02UndatedAll we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell.Jess Walter / quote ↗
03UndatedHe found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.Jess Walter / quote ↗
07Undated(…) my money guy Richard is going without a tie now, like a politician who wants to appeal to the suffering common man (or perhaps every morning his firm takes the ties and shoelaces away from the brokers and financial planners to keep them from offing themselves)Jess Walter / quote ↗
08UndatedBut it's not easy, realising how we fucked it all up. And that turns out to be the hardest thing to live with, not the regret or the fear, but the realisation that the edge is so close to where we live.Jess Walter / quote ↗
09UndatedTwo kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.Jess Walter / quote ↗
10UndatedAmong the world's evils—fascism, ethnic cleansing, environmental degradation— smoking deserves the most severe curricular attention in my kid's school.Jess Walter / quote ↗
11UndatedIt was curious what trying to speak English had done lately to his mind; it reminded him of studying poetry in college, words gaining and losing their meaning, overlapping with images, the curious echo of ideas behind the words people used.Jess Walter / quote ↗
12UndatedI have this theory, that this will be the only city that future archaeologists find, Las Vegas. The dry climate will preserve it all and teams of scientists in the year 5000 will carefully sweep and scrape away the sand to find pyramids and castles and replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the New York skyline and stripper poles and snapper cards and these future archaeologists will re-create our entire culture based solely on this one shallow and cynical little shithole. We can complain all we want that this city doesn’t represent us. We can say, Yes, but I hated Las Vegas. Or I only went there once. Well, I’m sure not all Romans reveled in the torture-fests at the Colosseum either, but there it is.Jess Walter / quote ↗
13UndatedHe wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.Jess Walter / quote ↗
15Undatedall we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character--what we believe--none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!Jess Walter / quote ↗
16UndatedThe movie I was working on, "Cleopatra", it's about how destructive a force love can be. But maybe that's what every story is about.Jess Walter / quote ↗
17Undatederhaps it was the difference in age between the countries—America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires.Jess Walter / quote ↗
18UndatedHe considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.Jess Walter / quote ↗
20UndatedI don't know what I expected – no maybe I do, Al Pacino from Scarface- but this drug dealer is more like Al Pacino at the beginning of The Godfather reasonably bemused, untouched by his criminal world, sitting with Diane Keaton whispering about Luca Brazzi, not yet asleep with the fishes, or like Al Pacino from Glengarry Glen Ross, although actually, now that I think about it, he's not like Al Pacino at all but more like Kevin Spacey from that film, and who's ever been afraid of Kevin Spacey?Jess Walter / quote ↗
21Undated(…) met the owner of this cozy book-and-candle Apt. G, a tall, leggy, striking girl named Bea or maybe just the letter B or maybe the insect Bee, not sure, her long blond hair pulled in a ponytail, her no-doubt banging body effortlessly buried beneath a pile of tights and sweaters and scarves – she is a walking coat rack – and as we shook hands, Bea fixed me with the most alarming blue-eyed stare of my life, the kind of stare in which you think some potent subliminal message is being passed along (Run away with me or maybe just Run away), (…)Jess Walter / quote ↗
23UndatedAnd while his mother's lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant--how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.Jess Walter / quote ↗
24UndatedI guess I forgot we were going out tonight.""We always go out on Fridays.""It's Thursday, Alvis.""You are so tied to routine.Jess Walter / quote ↗
