Top 120 Jonathan Tropper Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “It’s a sad moment when you come to understand how truly replaceable you are.”

— Jonathan Tropper

3. “Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.”

— Jonathan Tropper

4. “There are no happy endings, just happy days, happy moments. The only real ending is death, and trust me, no one dies happy. And the price of not dying is that things change all the time, and the only thing you can count on is that there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

— Jonathan Tropper

5. “If at first you don’t succeed, lower you expectations.”

— Jonathan Tropper

6. “It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

— Jonathan Tropper

7. “Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up.”

— Jonathan Tropper

8. “Life, for the most part, inevitably becomes routine, the random confluence of timing and fortune that configures its components all but forgotten. But every so often, I catch a glimpse of my life out of the corner of my eye, and am rendered breathless by it.”

— Jonathan Tropper

9. “Everybody dies alone. That’s a fact. Some more alone than others.”

— Jonathan Tropper

10. “She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.”

— Jonathan Tropper

11. “Silver is forty-four years old, if you can believe it, out of shape, and depressed – although he doesn’t know if you call it depression when you have good reason to be; maybe then you’re simply sad, or lonely, or just painfully aware, on a daily basis, of all the things you can never get back.”

— Jonathan Tropper

12. “There are some people out there who don’t wait for what come next. They decide what should come next and they go and make it happen.”

— Jonathan Tropper

13. “Screenwriting you don’t necessarily have to do the job of the costume designer and the prop master and the set designer. It’s more just about finding the visuals and finding these characters through dialogue.”

— Jonathan Tropper

14. “The reason wisdom is meant to be imparted is because you acquire it only after it’s too late to apply to yourself.”

— Jonathan Tropper

15. “The life you build feels like the entire world, and when it’s suddenly gone, the world doesn’t make sense for a while. Or, in his case, ever again.”

— Jonathan Tropper

16. “I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.”

— Jonathan Tropper

17. “Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts.”

— Jonathan Tropper

18. “And no matter which way you turn your desperate gaze, there’s absolutely no land in sight, which is strange, because you didn’t think you’d gone out that far to begin with.”

— Jonathan Tropper

19. “That’s the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.”

— Jonathan Tropper

20. “I’m not a fan of country music, but there’s no better music to drive to. Turn the right song up loud enough on the Porsche’s sound system and it will swallow you whole. The past is prelude and the future is a black hole, but right now, hurtling north across state lines for no particular reason, I have to say, it feels pretty good to be me.”

— Jonathan Tropper

21. “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

22. “At this point in my life, I’m not looking for any happy endings. I’m just looking to get things started.”

— Jonathan Tropper

23. “At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”

— Jonathan Tropper

24. “Loneliness is the theme, and I play it like a symphony, in endless variations.”

— Jonathan Tropper

25. “We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.”

— Jonathan Tropper

26. “You lost your wife, Douglas. My heartbreaks for you, it really does. But I lose my husband every day, all over again. And I don’t even get to mourn.”

— Jonathan Tropper

27. “Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it’s true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn’t fade and the scars don’t heal, and it’s too damned late.”

— Jonathan Tropper

28. “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

29. “Relationships don’t come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending.”

— Jonathan Tropper

30. “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

31. “The point is, people become possessive of their grief, almost proud of it. They want to believe it’s like no one else’s. But it is. It’s exactly like everybody else’s. Grief is like a shark. It’s been around forever, and in that time there’s been just about no evolution. You know why?” “Why?” “Because it’s perfect just the way it is.”

— Jonathan Tropper

32. “Time doesn’t heal as much as it buries things in the undergrowth of your brain, where they lie in wait to ambush you when you least expect it.”

— Jonathan Tropper

33. “Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.”

— Jonathan Tropper

34. “Pity, I’ve learned, is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can’t stand anyone else’s.”

— Jonathan Tropper

35. “And someday soon, I’ll rest in peace. But till that day does come, I’ll rest in pieces.”

— Jonathan Tropper

36. “There’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.”

— Jonathan Tropper

37. “I loved her for the way she embraced the unknown, how she opened herself up to every experience. When I was with her, she opened me up, too, stirred my passion and heightened my every sensation. Which was great, until she left me and all my heightened senses to deal with the heartache of losing her.”

— Jonathan Tropper

38. “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

39. “In high school, if you can find a girl who will kiss you and maybe let you touch her breasts and a guy who likes the same movies as you, your world is pretty much complete.”

— Jonathan Tropper

40. “Sometimes you don’t need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.”

— Jonathan Tropper

41. “You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.”

— Jonathan Tropper

42. “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

43. “This is just your time, son, that’s all. Your time to hurt and bleed and tear apart your notion of what makes you who you are. Life knocks us all on our ass at some point. And then we get back up, and we make some changes, because that’s what men do. We adapt. And when we’re done adapting, we’re better equipped to survive.”

— Jonathan Tropper

44. “We don’t stop loving people just because we hate them, but we don’t stop hating them either.”

— Jonathan Tropper

45. “There is a sense of violation in learning that, unbeknownst to me, my mind has maintained such a strong connection with the town, as if my brain’s been sneaking around behind my back.”

— Jonathan Tropper

46. “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

47. “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

48. “I’m tired of having a plan. I’ve been planning my whole life, and it isn’t working. I just want to sit back and breathe for a minute, figure out who the hell I am.”

— Jonathan Tropper

49. “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

50. “Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you’ve lost.”

— Jonathan Tropper