Quotes from Palo Alto: Stories

James Franco ·  224 pages

Rating: (9.3K votes)


“Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad, and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there's any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about...”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“There was a moon and it was on the water. A miniature moon rocking on the little waves. I always see nice images like that but I don’t know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“The wind came in languid gusts like whispered reminders.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories



“Barry had done it with her, the girl I loved, and it had meant nothing to him; Tanya would die and no one would care; and there were billions of bodies alive on earth and they would all be buried and ground into dirt; and Picasso was a master at age sixteen and I was a perfect shit.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“He was so. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“I drank from the bottle again and it was a scary plunge because I always wanted to take too much. It hurt, but it was also impressive, like being in the hands of a bigger force. And because of that, a relief.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“...it can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great, but maybe some people say the same thing about you, and you want to tell those people: 'No, you're stupid, it's no fun being me.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


“I guess in some people's lives, no one tells you what to be, and so you be nothing.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories



“Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there’s any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don’t know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other’s tapes and find out what each of us was really like. But then you’d have to watch girls go poo and boys trying to go down on themselves.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories


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About the author

James Franco
Born place: in Palo Alto, California, The United States
Born date April 19, 1978
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Popular quotes

“Όταν της τον έβγαλα ήταν πασαλειμμένος με σκατά κι εκείνη αηδίασε. Εγώ όχι. Εγώ είχα πάντα σε εγρήγορση τον κυνισμό, δεν κοιμόταν ποτέ. Το θέμα είναι ότι το σεξ δεν είναι για ανθρώπους με αναστολές. Το σεξ είναι ανταλλαγή υγρών, ρευστών, σάλιου, ανάσας και δυνατών μυρωδιών, ούρων, σπέρματος, σκατών, ιδρώτα, μικροβίων, βακτηρίων. Αλλιώς δεν είναι. Εάν είναι μόνο τρυφερότητα και αιθέρια πνευματικότητα, τότε περιορίζεται σε μια στείρα παρωδία του τι θα μπορούσε να είναι. Τίποτα.”
― Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, quote from Dirty Havana Trilogy


“what my mother doesnt know wont hurt her”
― Sonya Sones, quote from What My Mother Doesn't Know


“Of course, it is true that plastic surgeries and sex reassignments are “artificial,” but then again so are the exercise bikes we work out on, the antiwrinkle moisturizers we smear on our faces, the dyes we use to color our hair, the clothes we buy to complement our figures, and the TV shows, movies, magazines, and billboards that bombard us with “ideal” images of gender, size, and beauty that set the standards that we try to live up to in the first place. The class systems based on attractiveness and gender are extraordinarily “artificial”— yet only those practices that seem to subvert those classes (rather than reaffirm them) are ever characterized as such.”
― Julia Serano, quote from Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity


“It is no disaster to be unhappy but how discouraging it must be to know that there is nothing to pin the blame on, outside oneself?”
― Gerard Reve, quote from De avonden


“You’ve got to have a God. Without God, you might turn to something really crazy, like witchcraft, or religion.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from God Knows


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