Top 182 Quotes & Sayings by James Frey - Page 3

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

I sleep during the day. I still dream about drinking and drugs. Sometimes I wake to a hang-over, sometimes I wake to a trickle of blood from my nose, sometimes I wake scared and shaking. I read, go to museums and visit Lilly in the afternoon. Sometimes I read to her, sometimes I talk to her, sometimes I just sit and remember the times, remember the times, remember the times." (James Frey, pg.119)

Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.

Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.

More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if i wasn't alone.

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.

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)

I feel strong. Not strong enough to face myself, but strong enough to keep going.

In Lilly's eyes her beautiful clear water eyes there is what I have sought and never found, wanted and never had, hoped for and never discovered. Love.

But we are what we are, and humans will always hate.

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.

It started when she passed me a note in English class. The note said you don't seem as awful as I hear you are. I passed one back that read: beware I am as awful as people say and worse. She laughed and I had a friend. She didn't become my Ally and I didn't ask her to or want her to but she became my friend and that was more than anyone else was willing to do.

The past doesn't matter. People cling to it because it allows them to ignore the present.

I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed.

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.

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.

What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.

There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.

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.

I hadn't learned yet that everybody's locked up some way or other. That's how life is we're all imprisoned by something.

Lying became part of my life. I lied if I needed to lie to get something or get out of something

I think God is something that people use to avoid reality. I think faith allows people to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we'll ever have. I think people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don't.

There are places from which you cannot return. There is damage that can be irreparable.

There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.

I love the process of being alone in a room.

To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.

I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work.

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.

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.

I don't write with an outline. I don't often know what I'm going to do as I'm writing. And I do everything by feel and by instinct.

I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things and not allowing things outside of myself to distract me or bother me or affect me in any way.

I just think it's a great world to tell stories in, to tell cool stories: money, sex, fame, and scandal. Those are great subject matters to work with.

It's cold and it's winter and the world has gone to sleep

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.

We know have the power of God in many ways: the atomic bomb, the ability to create life in a test tube, cloning, artificial intelligence.

Writing's not precious to me. It's not a thing that requires specific environment. You know, it's my job. Just like anybody with a job, you have to do your job when you don't feel like it, regardless of how good or bad the conditions are, regardless of how good or bad you might feel on any particular day.

Dreams can come true there [Los Angeles]in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.

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.

In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.

They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.

L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.

I'm trying to influence the next generation or two generations or three generations behind me. That's a big ambition of mine.

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 try to write books that are different from the books I've already written. I think one of the thing I really try to do is reinvent how a novel can be written.

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.

One of the beautiful and terrible things about America is you can go there and still be whatever you want, if you bust your ass and you have some luck.

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 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.

I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend.

Love is love. It doesn't matter how or who you love. I don't believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women.

You don't have to follow anybody's conventions.

What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.

You don't have to follow anybody's rules.

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.

Stay. Fight. Live. Take it. Cry. Cry. Cry.

I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.

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.

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel. I broke something, Old Man. How badly is it broken? It's in a million little pieces. I'm afraid I can't help you. Why? There's nothing you can do. Why? It can't be fixed. Why? It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.

People call me all sorts of things. I don't even care what they call me.