Vince Passaro > Quotes

“I look back now with amazement at the small accidents that put certain books before me.”
― Vince Passaro

“I was taken up by books, as if by the strong arms of a parent I'd never known and had been badly missing.”
― Vince Passaro

“Imagine you lose your legs. So much of what you do for the rest of your life is constricted, or painful. Or humiliating. You feel ashamed. But over the years despite all that you still hear a good piece of music or read something fine or successfully make love to your wife—without legs that really must be something but never mind— ... So at these times you feel what other people feel, you know. Satisfaction. Pleasure. Happiness. Even joy. You can see the largeness and beauty of life. You have snatches of happiness. And does anyone have more than that? Visionaries maybe. Ecstatics... Otherwise no, they have the same little passing lovely moments of happiness as this, but they have it or don't have it or strive for it or forget it—with legs. But you have no legs. Every day you wake, having dreamt of your legs, and you find again you have none. Every morning that flash of hope, every morning that smash of truth.”
― Vince Passaro, Crazy Sorrow

“I meant: what do I want to do now, who do I want to be now? And I look at these questions from the perspective of someone with twenty years left, or twenty-five, whatever, of active public life, and I have no ambitions, none, I don’t want to prove anything to anybody, I don’t want to convince the world of anything anymore, I don’t want to work. I want to be as peaceful as possible and think and read and maybe write a little, just journals and notes, you know, like a blog. But on paper. I’ll tell no one about it.”
― Vince Passaro, Crazy Sorrow

“If we die, said Louis, I want to die in the doorway of Tad’s Steakhouse.”
― Vince Passaro, Crazy Sorrow

“Sometimes, he said, you feel the irreplaceability of a moment in time—its perfect ephemeral uniqueness. Yes? You know?”
― Vince Passaro, Crazy Sorrow

“Breslin said every story is five flights up. You want the story, you climb the”
― Vince Passaro, Crazy Sorrow