How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

So I kept reading, just to stay alive. In fact, I'd read two or three books at the same time, so I wouldn't finish one without being in the middle of another -- anything to stop me from falling into the big, gaping void. You see, books fill the empty spaces. If I'm waiting for a bus, or am eating alone, I can always rely on a book to keep me company. Sometimes I think I like them even more than people. People will let you down in life. They'll disappoint you and hurt you and betray you. But not books. They're better than life.

There are moments in your life when you see yourself through someone else’s eyes, when your only hope of believing you’re capable of doing something is because someone else believes it for you.

I'm a sucker for a guy with a big organ.

Hard work may pay off in the long run, but the benefits of laziness are immediate.

I step up to a podium and speak to the audience as if I were addressing a rally. But just as I begin, a tall figure in the fifth row stands up and says, "Excuse me, Jesus..." I lean forward to search the blackness for the voice. The figure raises a pistol and fires a shot that echoes all over the auditorium. The place goes nuts. People scream. I smash the blood pack under my shirt and collapse on the floor as the figure dashes out the nearest exit. A couple of audience members actually run after him like it's real. The stage goes to red and the electric guitars start to wail. It's fucking brilliant. There's no time for the audience to recover. Onstage it's chaos: fifty teenagers keen and scream, choristers dressed as cops, paramedics, and reporters dash on trying to restore order, but only complicating things. And in the middle of it all is me, lying in a pool of blood. This, this, this is what being an actor is about. To be able to elicit such a strong reaction from hundreds of people at once - that power is awesome and irresistible and humbling. If you want to think I'm needy because I love applause, go ahead. But I know that the reason I perform is for moments like these, moments when you connect with an audience and take them somewhere.

Y en medio de todo, yo permanezco quieto, sobre un charco de sangre. Es esto, esto, esto, esto es de lo que se trata. Esto es ser actor. Ser capaz de conseguir una reacción tan fuerte de cientos de personas a la vez: ese poder es increíble, irresistible y humillante. Si queréis, pensad que estoy necesitado, porque me encanta el aplauso. No obstante, que sepáis que la razón por la que actúo es por momentos como éste, en los que se puede conectar con un público y llevarlos a otro nivel, alegre o triste, da igual. Eso es lo que hace que valga la pena.

Algunas mañanas me despertaba y el dolor era tan enorme que quería terminar con todo, pero entonces pensaba: «No, Ted, hoy no te puedes suicidar. Estás a mitad de un libro estupendo».

You've got strengths you're not even aware of yet and you are going to be amazed at what you can do when this is all over. I believe in you; not just in your talent, but in you yourself. There is so much more to you than you even realize, I promise.

Pairs of shoes should be like pairs of people,' Paula says. 'They should complement one another, not match.

If you want to be a garbage man, be a garbage man, but be the best garbage man you can be. (p. 8)

Pork chop, pork chop, Greazy, greazy, We'ze gonna beat you, Easy, easy. Corn bread, Jeri Curl, Bar-bee-cue, We'ze gonna beat the whoopy outta you!

Excluding vacations, that's 144 gym classes a year, which comes to a lifetime total of 1,584; multiply that by forty minutes a class and it comes to 1,056 hours of nonstop harassment, or forty-four days of round-the-clock terror. POWs have died for less.

They are, essentially, a happy family, in their scream-at-each-other-from-the-other-end-of-the-house kind of way and I've always felt at home around them. Jews are a lot like Italians, except smarter.

Now I realize that sliding underneath a table in a restaurant is somewhat of an I Love Lucy response to a crisis, but once I'm down on the floor I can't very well reappear without giving some thought as to how I'm going to accomplish it.

The sky is turning from black to gray and I stop to remember this melancholy moment for my acting. I huddle on a bench in my big thrift-store overcoat and my painful hair, watching my breath make clouds and thinking Holden Caulfield-y thoughts, like how come you never see any baby pigeons? This is what those people on black-and-white French postcards must feel like. I find myself craving a cup of coffee and a cigarette despite the fact that I neither drink coffee nor smoke.

The house is about as tidy as most people's attics, which makes it a particularly hospitable hangout for sloppy teenagers.

The people here are such snobs." She doesn't seem concerned that those snobs can hear her. "But I honestly don't understand what they've got to be so snobby about. Don't they realize they live in New Jersey?

This summer is my big chance to improve myself and I'm determined to give up sugar, caffeine, alcohol, read meat, white flour and fried foods, as well as finally learn to meditate and become the spiritually evolved person I know that I truly am inside.