Tom Perrotta citations

“Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.”

“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.”

“It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.”

“There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. (67)”

“Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.”

“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.”

“Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.”

“That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.”

“Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?”