Quotes from This is Where I Leave You

Jonathan Tropper ·  339 pages

Rating: (117.7K votes)


“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“You're terrified of being alone. Anything you do now will be motivated by that fear. You have to stop worrying about finding love again. It will come when it comes. Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



“You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“It's just hard to see people from your past when your present is so cataclysmically fucked.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet's tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



“We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I may not be old but I’m too old to have this much nothing”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



“We are all smiling in the picture, three brothers having a grand old time just playing around in the living room, no agendas, no buried resentments or permanent scars. Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kids.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I sit down on the bed, cradling her little head against my shoulder, inhaling her sweet baby scent. Someday she'll get older, and the world will start having its way with her. She'll throw temper tantrums, she'll need speech therapy, she'll grow breasts and have pimples, she'll fight with her parents, she'll worry about her weight, she'll put out, she'll have her heart broken, she'll be happy, she'll be lonely, she'll be complicated, she'll be confused, she'll be depressed, she'll fall in love and get married, and she'll have a baby of her own. But right now she is pure and undiminished and beautiful.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



“...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I've never been shot, but this probably what it feels like, that second of nothingness right before the pain catches up to the bullet.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“It's hard to imagine her ever having felt lost, but it's impossible to know the people your parents were before they were your parents.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“...the first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I wasted a lot of time being angry, time I can't get back. And now I see you, so angry about what happened to your marriage, and I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



“And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will feel like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benetar or the Cure on the soundtrack.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“A good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You


“I blame Hollywood for skewing perspectives. Life is just a big romantic comedy to them, and if you meet cute, happily ever-after is a forgone conclusion.”
― Jonathan Tropper, quote from This is Where I Leave You



Video

About the author

Jonathan Tropper
Born place: in The United States
Born date February 19, 1970
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Tommy Stratford and Michael . . . something or other,” she says. “Are you worried I’ll like them better than I like you?”

“That’s just not possible.”

“Why? Because you’re so irresistible?”

“No. Because you don’t like anyone.”

Arsinoe snorts.

“I do like you, Junior.”

“Oh?”

“But I have more important things to think about right now.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne


“I am always with you. Love never burns away. It just keeps on and on.”
― Joe Hill, quote from The Fireman


“When you fight for what you believe in, you come across a lot of obstacles. People who don't agree with you, people who agree with you but only some bits, people who delight in ripping you down, people who are threatened by the strength of your belief.

But I was beginning to realise, the biggest hurdle to overcome was the hurdle of yourself.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from What's a Girl Gotta Do?


“Everyone has something dark in their past. I suppose it's our job to overcome it. And if we can’t overcome it, then all we can do is make the most of it.”
― Tricia Levenseller, quote from Daughter of the Pirate King


“Love doesn't need to last a lifetime for it to be real. You can't judge the quality of a love by the length of time it lasts. Everything dies, love included. Sometimes it dies with a person, sometimes it dies on its own. The greatest love story ever told doesn't have to be about two people who spent their whole lives together. It might be about a love that lasted two weeks or two months or two years, but burned brighter and hotter and more brilliantly than any other love before or after. Don't mourn a failed love; there is no such thing. All love is equal in the brain.”
― Krystal Sutherland, quote from Our Chemical Hearts


Interesting books

Blood Slave
(702)
Blood Slave
by Travis Luedke
Taken
(14.8K)
Taken
by Robert Crais
The Souls of Black Folk
(26.1K)
The Souls of Black F...
by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings
(6.1K)
The Labyrinth of Sol...
by Octavio Paz
The Star Rover
(3.6K)
The Star Rover
by Jack London
Ketchup Clouds
(10.6K)
Ketchup Clouds
by Annabel Pitcher

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.