Jonathan Tropper Quotes - Page 3

As far as rapprochements go, it's awkward and vague, but the advantage of being as emotionally inarticulate as we are is that it will do the trick.

The future just isn't what it used to be

At this point in my life, I'm not looking for any happy endings. I'm just looking to get things started.

And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will feel like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benetar or the Cure on the soundtrack.

But the muse won’t always cooperate and she will never be coerced. Sometimes she’d rather take a nap or see a mid-afternoon movie.

If only all our conflicts could be resolved with a few grunts and a smack in the ass.

We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.

Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.

We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.

We are all smiling in the picture, three brothers having a grand old time just playing around in the living room, no agendas, no buried resentments or permanent scars. Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.

It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kids.

Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.

...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.

↑ top up position down The fact that I suspect I'm an asshole means I probably am not, because a real asshole doesn't think he's an asshole, does he? Therefore, by realizing that I'm an asshole, I am in fact negating that very realization, am I not? Descartes's Asshole Axiom: I think I am; therefor I'm not one.

When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are.

It's sort of an organic process when you're adapting any book, not even just your own. You want to preserve the heart of the story and you want to preserve who the characters are, but film requires a lot of compression.

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people.

I'm generally somebody who hopes for the best. It's not what one ought to do in my line of work [screenwriting], but it is what I do.

I'm really not a fan of voiceovers; I think they become a crutch.