The Dangerous Animals Club Quotes

“Fairly or unfairly, many people are tried in life. The mistake people make is that they think the trial is a sign of failure. It’s not. It’s only a doorway that leads to who you really are.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“The fall from your dream into reality is especially hard when you’ve seen that you can fly.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“I knew I should have taken the high road. I was just going too fast and missed my exit.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“The one common tragedy I have seen woven throughout my life and the lives of others is that we can't feel the miracle of our own lives.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“The glue that holds a person together is either values or vanity. It is always detectable when we least expect it.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Any endeavor has unintended consequences. Any ill-conceived endeavor has more.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Maybe Joseph [in the Old Testament] . . . was describing the journey itself . . . don't fight with the path.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Being on Heroes was like being in one of those comedies where the leading man wakes up hungover with a woman in his bed and a walrus in his bathtub and he shakes his head and says, “What happened?”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“One day David asked me how I felt about nudity. I told him I do it every day, briefly. He said he wanted to write a scene where I have sex in a bathtub with a prostitute at the Bella Union. “Why not,” I said. I had only tried sex in a bathtub once in real life. It was not to be recommended, just for the sheer mop-up factor afterward. But this was fiction. In one of many heartwarming father-and-daughter stories in Hollywood, Powers’s daughter, Parisse, was playing a prostitute who worked for him. David chose Parisse to be the lucky girl to join me in the tub. The irony was that Powers and I went to school together at SMU thirtysome-odd years before. Back in the old days I had spent some wonderful evenings with Powers and his wife, Pam, and their new baby, Parisse. One evening, after Powers had passed out, I was talking to Pam about horses and stained-glass windows. Pam went to get a couple more beers and asked me if I would diaper Parisse for her, who was a few months old at the time. So in an unlikely turn of events, I was going to have simulated sex in a bubble bath with a woman I had diapered in my past. For those who believe in a universe of probability, the odds of this one have to be lesser than finding sushi in South Dakota.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“a beat-up red van pulled off onto the shoulder of the highway right in front of us. The side door slid open. Beth and I jumped inside the van and slammed the door shut. The van was full of black people. A man and woman were in the front seat. We were in the back with an old woman and two small children. I said, “Hey.” There was no response. I continued, “I hope you’re heading for Dallas. That’s where we were heading. Thanks for stopping.” The man driving didn’t say a word. He just looked at me in the rearview mirror. He started the engine. I repeated, “You are going to Dallas, aren’t you?” He just looked at me again in the rearview, put the car into gear, and off we went. I watched the bus get smaller and smaller out the back window and I thought how clever we were. I started talking to the people in the back of the van. The old woman put her hand on one of the children to quiet any urge to speak. Silence. No one looked at Beth or me. It was tense. Now I wondered how this ride would end. Around sundown, the van pulled off the road in the outskirts of Dallas. The man driving said, “We’re not going any farther. You have to get out here.” I nodded and opened the van door. “Hey, thanks for the lift,” I said. “I was afraid no one would pick up hitchhikers anymore.” “What? You were hitchhiking? We never even saw you. We had just pulled over to change drivers. You jumped into the car and said, ‘Drive us to Dallas.’ We thought you were kidnappers.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“I actually had misunderstood her name the entire time I knew her. Instead of Alice Nell I thought her mother was calling her Alice Snail. I loved snails. I ran over to her house with the mimosa flowers. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. I kissed her on the cheek. I still remember how warm and soft that cheek was. I knew from the movies that kissing a girl would be an important skill for me to learn. At night I would practice on my pillow. It didn’t feel anything like Alice Snail’s cheek. I needed to move up to something more girl-like. I switched to the stuffed rabbit I had in my bed. It was missing an eye and an ear. But it did have a mouth of sorts so it was a step up from the pillow.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“I remember my first marriage proposal. I was five.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Because relationships are so difficult to make and keep, people always try to simplify them, codify them, and crystallize them into something understandable.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Love can be a hopeless thing. And love without expression can be a killing thing.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“sun. And I was afraid. I was afraid that not all prayers are answered, or that maybe they are, but not in the ways we expect or in a language we understand.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Debauchery requires maintenance.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Mom was the epitome of wackiness in a good-hearted way.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Sometimes everything you know is wrong.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“In the void, we will hang our affections almost anywhere.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“In our lives, memory rarely serves as a measurement of time, but rather as a measurement of meaning. The associations we make are rarely linear. Time and memory combine to create an unpredictable picture. We never can know what moments will rise to the level of significance. The strangest, smallest things can become your evening star.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“We began our stories. Her face changed as most women’s do when they listen to their men: from amusement to horror to incomprehensibility.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club

“Like any good father, I tried to calculate ways I could monetize this ability.”
― Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club