Tom Perrotta Quotes

He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling.

It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.

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.

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

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

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.

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.