Tom Perrotta
Tom Perrotta
Thomas R. Perrottais an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels Electionand Little Children, both of which were made into critically acclaimed, Academy Award-nominated films. Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film version of Little Children with Todd Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also known for his novel The Leftovers, which has been adapted into a TV series on HBO...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 August 1961
CountryUnited States of America
Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.
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.
If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.
Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.
It's like the human race has been programmed for misery.
He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday--that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body.
Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer — that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with people you’d left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn’t love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.
It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.
Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.
When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.
A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.
My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.
It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.
I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.