The Paperboy Quotes

“I was tired in ways that had nothing to do with sleep. It occurred to me, sitting in the car with her, that I had been trying to hold too many things together that were meant to fall apart.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“Nothing looks more foolish than tradition to those who have none.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“Sometimes," he said, "you've got to watch people a long time to see who they are.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“To see certain things, you have to be lying on your back with tears in your eyes and a scalding potato in your mouth. It's possible, I think, that you have to be hurt to see anything at all.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“...fill the holes with facts, not flowers.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“A newspaper story, like anything else, is more attractive from a distance, when it first comes to you, than it is when you get in close and agonize over the details. Which I presume is how Yardley got in the habit of keeping himself at a distance.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“I had noticed, even then, that there were certain women whom other women instinctively disliked, and that these women invariably had more bait in the water than the women who disliked them.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“...without moving a muscle in his face, slips away; retreats, I think, to that sheltered place where his stories are kept. Perhaps we all have our places.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“No one mentions that now, and I suppose no one is inclined to bring it up, particularly not my father, who in other matters loves those things most that he can no longer touch or see, things washed clean of flaws and ambiguity by the years he has held them in his memory, reshaping them as he brings them out, again and again, telling his stories until finally the stories, and the things in them, are as perfect and sharp as the edge of the knife he keeps in his pocket.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“He was a newspaperman,' he said, 'but there's some people who should never leave Savannah.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“My father drank half of what was in the glass and relaxed. “So what do you think?” “I don’t know,” I said. “About the business,” he said. “You’ve had a look, what do you think?” “I don’t think much one way or the other.” “It’s better than driving a truck.” I said, “It’s better than loading one.” And he looked at me and smiled. “We all have our own speed,” he said, meaning, I supposed, that Ward had never been expelled from the University of Florida. “One way or another, we do things when we’re ready.” He thought about something else for a moment, then looked at me and smiled again. A kind of peace had settled over him with the last bottle of wine. “Don’t be so serious about everything, Jack,” he said. “Your turn will come.” I said, “I do things when I have to,” and that made him laugh, and I laughed with him. I’d had a few glasses of wine myself. “Sometimes,” he said, fondly, as if he were remembering a story, “the only way you find out you’re ready is that when you have to be, you are.” I had another drink of the wine, and felt peaceful myself. “Can I tell you something?” I said. “Anything.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And that made him laugh too.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy: A Novel

“Between events of personal interest, however, Yardley Acheman would sit at his desk in the most distant corner of the city room, visiting an endless stream of girls and bookies on the telephone, trying to talk the new ones into giving him a chance, trying to talk the old ones into leaving him alone.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy: A Novel

“Cautious human beings do not presume to write history on a day's notice. They are aware of the damage mistakes can cause. My father believed that mistakes could always be corrected in the next edition.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy

“...he told a story about the days when he was a reporter himself and how he had gotten so close to story that he finally couldn't write it...When I stared at something long enough, the lines blurred and I could no longer see it for what it was. One thing became another.”
― Pete Dexter, The Paperboy