Thomas Beller > Quotes

“Having contact sheets for all sorts of episodes in your life seemed to me intriguing and desirable. So much of my own history is beclouded by time, but a few sharp rays, in the form of pictures, falling upon a given day would resuscitate whole contexts. And from this archipelago of moments, scenes, episodes, you could see the larger tectonic movements of your life forming and unforming. You would be reminded of who you are. Or at least of who you were.”
― Thomas Beller

“Sometimes I wonder if a friendship in which the common ground is all that is bad about each person is a friendship worth having.”
― Thomas Beller, The Time Out Book Of New York Short Stories

“Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.”
― Thomas Beller, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist

“In the Glass family stories, the mother is portrayed as hungry for her son’s correspondence and news. She is portrayed as insatiable for this, in fact, and for this reason her son Zooey is in a constant state of mortified retreat. This theme plays itself out in many of Salinger’s stories, the reticent brother and son who doesn’t keep in touch.”
― Thomas Beller, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist

“But to me it sounds like a man waking from a paralysis to discover, in rapid succession, that he can walk, that he can run, that he can run fast.”
― Thomas Beller, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist

“A couple of hours later, his mother arrived in the lobby and found her son, dressed head to toe in his Indian costume, complete with a long feather headdress. His suitcase was by his side. “Mother, I’m running away,” he said. “But I stayed to say goodbye to you.”
― Thomas Beller, J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist