Quote

All we have is the story we tell.

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
Story
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Jess Walter

Image
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
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
For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are, you wish you could not do them. For most of us it's I cannot get off Facebook. But imagine that your demon has you living on the street. I don't think those compulsions and obsessions are that different.
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
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
Image
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
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 considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
Jess Walter
Image
I'm certainly eclectic in my writing.
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'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
Image
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
Image
His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.
Jess Walter
Image
I don't know a family that isn't touched by some sort of addiction.
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
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
If a police officer arrests a mime, does he need to tell him he has the right to remain silent.
Jess Walter
Image
A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.” “That’s only three.” Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.
Jess Walter
Image
He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.
Jess Walter
Image
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