Jess Walter Quotes

Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.

The scramble to get higher, to be seen, the cycle of creation and rebellion, everyone assuming they were saying something new or doing something new, something profound—when the truth was that it had...

About Author

Jess Walter (born July 20, 1965) is an American author of seven novels, two collections of short stories, and a non-fiction book. He is the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006.

But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos-- we know what's out there. It's what that truly compels us. Technology may ha...

But aren’t all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos—we know what’s out there. It’s what isn’t that truly compels us. Technology may...

Yes, what is it like? Certainly not like she dreamed. But maybe that's okay. We want what we want. At home, she works herself into a frenzy worrying about what she isn't--and perhaps loses track of ju...

Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same.

And he urges the old man to remember the last moment he felt his being without its relation to beloved Amedea, his last moment of individual happiness or longing—

What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough?

This is what happens when you live in dreams, he thought: you dream this and you dream that and you sleep right through your life. He needed coffee.

Great fiction tells unknown truths.

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at a...

Sometimes what we want to do and what we must do are not the same. Pasquo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.

He wondered if the German girl ever knew that someone had loved her so much that he painted her twice on the cold cement wall of a machine-gun pillbox.

Buried by random events, ruined by confusion and grief.

I could write for days about the disappointment of politics.

I remembered his saying that I really only lived in the perceptions of others, and suddenly it seemed painfully true. I couldn’t think of a time when I’d acted on my own, when I wasn’t driven by my gr...

Your parents don't get to tell your story. Your sisters don't. When he's old enough, even Pat doesn't get to tell your story. I'm your husband and I don't even get to tell it. So I don't care how love...

IN THE NINE YEARS since the standoff at Ruby Ridge and in the six years since this book first appeared, much has happened. Yet little has changed. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on hearin...