"After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"From a distance, it makes perfect sense that the people and the things you think will save you are the very ones that have the power to disappoint you most bitterly, but up close it can hit you as a bewildering surprise."
— Tom Perrotta (Joe College)

" "Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not." "
— Tom Perrotta (The Abstinence Teacher)

"Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish."
— Tom Perrotta (Election)

"It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"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."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"Because it was just too creepy to consider the alternative: nothing changing at all, everything shrinking into the sad belated recognition that the best days had come and gone without her even realizing it."
— Tom Perrotta

"She took care of evyone with the same no-nonsense air of friendliness and good cheer that made her seem so paradoxically wholesome, as if she were convinced that being a slut and being a really nice person were just two things that naturally went together."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date---not that she was going on a lot of dates these days---let alone to work. "
— Tom Perrotta (The Abstinence Teacher)

""it had expanded in a nice, welcoming way, becoming ever rounder and softer without losing its essential shapeliness" "
— Tom Perrotta

"If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"Something had happened to him ove the past couple of years, something to do with being home with Aaron, sinking into the rhythm of a kid's day. The little tasks, the small pleasures. The repetition that goes beyond boredom and becomes a kind of peace. You do it long enough, and the adult world starts to drift away. You can't catch up with it, not even if you try."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"It felt good, the whole family together on a sunny morning in a wholesome environment. If it hadn't been for the warshiping God part, he would have happily attended church on a regular basis."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"No, it's just like when you're dead and you try to remember being alive, it'll be like thinking of winter on the hottest day of the year. You'll know it's true, but you won't really believe it."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

"All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall."
— Tom Perrotta (Joe College)

""You talk to them. And look at their faces. Cows have very expressive faces."

I knew her well enough at that point not to be surprised by this. The first few months we'd worked together, I'd found her distant and intimidating, not just because she was Professor Preston's girlfriend, but also because she'd cultivated a very adult reserve that made her seem years older than the rest of us. She was all business at our editorial-board meetings, holding herself conspicuously aloof from the atmosphere of manic jocularity that dominated the proceedings. The more time we spent together, though, the more I'd come to realize that her reserve was rooted as much in shyness as in confidence, and that her quiet sophistication masked a powerful streak of girlish sincerity."
— Tom Perrotta (Joe College)

"He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he’d known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)

""Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.""
— Tom Perrotta (The Abstinence Teacher)

"Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures…"
— Tom Perrotta (The Abstinence Teacher)

"The thing was to wear a bathing suit and look good in it, to somehow make yourself worthy of the scenario you were volunteering for."
— Tom Perrotta (Little Children)