Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

All wisdom ends in paradox.

We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.

It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.

To be inclusive you must accommodate different levels of sophistication.

I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

People don't save other people. People save themselves.

I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to.

If love were endless, if it were on tap, it wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write about it.

Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly

She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.