|
d408f0b
|
If I'd known you were coming, he said, I woulda worn my lululemons.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
68516ec
|
It's a bad dream: my English teacher is standing naked at the foot of this slightly lumpy bed, clutching a pair of not-quite-white underpants in his hand, studying me with this creepy look on his face, the one he gets when he's reading aloud in class and wants us to think he's moved by the passage.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
8c9b24c
|
WE ARE MEMBERS OF THE GUILTY REMNANT. WE HAVE TAKEN A VOW OF SILENCE. WE STAND BEFORE YOU AS LIVING REMINDERS OF GOD'S AWESOME POWER. HIS JUDGMENT IS UPON US.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
9f5078e
|
Patty seemed like a nice enough woman--of course, most people seemed nice enough when they weren't allowed to talk...
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
1a03ff2
|
I'd come to think of sex as this long dark tunnel that turns friends into strangers, strangers into friends.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
ca6dbd4
|
and a smile with a missing tooth. "I was an adorable"
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
9d89608
|
On reflection, though, it struck her as dishonest, like serving people ice cream on their first night at the fat farm. Hey, have some more hot fudge! You're gonna love it here at Camp Lose-a-Lot!
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
5774094
|
him reverse cowgirl-style,
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
15bd34e
|
Taylor Swift wasn't actually one of them--she was just pretending, the same way Jesus had pretended to be a man. That was why she stood in front of the line, ahead of the others rather than among them. Because she was the teacher, the role model. She'd already shaken off the haters and the doubters and activated her best self. She was there to show the world what happiness and freedom looked like. You glowed with it. You did exactly what yo..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
ef7a831
|
slumped
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
463415b
|
found him stabbing his paperback edition with a steak knife, the tip of the blade penetrating the cover and sinking far enough down into the early chapters
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
90c5587
|
blissfully unaware of the beautiful tradition they'd been chosen to uphold.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
38baf74
|
us, Will had invited his camp counselor buddy, Dylan, and Dylan had brought along his roommate, this annoying kid named Sanjay. I mean, it wasn't like there was anything wrong with Sanjay, and no, I'm not prejudiced against Indian people or anyone else. It was just awkward. The rest of us were jocks and hard partiers, and Sanjay was a skinny nerd who looked like he was about twelve years old. And that's fine, you know? Go ahead and be a ner..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
17c5778
|
I got PTSD from high school.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
db3f28e
|
NO SHOES? WE LOVE YOU!
|
|
shoes
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
7a8dc8c
|
Not boots, not shoes, not sneakers, not even Tevas--
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
e0011c3
|
Wherever he was, he was onto something else, growing up without her, leaving her more alone than she already was.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
8a3399c
|
And later, of course, she got too busy. She asks Royce if he heard anything from Grace, ever. "No. No. Why should I?" "I just thought." "No." "I thought you might have looked her up later on." "Not a good idea." She has disappointed him. Prying. Trying to get at some spot of live regret right under the ribs. A woman."
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
c1fb412
|
Your poor lungs." "We're not gonna live long enough to get cancer. The Bible says there's just seven years of Tribulation after the Rapture."
