Everyday Encounters Quotes

My inspiration comes from everything, everywhere. Just the people around you, the things you see and most definitely your experiences. Once I get an idea, it pretty much writes itself.

I have no trouble walking around. But every once in a while, somebody will come, during the course of the day, and say, 'Oh, I recognize you from such-and-such,' and yeah, they'll make a connection. I think for the most part, people don't go, 'Where do I know him from? Does he work at the bank?'

I'd love to be approached to do ordinary things more.

The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.

Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even.

Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.

I think sometimes in the focus on deep friendships and on romantic relationships, we can lose sight of how important the small connections we make are with strangers and with people that we may encounter for just a few seconds or a few minutes, whether it's the barista at our coffee shop or the stranger next to us on the subway.

People can never work out where they know me from. They just come up and chat with me like mates.

Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but...at supper time, or walking along a road...He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.

I don't get my inspiration from books or a painting. I get it from the women I meet.

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.

The decisions that we write off as momentary, insignificant, incidental, everyday encounters are exactly when we have a chance to define ourselves. To find beauty. To engage the world around us. To create memories.