Quotes from Jeffrey Eugenides

I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.

German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt.

You went out with a girl at first because the sheer sight of her made you weak in the knees. You fell in love and were desperate not to let her get away. And yet the more you thought about her, the less you knew who she was. The hope was that love transcended all differences. That was the hope.

That was the deal basically: catatonia without; frenzy within

He had the feeling that there was something physically behind his eyes, blocking the light.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

We knew the pain of winter rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other...

Whenever we got a glimpse, their faces looked indecently revealed, as though we were used to seeing women in veils.

Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

All of a sudden America wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

I saw the movie, he said. I know what it's about. Listen to this. When girls get to be about twelve or so—he leaned toward us—their tits bleed.

Chucking her under her chin, he said, What are you doing here, honey? You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: Obviously, Doctor, she said, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it's my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates.

But that was in the days when they expected perils to come from without, and nothing made less sense by that time than a survival room buried in a house itself becoming one big coffin.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.

We lost them in the vastness of their dresses and found them again, squeezed the pulp of their bodies and inhaled the perfume of their exertion. A few of us grew brave enough to insert our legs between theirs and to press our agony against them.

He left in a state of distraction and a winter coat.

O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies.

Pay no attention to the terrors that visit you in the night. The psyche is at its lowest ebb then, unable to defend itself. The desolation that envelops you feels like truth, but isn't. It's just mental fatigue masquerading as insight.

Anyone have some mints or some gum? Bonnie asked. No one did, and she turned to Joe Hill Conley. She scrutinized him a moment, then, using her fingers, combed his part over to the left side. That looks better, she said. Nearly two decades later, the little hair he has left remains parted by Bonnie's invisible hand.