James frey quotes

There is emotion in the hug, and there is respect and a form of love. Emotion that comes from honesty, respect that comes from challenge, and the form of love that exists between people whose minds have touched, whose hearts have touched, whose souls have touched. Our minds touched. Our hearts touched. Our souls touched. We separate.

Stay. Fight. Live. Take it. Cry. Cry. Cry.

More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if i wasn't alone.

I don't speak with proper grammar. I don't speak with dialogue attribution. I don't speak with quotation. I don't care about any of that stuff. It's about rhythm, and it's about what's in their [the character's] head, and what feels more natural. And it's about speed. I want things to move.

There is no such things as God's word on earth. Or if there is it is not to be found in books. -Then where is it to be found?- In love. In the laughter of children. In a gift given. In a life saved. In the quiet of morning. In the dead of night. In the sound of the ocean, or the sound of a car. It can be found in anything, anywhere. It is the fabric of our lives, our feelings, the people we live with, things we know to be real.

It's the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?

You should at all times be showing a well-motivated character overcoming obstacles in pursuit of a goal.

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.

When something is staring you in the face in your life and you see it with your own two eyes and feel it within your heart only a fool doesn't believe it to be true.

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.

I always wanted to be the outlaw. And that's to a certain extent how I've lived.

And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.

I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

She feels and she cries. It is to be admired.

Love only brought me lonliness and horror.

We live in a world that's very fast, where we get bombarded with huge amounts of information very quickly, and I have tried to tailor my voice to the times, which I think, writers, over the course of history - many have always done.

There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain.

I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.

Most of the time, it's not the concept, but the execution of craft that counts.

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.

The promise of eternal life makes people forsake the life they're given.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm married, I have a couple kids, I've traveled a lot, I've done book tours a lot, I'm happy to stay home and take my kids to school and come to the office.

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.

I turn and I look back across the lake. The mist is gone and the ice diminished, the drip of the icicles quick and heavy. The sun is up and the sky is blue empty blue light blue clear blue. I would drink the sky if I could drink it, drink it and celebrate it and let it fill me and become me. I am getting better. Empty and clear and light and blue. I am getting better.

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.

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.

When I see you, the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you.

What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.

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.

This moment and this chance, they are the same, and they are mine if I choose them,and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye, don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving.

On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray. I was standing in line for lunch and I didn't see it coming. I went down. When I got up, I turned around and started throwing punches." (James Frey, pg.1)

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.

Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.

I sleep during the day. I still dream about drinking and drugs. Sometimes I wake to a hang-over, sometimes I wake to a trickle of blood from my nose, sometimes I wake scared and shaking. I read, go to museums and visit Lilly in the afternoon. Sometimes I read to her, sometimes I talk to her, sometimes I just sit and remember the times, remember the times, remember the times." (James Frey, pg.119)

But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.

The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.

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.

I meet a third man he's an old man he trips in the street he falls and I help him up, walk him to the curb. He shakes my hand says keep the faith, young man. I ask him what he means, he says keep running and don't let them catch you.

She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis.

Part of me still loves. More of me doesn't.

I skip the introduction. If the book goes in the trash, I want it to go because of my thoughts on it, not because of some Asshole's thoughts who wrote the introduction.

I don't want to walk in the middle. I want people to read what I write and feel strongly about it. If, at some point, whatever I am doing is failing to elicit a response, whether it's very positive or very negative, then I am going to stop doing it.

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.

Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says. Stay. Fight. Live. Take it.

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.

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

A contest was held in 1994 to rename the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center after an extensive renovation and expansion. The winning name, chosen from over ten thousand entries, was the Los Angeles Convention Center.

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.

Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.

I'm tired of making people sad and I'm tired of disappointing them and I'm tired of seeing them break. I have seen this too many times. He will be the last.

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel. I broke something, Old Man. How badly is it broken? It's in a million little pieces. I'm afraid I can't help you. Why? There's nothing you can do. Why? It can't be fixed. Why? It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.

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.

I've been alone my whole life, I can't do it anymore.

Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.

Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world.

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

On the other couch a women sits with a young boy looking through a picture book about Babar the Elephant. When I find a magazine and I lean back to start reading it, I can see the women watching me out of the corner of her eye. She moves closer to the child and she leans over and kisses his forehead. I know why she does it and i don't blame her.

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.

Take the risk and do whatever you can do and try not to get caught. If you do get caught, do it again.

