Best 29 quotes of Peter Hedges on MyQuotes

GOOD AS NEW was born out of the idea of writing a play where the stakes were high and the collisions were of a verbal nature. Also I wanted to write a play where people were smarter than I was, and more alive than I feel normally. I became interested in the idea of characters who would surprise me. I guess one could argue that nothing comes out of you that wasn't within you to begin with, but maybe there are ways to trick yourself into becoming more an observer or an advocate for the characters.

I can't stop terrorism; I can't cure cancer. But I can put some stories out there in their own quiet way that talk about tolerance.

I don't want to write my life. I live my life. I want to make up a new world.

I feel like there's a certain kind of laughter missing in the world.

In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

I think it's a fantastic thing to be alive.

I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.

I've wanted to direct for a long time, but it had to be a story I wanted to tell. The writer's job is to find the story that he should tell.

I want to write stories that don't help you escape life, but embrace life.

I would hope that people might view their fellow beings, all beings, with more empathy, more compassion, with a desire to understand. Even if they can't know why people are the way they are, to understand that they're probably that way for a good reason.

People are usually pretty hungry after a funeral. I guess it's because we all realize that time is running out and we better eat all we can. Please don't mention that to my mother.

The bigger the budget, the less an audience is trusted, and that's the difference between a big-budget film and a small-budget film.

Anyway, they took her body to McBurney's Funeral Home in Motley. They'll be planting her tomorrow.

Gilbert?" Some days I hate all those who know my name.

God forgives you your sins." I say right back, "And I forgive him his.

He loves to hide, but only if you take the time to find him. And while I suspect that's true for most people, only a retard or a kid would admit it.

He sees me through the glass. We both nod like we give a small shit about each other.

How can you kill a man who'd already been dead for years?

I devised a test. I turned off the TV and instantly the snoring stopped. She began to move. When I felt her eyes about to open, I turned the TV back on and back to sleep she went. Then I'd turn it off and on - sometimes for millisecond - and she never failed me. Each time it was off, she's move and mutter - each time it was on, she'd sleep. By the time the headlights from Amy's Nova turned into our driveway, my suspicion had been confirmed. My mother has a more intimate, connected relationship with this television than she has ever had with me.

I never want to regret. 'Regret' is the ugliest word.

In the living room, the consensus among the guests was that Scotty’s looks favored his father, but the Judge was quick to disagree: ‘He doesn’t look a thing like me. He looks like an hors d'oeuvre.’ Hearing this, Joan thought the following, and pledged it to herself, as both prayer and promise: You will be loved, Scotty Ocean. And while the guests laughed at the Judge’s remark, Joan leaned over and softly whispered to her newborn son, 'You will be loved.

I stared at her - unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother's stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes.

It's supposed to go bing-bing or bong-bong or ding-ding when tires go over it. The one at Dave's stopped working several years ago, and he won't have it fixed because he feels as I do - that none of us need to be reminded we exist.

I was seven when he hung himself, and I don't remember all that much, and anything I did remember, I've managed to forget.

My brother's costume is the exception. He looks like an American. In fact, he behaves like one. When he tried to pick up the first kid he knocked down, he smashed into several others, it snowballed, chaos ensued. My brother very much resembled America today in pretty much all things.

She doesn't acknowledge Tucker, and there's no thank you for the cigarettes. She says a person shows their gratitude by action, not by words. So I guess that means she thanks me by smoking every cigarette in every pack.

The more Christian you are in this town, the more makeup you wear. I've always thought that it's because if you were to die suddenly, you'd look better for God.

Wait a minute, I'm thinking, was this another one of those conversations where what is meant and what is being said are not the same thing?

Who's calling?" "Don't insult me like that," the voice says. I stop. Was I just insulting?