James Frey quotes
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“What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.”
-- James Frey -
“The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2004). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.270, Anchor
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“The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2004). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.51, Anchor
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“Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.”
-- James Frey -
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“Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2003). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.287, Rutgers University Press
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“Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.”
-- James Frey -
“And as ridiculous as it may sound, sometimes all any of us needs in life is for someone to hold our hand and walk next to us.”
-- James Frey -
“About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2004). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.507, Anchor
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“The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.”
-- James Frey -
“Its not just a smile of momentary happiness. When it disappears from my face, it will stay with me.”
-- James Frey -
“When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.”
-- James FreySource : "James Frey: 'I always wanted to be the outlaw'" by Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2011.
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“There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be.”
-- James Frey -
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“Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world.”
-- James Frey -
“I felt like I had lost something. But not something silly, like my keys or my gum; more like my arm or my foot, something that really mattered. Like something that I could live without, but would make life much harder if it were missing. And life is hard enough. Life is hard enough with everything we're given.”
-- James Frey -
“Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
-- James Frey -
“We stare into each other's eyes and softly kiss speaking and saying more with the movement of our lips and the tips of our fingers than words will allow us to say. Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.”
-- James Frey -
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“Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.”
-- James Frey -
“When I started writing 'A Million Little Pieces,' I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.”
-- James Frey -
“And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2011). “The Final Testament”, p.140, Hachette UK
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“...we got this gift of life and we got it one time and we gonna get hurt in it and be hurt going through it and the only thing that'll make that hurt better or hurt less is love.”
-- James Frey -
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“Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.”
-- James Frey -
“For the worst things of our lives, it is sometimes the best way, to never speak of them again.”
-- James Frey -
“I stand, walk over to him, sit down on his bed, put my arms around him, hug him. He hugs me back strong and I can feel the shame coming through his arms. I am a Criminal and he is a Judge and I am white and he is black, but at this moment none of that matters. He is a man who needs a friends and I can be his friend.”
-- James Frey -
“I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.”
-- James Frey -
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“We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.”
-- James Frey -
“For the most profound experiences in our lives and in the world words are worth nothing. Can you describe love Or death Can you describe what it really feels like the first time you see your child Or the first time your heart gets broken You can try...but it won't come close to describing what it really was or what it really felt like.”
-- James Frey -
“The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value.”
-- James Frey -
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“The feeling of arms around me, of love in my heart, it was more powerful than any of the negativity I knew was existing in the world for me. That feeling of love killed it all.”
-- James Frey -
“My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people's lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough.”
-- James Frey -
“The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.”
-- James Frey -
“I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.”
-- James Frey -
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“I've always wondered what it would be like if the Messiah, or Christ Returned, were actually alive and living in our society; who would that person be, how we would identify them, how would they live and what would they believe in, how would society react to them? I decided to try and tell my idea of that story.”
-- James Frey -
“The point of what I do is that it doesn't really matter what a book or a story is as long it moves you, informs you, challenges you, entertains you, or changes you.”
-- James Frey -
“There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.”
-- James Frey -
“Whatever hardships there have been in my life I still live in a very privileged position. Fear is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Fear is seeing a child get hurt. Fear is watching someone you love waste away. Fear is knowing you are going to die yourself. But there's no fear in what I do. I write books.”
-- James Frey -
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“When I was a little boy, Marvin Hagler was my idol. He got no respect for most of his career. His fighting style was straight ahead. He took every shot thrown at him, and he kept punching back 'til he won. I honestly feel that's how I am. I take big shots from people. But I keep going.”
-- James Frey -
“But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost.”
-- James FreySource : Jamie Ford (2014). “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost: Two Bestselling Novels: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Songs of Willow Frost”, p.573, Ballantine Books
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“All of us started normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost.”
-- James Frey -
“Take the risk and do whatever you can do and try not to get caught. If you do get caught, do it again.”
-- James Frey -
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“I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.”
-- James Frey -
“I will not allow people to impose rules on me that don't make sense to me. And I live and work very much outside the literary world and the literary system. What they think and what they believe and what their rules are mean nothing to me.”
-- James Frey -
“Most of the time, it's not the concept, but the execution of craft that counts.”
-- James Frey -
“I think as an artist or a writer it's OK to want to control your own work.”
-- James Frey -
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“I'm just going to write my books and do my work and release it. Let the world decide what it is, and if it's any good or not.”
-- James Frey -
“Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.”
-- James Frey -
“My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.”
-- James Frey -
“Sometimes I really want to believe in God. I really admire, in a lot of ways, people who have faith. I think it must be a beautiful thing to believe.”
-- James Frey -
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“When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.”
-- James Frey -
“I am essentially optimistic. Being alive is incredible. Life is extraordinary and beautiful. It can be hard and sad and terrifying, but it's all we've got.”
-- James Frey -
“I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.”
-- James Frey -
“My life is routine. I wake up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I sit on the floor of the cell I do not go to breakfast. I stare at a gray cement wall. I keep my legs crossed my back straight my eyes forward. I take deep breaths in and out, in and out, and I try not to move. I sit for as long as I can I sit until everything hurts I sit until everything stops hurting I sit until I lose myself in the gray wall I sit until my mind becomes as blank as the gray wall. I sit and I stare and I breathe. I sit and I stare. I breathe.”
-- James Frey -
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“In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.”
-- James Frey -
“She is sitting on frozen ground wrapped in a blanket, her pale skin shining. She smiles and she stands and without words, she steps forward, opens the blanket, envelops me within it and within her and within myself. She kisses my cheek, the one not torn, she wraps me and she holds me. Her arms are thin but strong. She whispers in my ear, "I'm glad you're here.”
-- James FreySource : James Frey (2004). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.375, Anchor
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“Be patient and wait. Your mud will settle. Your water will be clear.”
-- James Frey -
“Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests. Why? You tell me. I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.”
-- James Frey -
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“In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters”
-- James Frey -
“It's cold and it's winter and the world has gone to sleep”
-- James Frey
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