
Jess Walter
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The first fiction I ever wrote was short stories. I was writing short stories in my late teens and early twenties, and I think it's how you teach yourself to write.
Jess Walter
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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
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What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?
Jess Walter
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Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.
Jess Walter
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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
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If a police officer arrests a mime, does he need to tell him he has the right to remain silent.
Jess Walter
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The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.
Jess Walter
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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
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What business does memory have with time?
Jess Walter
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The stories tend to be what I work on when I'm stuck. Something will just pop into my head and I'll think that's more of a story.
Jess Walter
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I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something.
Jess Walter
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He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
Jess Walter