Live and let live, do not judge, take life as it comes and deal with it, everything will be okay.

My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.

Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I turn and I slowly walk away and I don't look back. It has always been a fault of mine, but it is the way I am. I never look back. Never.

The calm. If there is God or something Higher for me it is this. The calm. If there is something that will hold me when I need to hold it is this the calm. There is no anger, no rage, no Fury. There is no want, no need, no desire. There is no hatred no shame no regret. There is no grief, no sadness, no depression. There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.

Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I have never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I would have fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall.

To write a damn good thriller, you need a killer attitude.

Practice not wanting, desiring, judging, doing, fighting, knowing. Practice just being. Everything will fall into place.

I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. 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.

I look at pastries and cakes, tarts and pies. My body craves sugar, always craves sugar. Years of alcohalism and the high level of sugar in alcohal created the craving, which I feed with candy and soda.

For the worst things of our lives, it is sometimes the best way, to never speak of them again.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

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.

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag full of mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

I, however, like black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience. In the darkest darkness, all is black. In the deepest hole, all is black. In the terror of my Addicted mind, all is black. In the empty periods of my lost memory, all is black. I like black, goddammit, and I am going to give it its due.

I think as an artist or a writer it's OK to want to control your own work.

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.

I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I am also aware that in order to win that which is great, you must first win that which is small.

There is no fear. Absolutely no fear. When one lives without fear, one cannot be broken. When one lives with fear one is broken before one begins to live.

Ive never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.

Every year, at 8:00 PM on the second Saturday of July, hundreds of people gather along a section of Los Angeles rail track to drop their pants and moon passing passenger trains.

It's cold and it's winter and the world has gone to sleep

To live with angels and chase their dreams.

This Girl with nothing but her own strength and a desire to be free. With nothing but a beating heart that is scared to be alone. With nothing but clear blue eyes that see through me and understand me. With nothing but open arms ready to receive me. To stand by me. To walk with me. To love me. I love her. Lilly. The Girl with nothing and everything. Lilly. I love her. A tear appears. She smiles. She leans forward kisses my lips softly kisses me and as our lips touch barely touch she whispers. I love you too, James. Our lips barely touching she whispers. I love you. Whispers. I love you.

I have lived alone, I have fought alone, I have dealt with the pain alone. I will die alone. I think when I'm going to leave. I don’t want to be seen and I don’t want to be followed , I want to disappear quickly and quietly and without any drama , I want as much time in the darkness as I can possibly have . The darkness provides cover, the darkness provides places to hide and the darkness provides comfort.

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.

He tells me I look as if I could use a hugand i laugh at him and he ignores me and steps forward and puts his arms around me and hugs me. I warm at the simple pleasure of human contact and for the first time in a long time i actually feel good." (James Frey, pg.38)

I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed.

Its not just a smile of momentary happiness. When it disappears from my face, it will stay with me.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

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.

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.

I can run fast when I want to run fast, and I've always been good at destroying things.

He pulled out turned west and started driving towards the glow it was thousands of miles away, he started driving towards the glow.

If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

People don't want to accept the responsibility for their own weakness, so they place the blame on something that they're not responsible for, like disease or genetics.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

Not everyone who works hard makes their dream come true. You need luck and hard work and being in the right place at the right time but I still very much believe it's possible.

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.

...if you can accept the truth and live with it your heart will be at peace.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

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.

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.

I have a great amount of confidence and faith in my abilities to write. There are other areas of my life where I'm not as confident, and have not as much faith, but when it comes down to writing and working, I don't worry about it. I trust myself to get it right.

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.

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.

I hope nobody took the Razzle Dazzle Rose.

It's been great getting better with you.

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

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.

...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.

In Lilly's eyes her beautiful clear water eyes there is what I have sought and never found, wanted and never had, hoped for and never discovered. Love.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sleep is still difficult I sleep for three or four hours a day. Usually sometime in the afternoon. I walk in the cold, keep myself numb. I cry less, and less." (James Frey, pg.88)

Lying became part of my life. I lied if I needed to lie to get something or get out of something

Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There's publishing, touring, marketing, web presence.

You only live once, buy Picassos whenever possible.

America was first colonized by Puritans. Most of our earliest immigrants, and many since, have come here in order to practice their religious beliefs as they please. Our culture has always been, and will most likely always be, profoundly influenced by religion.