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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

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Tom Perrotta
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 13
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Garwood
New Jersey
Broken
Forever
Whether
Barrier
Another
Separates
Persons
Barriers
Person
Invisible
Liked
Connected

More quotes by Tom Perrotta

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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
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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
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My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.
Tom Perrotta
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My wife and I left New York when she got pregnant - we just thought it would be really hard to stay in the city.
Tom Perrotta
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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
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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
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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
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Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
Tom Perrotta
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I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.
Tom Perrotta
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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
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I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.
Tom Perrotta
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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
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I was writing very early, like I was involved in our high school literary magazine, which was called 'Pariah.' The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine was 'Pariah.' It was great. It was definitely a real sub-culture. But I wrote stories for them.
Tom Perrotta
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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
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I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven.
Tom Perrotta
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I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.
Tom Perrotta
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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
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From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise.
Tom Perrotta
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It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.
Tom Perrotta
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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