Jess Walter Quotes

There is a lot to look at when you are serious about transformation. You look at everything you've ever done, every circumstance you've ever been in, cleaning up everything in your past. Reconciling, forgiving others, forgiving yourself. It's a lot of work, actually.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

I left things out - my motivations, my history, my emotional responses - because I am not good at understanding them or writing about them. I tried and it was generally boring and always unconvincing. Most importantly I wanted to try to place Afghans and Afghanistan in the foreground rather than my own character.

I think it's a very healthy thing to learn from what's happened in the past. But only if you look at what happened and think, 'How could I have dealt with that differently?' Then let it go.

I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

Some of my best friends here in New York have pasts I have a hard time reconciling with the people I'm close to now. But I wouldn't change them - or their pasts - for anything in the world. Their experiences are what made them the people they are today.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

It's good for everyone to understand that they are to love their enemies, simply because your enemies show you things about yourself you need to change. So in actuality enemies are friends in reverse.

I have found that when I have attacked people personally, that's been a stupid mistake on my part. And so whoever I have attacked personally I apologize for.

For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.

I really don't hold grudges. I mean, I remember everything, but I move on.

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn't so much about plot. It was much more about character.

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and Responsibility of our existence.

I write to discover what I think.

You never want to judge your character.

Those who do not forgive history are assigned to repeat it until compassion replaces judgment.

Judge your neighbor, write it down. Ask four questions, turn it around.

Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.

I'd like to thank everybody who ever punched or kissed me in my life and everybody who I ever punched or kissed.

It is easier to recount grievances and slights than it is to set down a broad redress of such grievances and slights. The reason is that one fears to be thought of as an arrant braggart.

Thinking of someone else is what got me damned. It’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat. (Xypher) You know sometimes it’s by repeating our mistakes that we realize what went wrong the first time. Knowing that, we’re able to fix the mistake and move past it. (Acheron)

Even the mistakes and the pain that you've caused and enacted upon you. That is definitely what I'm trying to capture

I think at the age of 50, everyone should write their own autobiography.

There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.

As long as we are human, we are destined to make mistakes. We all fall prey to flawed beliefs and views. What separates a forward-looking person from an intransigent one, a virtuous person from a malevolent one, however, is whether one can candidly admit to ones mistakes and take bold steps to redress them.