Top 100 James Frey Quotes
#1. I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.
James Frey
#2. 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.
James Frey
#3. That's how life works. You know it when you know it.
They're nineteen and in love. Alone except for each other. Jobless and homeless, looking for something, somewhere, anywhere here.
They're on a sixteen-line highway.
Driving west.
James Frey
#4. 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.
James Frey
#5. Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.
James Frey
#6. 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.
James Frey
#7. I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.
James Frey
#8. Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.
James Frey
#9. 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.
James Frey
#10. I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.
James Frey
#11. Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.
James Frey
#12. Learn to deal with that. It's the way of the world. You fight and struggle and work your ass off and then you die. Deal with that.
James Frey
#13. I go to my Room and I drink and I smoke some cigarettes and I think about her. I drink and I smoke and I think about her and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me.
James Frey
#14. Lying became part of my life. I lied if I needed to lie to get something or get out of something
James Frey
#15. I've been alone my whole life, I can't do it anymore.
James Frey
#16. Love only brought me lonliness and horror.
James Frey
#17. 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.
James Frey
#18. 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
#19. Life is hard, kid. you gotta be harder. you gotta take it on and fight for it and be a fucking man about how you live it. if you're too much of a pussy to do that, then maybe you should leave, 'cause you're dead already
James Frey
#20. I want to run or die or get fucked up. I want to be blind and dumb and have no heart. I want to crawl in a hole and never come out. I want to wipe my existence straight off the map. Straight off the fucking map.
James Frey
#21. They live in cardbox encampments, tin shacks, they live in tents and sleeping bags, they live on the ground. They yell at each other, scream at each other, sleep with each other, do drugs and drink with each other, fuck each other, kill each other. They
James Frey
#22. I hadn't learned yet that everybody's locked up some way or other. That's how life is we're all imprisoned by something.
James Frey
#23. What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.
James Frey
#24. Being an unpublished novelist has about as much social acceptability as being a shopping bag lady.
James Frey
#25. For some it is harder to
write a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.
James N. Frey
#26. If you're gonna cry, cry because of all the good times we had, and all the laughs, and all the fun shit we did, and cry because those memories make you happy.
James Frey
#27. 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
#28. Let things be, let yourself be, let everything be and accept it as it is. Nothing more. Nothing less.
James Frey
#29. 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
#30. There is one thing. One thing that haunts me from page one to page twenty-two. I have never spoken of it. I have never told another person
James Frey
#31. The way America works, and the way L.A. works, is a very small percentage of people get what they want out of life, and a much greater percentage try very very hard and they don't. That's just the way it is.
James Frey
#32. I can run fast when I want to run fast, and I've always been good at destroying things.
James Frey
#33. Love and laughter and fucking make one's life better. Worship is just the passing of time.
James Frey
#34. 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.
James Frey
#35. 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)
James Frey
#36. I hope nobody took the Razzle Dazzle Rose.
James Frey
#37. When characters have different goals and are intent on achieving them, conflict results. If the stakes are high and both sides are unyielding, you have the makings of high drama.
James N. Frey
#38. But we are what we are, and humans will always hate.
James Frey
#39. Practice not wanting, desiring, judging, doing, fighting, knowing. Practice just being. Everything will fall into place.
James Frey
#40. I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy.
James Frey
#41. I wonder why they still love me and why I can't love them back and how two normal stable people could have created something like me, lived with something like me, and tolerated something like me.
James Frey
#42. I miss everything. I miss talking to her, hearing about her day. I miss her voice all gravelly and smoky, I miss hearing her laugh, I miss getting her letters, writing her letters. I miss her eyes, and the smell of her hair, and the way her breath tasted. I fucking miss everything.
James Frey
#43. Live and let live, do not judge, take life as it comes and deal with it, everything will be okay.
James Frey
#44. Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.
James Frey
#45. They say confront the difficult while it is easy, accomplish the great one step at a time. They say let things come and let things go and live without possession and live without expectation.
James Frey
#46. L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.
James Frey
#47. 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?
James Frey
#48. 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.
James Frey
#49. Its not just a smile of momentary happiness. When it disappears from my face, it will stay with me.
James Frey
#50. 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
#51. 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.
James Frey
#52. 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.
James Frey
#53. To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.
James Frey
#54. 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.
James Frey
#55. I always wanted to be the outlaw. And that's to a certain extent how I've lived.
James Frey
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. Whether they are accepted or not isn't important. What is important is the act of apologizing, the act of admitting fault, the act of asking for forgiveness.
James Frey
#59. The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.
James Frey
#60. In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election.
James Frey
#61. She feels and she cries. It is to be admired.
James Frey
#62. 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.
James Frey
#64. Because I'll never be any better. I'll never be any more normal and I'll never make the pain go away. Never ever ever.
James Frey
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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.
James Frey
#69. Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.
James Frey
#70. I used to think i was tough, but then i realized i wasn't. i was fragile and i wore thick fucking armor. and i hurt people so they couldn't hurt me. and i thought that was what being tough was, but it isn't.
James Frey
#71. We ask for progress, not perfection. Just do your best.
James Frey
#72. Without a reunion, the Eagles are forever young, like James Dean.
Glenn Frey
#73. 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
#74. Part of me still loves. More of me doesn't.
James Frey
#75. This is how it has always been with me. Give me something good, I'll destroy it. Love me, I'll destroy you. I have never felt deserving of anything in my life.
James Frey
#76. The promise of eternal life makes people forsake the life they're given.
James Frey
#77. 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.
James Frey
#78. 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?
James Frey
#79. If there is beauty, there is ugliness. If there is good, there is bad. Being and nonbeing and difficult and easy and high and low and long and short and before and after and need, depend, create and define each other.
James Frey
#80. 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
#81. Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.
James Frey
#82. There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.
James Frey
#83. 1954. Smog prevents airplanes from landing and ships from docking for three days.
James Frey
#84. The best stories are universal stories that have been told for as long as humanity has existed it's just figuring out new ways to do it, with language, with structure. And so I'm always trying to do that.
James Frey
#85. In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.
James Frey
#86. In 1918, a Chinese immigrant working in a Los Angeles noodle factory invented the fortune cookie. He did so believing that a cookie with a positive message in it would raise the spirits of the city's poor.
James Frey
#87. 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.
James Frey
#88. No matter how bad or difficult life becomes, if you hold on, hold on to whatever it is you need to hold on to. If you hold on, just hold on, life will get better.
James Frey
#89. 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
#90. You don't have to follow anybody's conventions.
James Frey
#91. 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.
James Frey
#92. The future is unwritten. What will be will be.
James Frey
#93. Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There's publishing, touring, marketing, web presence.
James Frey
#94. Laughing and Love. They are both drugs.
James Frey
#95. If you care about what others think of you, then you will always be their slave.
James Frey
#96. When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.
James Frey
#97. he sits and waits and hopes that at some
James Frey
#98. There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing.
James Frey
#99. I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed ...
James Frey
#100. I try to write books that are different from the books I've already written. I think one of the thing I really try to do is reinvent how a novel can be written.
James Frey
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