Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers
13 quotes
"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."
"Nora had been training herself not to think too much about her kids. Not because she wanted to forget them - not at all - but because she wanted to remember them more accurately. For the same reason, she tried not to look too often at old photographs or videos...After a while, these scraps hardened into a kind of official narrative that crowded out thousands of equally valid memories, shunting the losers to some cluttered basement storage area in her brain."
"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."
"These days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection."
"Next time she’d have to ask him to keep the light on while he did it, so she could watch his face. That was the best part of the whole thing as far as she was concerned, the way a guy’s face contorted so violently and then relaxed, as if some terrible mystery had just been solved."
"I’m only human, she told herself. There’s not enough room in my heart for everyone."
"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."
"Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while."
"It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left."
"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."
"Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us."
"I’ve matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom."
"He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling."