Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tom Perrotta
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 13
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Garwood
New Jersey
Things
Idiot
Think
Helps
Thinking
Bunch
World
Genius
Rest
Helping
Wells
Well
Idiots

More quotes by Tom Perrotta

Image
Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.
Tom Perrotta
Image
My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.
Tom Perrotta
Image
I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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
Image
As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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
Image
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.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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
Image
He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.
Tom Perrotta
Image
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