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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

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Tom Perrotta
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 13
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Garwood
New Jersey
Looks
Love
Think
Extinguish
Thinking
Spark
People
Sparks
Unhappiness
Maybe
Look

More quotes by Tom Perrotta

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I used to describe myself as a comic novelist, but my concerns seem to have darkened over the past few years.
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I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.
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I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.
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Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault.
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As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.
Tom Perrotta
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I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.
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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.
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It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis.
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Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
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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.
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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.
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