Quotes from The Abstinence Teacher

Tom Perrotta ·  368 pages

Rating: (15.5K votes)


“Once you'd broken through that invisible barrier that separates one person from another, you were connected forever, whether you liked it or not.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory," Gregory said, "It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date---not that she was going on a lot of dates these days---let alone to work. ”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher



“They were good listeners, worldly yet easily shocked, hungry for details, curious and nonjudgmental at the same time, always happy to give advice, but only if it was requested.”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures…”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


About the author

Tom Perrotta
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date August 13, 1961
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Popular quotes

“But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G.K. Chesterton, quote from Orthodoxy


“To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.”
― W.G. Sebald, quote from The Rings of Saturn


“(On the seeming futility of metaphysics) Why then has nature afflicted our reason with the restless striving for such a path, as if it were one of reason's most important occupations? Still more, how little cause have we to place trust in our reason if in one of the most important parts of our desire for knowledge it does not merely forsake us but even entices us with delusions and in the end betrays us!

Or if the path has merely eluded us so far, what indications may we use that might lead us to hope that in renewed attempts we will be luckier than those who have gone before us?”
― Immanuel Kant, quote from Critique of Pure Reason


“In my life, I’ve learned when to let shit go and when to fight. This, babe, what we got, I’ll fight for.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from The Gamble


“It's noon, Valerius. We both should be asleep?" Acheron paused. "Where are you anyways?"
"I don't know," Valerius said. "I hear some godawful kind of music from outside, horns blaring, and I'm in a house with a mohawk cuckoo bird, a transvestite, and a knife-wielding lunatic."
"Why are you at Tabitha's?" Acheron asked.
"Excuse me?"
"Relax," Acheron said with a yawn. "You're in good hands. Tabby won't hurt you."
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― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Seize the Night


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