Quote

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.

Tom Perrotta

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Tom Perrotta
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 13
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Garwood
New Jersey
Life
Knew
Inevitable
Like
Open
Faults
Subtracted
Sense
Arms
Jill
Felt
Inside
Lifted
Away
Wasn
Cared
Even
Somebody
Emptiness
Something
Went
Vital
Always
Probably
Fault

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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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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.
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Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.
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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.
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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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Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
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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.
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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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As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
Tom Perrotta
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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.
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.
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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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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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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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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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