The Leftovers Quotes

“There's not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“It just took some people a little longer than others to realize how few words they needed to get by, how much of life they could negotiate in silence.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“To this day, she’s still sad. Because there’s not some finite amount of pain inside us. Our bodies and minds just keep manufacturing more of it. I’m just saying that I took the pain that was inside of her at that moment and made it my own. And it didn’t hurt me at all.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Jill felt an emptiness open inside of her as she lifted her arm, a sense that something vital was being subtracted from her life. It was always like that when somebody you cared about went away, even when you knew it was inevitable, and it probably wasn't your fault.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Things change all the time - abruptly, unpredictably, and often for no good reason. But knowing that didn't do you that much good, apparently.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“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.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“I’ve matured. I have a much higher tolerance for boredom.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“When your words are futile, you’re better off keeping them to yourself, or never even thinking them in the first place.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“I’m only human, she told herself. There’s not enough room in my heart for everyone.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“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.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“We’re agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don’t know if there’s a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don’t.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Next time she’d have to ask him to keep the light on while he did it, so she could watch his face. That was the best part of the whole thing as far as she was concerned, the way a guy’s face contorted so violently and then relaxed, as if some terrible mystery had just been solved.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“When your words are futile, you’re better off keeping them to yourself,”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“She felt strong and blissfully empty gliding through the crisp November air, enjoying the intermittent warmth of the sun as it filtered down through the overhanging trees, which were mostly stripped of their foliage. It was that trashy, post-Halloween part of the fall, yellow and orange leaves littering the ground”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“It's like the human race has been programmed for misery.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“I could spend the whole afternoon telling you about him, but it's not gonna do much good, is it? You never smelled his hair after he just got out of the bath, or carried him from the car after he'd fallen asleep on the way home, or heard the way he laughed when someone tickled him. So you'll just have to take my word for it: He was a great kid and he made you glad to be alive.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Today was the dance contest, the one where Squidward takes over Spongebob's body...During the competition, Squidward gets a cramp and Spongebob's body ends up writhing on the floor in agony. The audience thinks this is pretty cool and gives him First Prize. Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“No matter what she was doing-baking cookies, walking around the lake on a beautiful day, making love to her husband-she felt rushed and jittery, as if the last few grains of sand were at that very moment sliding through the narrow waist of an hourglass. Any unforeseen occurrence-road construction, an inexperienced cashier, a missing set of keys-could plunge her into a mood of frantic despair that could poison an entire day.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“And right now he was feeling the weight of all those losses, and the weight of the years that were behind him, and the weight of the ones that were still ahead, however many there might be – three or four, twenty or thirty, maybe more.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“It was like traveling back in time, meeting the person you used to be, and recognizing her as a friend.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“What a beautiful bird, they kept telling one another, which was a weird thing to say about a dead thing without a head.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers

“Some subjects mixed well with weed, but Chemistry wasn’t one of them.”
― Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers