He was a man who formed opinions as he spoke them, or…

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple…

— Tom Rachman

“He cannot deny a certain relief in being able to sift through academic tomes, fulfilling his journalistic duty without having to barge past security…

— Tom Rachman

My intent was to gain experience for fiction I eventually hoped to write. But there's no question I was drawn in by the hope…

— Tom Rachman

“I built and I built— heaven knows I have done that well. Those skyscrapers, full of tenants, floor after floor, and not a single…

— Tom Rachman

“What is wrong with guys? Half are molting; half are nothing but undergrowth.”

— Tom Rachman

“What I really fear is time. That's the devil: whipping us on when we'd rather loll, so the present sprints by, impossible to grasp,…

— Tom Rachman

“Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males.”

— Tom Rachman

My parents used to rent old movies - my whole childhood is in black and white - and it was my dream to make…

— Tom Rachman

I went to the University of Toronto to study the history and theory of film, in the back of my mind thinking I'd go…

— Tom Rachman

The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.

— Tom Rachman

During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise…

— Tom Rachman

“Don't people drown their sorrows in things like scotch? Not strawberry whatever-it's-called.”

— Tom Rachman

“Nothing epitomizes the futility of human striving quite like aspartame.”

— Tom Rachman

“She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change. He'd be distressed if she were cool-- it'd be as if his flesh…

— Tom Rachman

Many things embarrass me, but reading isn't one of them. I'm not ashamed of my slightly weird collection of prison memoirs. Nor the flaky…

— Tom Rachman