The Book of Joe Quotes

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.
The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths. I'm suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I've just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn't exist on any single plane of consciousness. It's generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you're reminded of what this baby's carrying under the hood.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I'm not the same person I was. I'm fucked up." I give her a sideways glance. "I am," she says. "You haven't even scratched the surface."

"I find that most people worth knowing are fucked up in some way or another.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you’re bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“You remember the old Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote would run off a cliff and keep going, until he looked down and happened to notice that he was running on nothing more than air?"

"Yeah."

"Well," he said, "I always used to wonder what would have happened if he'd never looked down. Would the air have stayed solid under his feet until he reached the other side? I think we're all like that. We start heading out across this canyon, looking straight ahead at the thing that matters, but something, some fear or insecurity, makes us look down. And we see we're walking on air, and we panic, and turn around and scramble like hell to get back to solid ground. And if we just wouldn't look down, we could make it to the other side. The place where things matter.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it’s too late is to become divinely fucked up.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“An old girlfriend is a gun in your belly. It's no longer loaded, so when you see her, all you feel is the hollow mechanical click in your gut, and possibly the ghost of an echo, sense memory from when it used to carry live rounds. Occasionally, though, there's a bullet you missed, lying dormant in its overlooked chamber, and when that trigger gets pulled, the unexpected gunshot is deafening even as the forgotten bullet rips its way through the tissue and muscle of your midsection and out into the light of day. Seeing Carly is like that. Even though we haven't spoken in almost ten years, it's an explosion, and in that one instant every memory, every feeling, comes flooding back as fresh as if it were yesterday.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

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The fact that I suspect I'm an asshole means I probably am not, because a real asshole doesn't think he's an asshole, does he? Therefore, by realizing that I'm an asshole, I am in fact negating that very realization, am I not? Descartes's Asshole Axiom: I think I am; therefor I'm not one.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Loneliness doesn’t exist on any single plane of consciousness. It’s generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you’re reminded of what this baby’s carrying under the hood.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Time doesn't heal as much as it buries things in the undergrowth of your brain, where they lie in wait to ambush you when you least expect it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I'll tell you the same thing I told your father. We make mistakes. They don't make us. If they did, we'd all be royally fucked, especially a coupe of assholes like us."

I grin at his last remark, and finally find some words to say, even though I'm not sure I possess the conciliatory feelings to match my town. "You could learn a lot from an asshole."

Dugan smiles at that, and it's the first time I've ever seen him do it. "I guess so.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“This is the age," she explained to me once as we walked home from school, "when we're the purest forms of ourselves we'll ever be. We haven't been complicated by everything yet. I want to keep a clear record of who I am, so that down the road I'll be able to see who I was. Maybe I can avoid losing myself completely."

She sighed, biting her lip pensively. "Things happen," she said. "Small things and large things, and they just keep changing you, little by little, until there's no trace of who you used to be. If I get lost, this journal will be like a record of who I was, a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Man muss die Originalität des eigenen Lebens infrage stellen wenn es sich mit den Zeilen eines Rocksongs perfekt umschreiben lässt.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Later, I'll replay this conversation and be somewhat unsure of what exactly transpired. Is it my forgiveness or his own we've just been negotiating? But at this moment, I felt vaguely satisfied that a rapprochement of sorts has been reached, and a long-raging battle has been ended. I don't like him any more than I did before, but maybe I hate him a little less, and I guess that's something.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“To err, as they say, is human. To forgive is divine. To err by withholding your forgiveness until it's too late is to become divinely fucked up.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Blood will separate, if need be, but its call is primordial, and it won't be refused.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Above us, the moon hangs like a fat blister on the feel of the sky, ready to burst in a spray of viscous white pus"
chap 22.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Besides, I came from the eighties, a neon, hair-sprayed decade from which very little music made it out alive.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“There is a sense of violation in learning that, unbeknownst to me, my mind has maintained such a strong connection with the town, as if my brain's been sneaking around behind my back.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“You have to question the originality of your life when it can be captured perfectly in the lyrics of a rock song.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it’s true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn’t fade and the scars don’t heal, and it’s too damned late.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I totally remember what it felt like to be so full.” “Full of what?” “I don't know. Full of promise, full of dreams, full of shit. Mostly just full of yourself. So full you're bursting. And then you get out into the world, and people empty you out, little by little, like air from a balloon.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“The music from my youth has aged poorly and is now like a joke out of context. You had to be there.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“The doorbell rings, and eager as I might be to continue my fond reverie of bad hair bands, pulverized birds, and my insensitive father, I clear my head and run downstairs to open the door.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“The delivery of dead-on one-liners is rare in the nonscripted world. Usually, they occur to you only afterward, at which point, of course, they're completely worthless.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I seem to recall having had edgier taste in music, but I suppose that's just one more adjustment I'll have to make to my compromised memories.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“Until you have money, you think it's the answer to everything, and only once you have it do you realize that it's just a whole new set of questions, the only difference being that now you have to keep them to yourself, because no one's going to sympathize.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I'm troubled by the notion that while I wasn't looking, I seem to have become an asshole.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I wait for him to say more, but he seems stuck, which I completely understand. Brad is confiding in me, and I am suddenly terrified at the prospect of such intimacy even though I know it's a good thing, a path to better relations. I think we both feel like impostors, posing as the kind of brothers who speak to each other about meaningful things.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe

“I am the star in my own Shakespearean farce, never managing to sleep with one woman without wanting the other. The gods of sex and irony are playing hockey, and I am their unwitting puck.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe