Matthew Thomas > Quotes

“You want much from life, and life will give you much, but there are things it won't give you, and victory today is one of them. This will be one defeat; more will follow. Victories will follow too. You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. You are loved with your head down. You will be loved whether you finish or not.”
― Matthew Thomas

“You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. You are loved with your head down. You will be loved whether you finish or not.”
― Matthew Thomas

“You want much from life, and life will give you much, but there are things it won't give you, and victory today is one of them. This will be one defeat; more will follow. Victories will follow too. You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved.”
― Matthew Thomas

“For a moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, not just about Tom, but about her, and himself, and all of life, and she liked the way he saw things. She could spend her life tuning into the calming frequency of his thoughts.
He wasn't a stiff, and he wasn't a weakling either. What was the word for it? Sensitive was the only one that came to mind, amazing as that was to consider; he was a sensitive man. He soaked up whatever you gave him.”
― Matthew Thomas

“There's more that's happened than what's in your memory.”
― Matthew Thomas

“Sometimes--as it was happening now--the music on the radio matched the rhythm of the bridge. The cables climbed toward the second arch, and she felt herself in the uncanny presence of beauty. Nothing else in her day stirred her to the contemplation of abstract ideas. The bridge was making an argument for its own soundness as she drove over it.”
― Matthew Thomas

“He threw all his affection at them and hoped that some of it would stick, maybe even come back to him, though if it didn't he gave it anyway; he gave it more, even, because everyone had something that needed to come out.”
― Matthew Thomas

“The point wasn't always to do what you want. The point was to do what you did and to do it well.”
― Matthew Thomas

“...he had impressed her as a man delightfully open to suggestion, with an imagination large enough to find time, even in the depths of despair, for the important things in life, those accidents without which our existence was little more than a schedule of dry routines.”
― Matthew Thomas

“She wondered if she'd taken the first step on the road away from her dreams. What scared her was how easy it had been to do it.”
― Matthew Thomas

“The point wasn't always to do what you want. The point was to do what you did and to do it well. She had worked hard for years, and if she had nothing to show for it but her house and her son's education, there was still the fact of its having happened, which no one could erase from the record of human lives, even if no one was keeping one.”
― Matthew Thomas

“Life, she thought, was like that sometimes; for years, things were a certain way, and then in an instant, almost without conscious thought, they weren't that way any longer, as if all the hidden pressure of their having been the way they'd been had found release through a necessary valve.”
― Matthew Thomas

“You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved.”
― Matthew Thomas

“She saw that he couldn't live in a way other than the one he thought was right, and when he saw what the right thing was, like now, he cared about it as if it were the only thing that mattered.”
― Matthew Thomas

“There was the obvious answer--it was random, senseless, genetic, environmental--but she didn't like that one. She also knew she couldn't sign on to any system that said it has all happened for a reason. So she took a third path, the pragmatic one. It hadn't happened for a reason, but they would find something to glean from it anyway.”
― Matthew Thomas

“Picture yourself in one of your cross-country races. It’s a hard pace this day. Everyone’s outrunning you. You’re tired, you didn’t sleep enough, you’re hungry, your head is down, you’re preparing for defeat. You want much from life, and life will give you much, but there are things it won’t give you, and victory today is one of them. This will be one defeat; more will follow. Victories will follow too. You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. You are loved with your head down. You will be loved whether you finish or not.”
― Matthew Thomas

“She wanted a man whose trunk was thick but whose bark was thin, who flowered beautifully, even if only for her.”
― Matthew Thomas

“She tried to imagine what it would feel like to have always been alone. She decided that being alone to begin with would be easier than being left alone. Everything would be easier than that.”
― Matthew Thomas