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
e0235be
|
Here's why at the Jesus beds they can only talk about all the stupid shit they've done--because that's all they are now, all they're ever gonna be, a twitching bunch of memories and mistakes. Regrets. Jesus, Bit thinks. I should've had the decency to go when Julie did.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
a1a96d9
|
I was supposed to have a son.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
330aaaf
|
thinking how good it was to be free, away from the baby and from Tom, too, the two people who couldn't help reminding her of everything that had gone wrong, and what a fool she'd been.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
76266e4
|
I think there have been a lot of writers who've been experimenting lately with really sprawling novels that will deal with a number of different characters and different points on the globe. I understand that as a method of getting at the global culture that we live in, and I understand writers who want to maybe juxtapose very different historical periods to make some larger points about how things have changed over time. I tend to like the..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
20cf550
|
Sharon had moved to Springdale in November of our senior year. She just appeared out of nowhere in four of my classes...I couldn't stop staring at her. I had this weird feeling she was going to be important.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
2e1b1ab
|
ever since the development of the spine, the individual had become paramount, the group disregarded. Ghiselle was only following the downhill path of her species.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
ad6a6e9
|
she kept checking her e-mail every five minutes, carrying the phone everywhere she went, just in case he decided to get in touch while she was in the shower or the laundry room.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
266cf7f
|
The G.R. wasn't big on spelling out its creed; it had no priests or ministers, no scripture, and no formal system of instruction. It was a lifestyle, not a religion, an ongoing improvisation rooted in the conviction that the post-Rapture world demanded a new way of living, free from the old, discredited forms--no more marriage, no more families, no more consumerism, no more politics, no more conventional religion, no more mindless entertain..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
055f1bc
|
He could easily imagine what people would say if they could see him now: exactly the same thing they'd say if someone had told them that Ray from work was a transvestite or that Ted from next door had anonymous gay sex at highway rest stops. They'd shake their heads with their heads with the standard combination of amusement, pity, and smug superiority, and say, Ha-ha-ha, poor Ray. Ho-ho-ho, poor Ted. At least I'm not like that. But we want..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
744318b
|
the world she'd been raised to live in no longer existed.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
cb9697d
|
Was it possible that they'd crossed without realizing it, each one rounding the corner of the aisle the other one had just vacated at exactly the same time?
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
6223d2c
|
Just a dead kid in the park, one more sign that the world had lost its mind.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
c9322e9
|
It was nothing really, just a passing shadow. And Eve had lived long enough to know that it was foolish to worry about a shadow, everybody had one, it was just the shape your body made when the sun came out.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
2bfa269
|
an empty desk in the second row, a memorial to the girl who used to sit there.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
ed4cff3
|
As a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical, first-world, middle-class white woman, she struggled to maintain a constant awareness of her privilege, and to avoid using it to silence or ignore the voices of those without the same unearned advantages, who had more of a right to speak on many, many subjects than she did. It went without saying that she was a passionate opponent of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
b33a3b7
|
oddly emphatic, as if she'd been waiting all day for a chance to discuss the weather.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
8453488
|
that's what privilege is--the license to treat other people like shit while still getting to believe that you're a good person.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
f178ed1
|
a girl from his English class who'd overdosed on sleeping pills after learning of the disappearance of her identical twin.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
e6cc576
|
Yes, he was young--way too young, she was well aware of that unfortunate fact--but there was something to be said for youth, wasn't there? The stamina, the gratitude, all the cliches that were cliches because they were true. Even his lack of experience was touching, because it wouldn't last forever. And he was beautiful--there was no other way to put it--at a time when there wasn't nearly enough beauty in her life. It was painful, to be off..
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
32f6cf5
|
She had a slightly dizzying sense of being overtaken by time, the future becoming the present before she was ready.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
84c4b11
|
In his heart of hearts, Jack London knew that we can never build a fire. Not when we really need to.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
8a3c84d
|
All she knew was that she'd inflicted pain on someone she cared about, and that always cost you something, even if you were just doing your job. It left you feeling dirty and mean, exposed to the laws of karma.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
56ebcb2
|
It was one thing to have a professor tell you that gender was socially constructed, and another to hear it from a person who had actually done construction work.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
6762659
|
She was about to laugh at the selfishness of her reaction, but she was distracted by the cool evening air when she stepped outside, the dusky blue of the sky, and the freshly paved street in front of her, its blackness bisected by a bright yellow line, a world so inexplicably beautiful that she forgot what she was thinking about and just stood still for a moment, breathing it all in.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |
|
7393cc9
|
She wanted to read and think and reconnect with her collegiate self, which had been so much more open and fluid and hopeful than the versions that had succeeded it.
|
|
|
Tom Perrotta |