“The old man took out an extraordinarily beautiful and elegant handkerchief and gave it to her to dry her tears. It was the sort of handkerchief that one might be content to be judged by if it was all that… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“-Lara is a weasel. I've always hated her. The only happy week I had as a child was when she fell from the roof… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I'd say writing is easier for me now than it once was, but I do less of it. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“Our knowledge about ourselves is our least reliable knowledge. Yet, so thoroughly do we ordinarily champion our own cause that it is acknowledged effective… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you? — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“We are born in this cemetery, but must not despair. -Piet Soron, 1847” — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another. — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“Can you imagine? That you can say something, offhand, and it can matter, it can really matter to someone else? Can you imagine what… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“One cultivates one's life, one's friends, one's means, one's hopes. One goes from place to place, from triumph to triumph, in search of ambition… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
“The whole thing about people living on in memory is a crock of shit. The best you can do is try to remember what… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse! — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it… — Jesse Ball Copy Share Image
