Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I skip the introduction. If the book goes in the trash, I want it to go because of my thoughts on it, not because of some Asshole's thoughts who wrote the introduction.
The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity.
The one word love means too little for what it is. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.
I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.
Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.
But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost.
And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind.
Not everyone who works hard makes their dream come true. You need luck and hard work and being in the right place at the right time but I still very much believe it's possible.
The feeling of arms around me, of love in my heart, it was more powerful than any of the negativity I knew was existing in the world for me. That feeling of love killed it all.
Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains.
...we got this gift of life and we got it one time and we gonna get hurt in it and be hurt going through it and the only thing that'll make that hurt better or hurt less is love.
Sleep is still difficult I sleep for three or four hours a day. Usually sometime in the afternoon. I walk in the cold, keep myself numb. I cry less, and less." (James Frey, pg.88)
I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.
I go to my Room and I drink and I smoke some cigarettes and I think about her. I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me.
All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.
But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.
I regretted making a comment about Dave Eggers. I’ve never said anything about McSweeneys except that I admire what it is, and I think it’s great that they keep people interested in literature.
I look at pastries and cakes, tarts and pies. My body craves sugar, always craves sugar. Years of alcohalism and the high level of sugar in alcohal created the craving, which I feed with candy and soda.
The best stories are universal stories that have been told for as long as humanity has existed it's just figuring out new ways to do it, with language, with structure. And so I'm always trying to do that.
The way America works, and the way L.A. works, is a very small percentage of people get what they want out of life, and a much greater percentage try very very hard and they don't. That's just the way it is.
I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.
I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.
When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.
A contest was held in 1994 to rename the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center after an extensive renovation and expansion. The winning name, chosen from over ten thousand entries, was the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests. Why? You tell me. I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.
There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing.
Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.
I want as much time in the darkness as I can possibly have. The darkness provides cover, the darkness provides places to hide and the darkness provides comfort. Darkness usually comes around dinner, but dinner would be too obvious.
Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says. Stay. Fight. Live. Take it.
We live in a world that's very fast, where we get bombarded with huge amounts of information very quickly, and I have tried to tailor my voice to the times, which I think, writers, over the course of history - many have always done.
Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.
I meet a third man he's an old man he trips in the street he falls and I help him up, walk him to the curb. He shakes my hand says keep the faith, young man. I ask him what he means, he says keep running and don't let them catch you.
I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.
I say to myself if you believe deeply in your heart you must defy, and if you are willing to pay for your defiance, you must always do it, even though the pain may be much. Too many times in our lives we do not do it, and we pay even more.
I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me.
For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.
In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters
Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.
It's the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?
I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.
I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.
I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.
America was first colonized by Puritans. Most of our earliest immigrants, and many since, have come here in order to practice their religious beliefs as they please. Our culture has always been, and will most likely always be, profoundly influenced by religion.
I have a great amount of confidence and faith in my abilities to write. There are other areas of my life where I'm not as confident, and have not as much faith, but when it comes down to writing and working, I don't worry about it. I trust myself to get it right.
He tells me I look as if I could use a hugand i laugh at him and he ignores me and steps forward and puts his arms around me and hugs me. I warm at the simple pleasure of human contact and for the first time in a long time i actually feel good." (James Frey, pg.38)
My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people's lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough.
On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray. I was standing in line for lunch and I didn't see it coming. I went down. When I got up, I turned around and started throwing punches." (James Frey, pg.1)
When I see you, the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you.
There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.
I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.