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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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Tom Perrotta
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 13
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Garwood
New Jersey
Read
Lost
Hypnotized
Stories
Gatsby
School
Sentences
Great
Moved
Love
Beauty
High
Story

More quotes by Tom Perrotta

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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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I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.
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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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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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
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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'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 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 was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.
Tom Perrotta
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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 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
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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 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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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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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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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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My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.
Tom Perrotta
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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.
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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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