Quotes from Jeffrey Eugenides

In desperate moods he asked his mirror why the girl he was crazy about was the only girl not crazy about him.

And for a time the tree stood blighted, trying to raise its stumted arms, a creature clubbed mute, only its sudden voicelessness making us realize it had been speaking all along.

Her father was about to have a heart attack, and my memories of her are now tinged with a blue wash of misfortune that hadn't quite befallen her at the time. She was standing bare-legged in the jungly weeds that grew up between our houses. Her skin was already beginning to react to the grass cuttings stuck to the ball, whose sogginess was suddenly explained by the overweight Labrador who now limped into view.

itse tila, jota sana kuvaa, on erittäin hyvin tunnettu. Sillä nimittäin tarkoitetaan ihmissuhteen syntymisen ensimmäistä huumausta. Se aiheuttaa huimausta, hilpeyttä ja rintalastan kutinaa. Perifesenssi on rakastumisen hullu, romanttinen puoli.

and the magisterial presence of all those words stopped her in her tracks.

And it was during this period that Madeleine fully understood how the lover's discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn't physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.

We thought green was cheerful, but not too cheerful. Green was also serious.

I don't approve of women driving, mind you. And now they get to vote! He grumbled to himself. Remember that play we saw (The Minotaur)? All women are like that. Given a chance, they'd all fornicate with a bull.

I'd never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe.

Tessie and I lay in our chairs, listening to wax being violently removed. 'Oh my!' cried the large lady. 'Is nothing,' belittled Helga. 'I do it perfect.' 'Oweee!' yelped a bikini-liner. And Helga, taking an oddly femenist stance: 'See what you do for the mens? You suffer. Is not worth it.

And all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / and to die is different from that anyone supposed, and luckier.

A sniper is cowardly, sneaky; he kills from a distance, unseen.

Her face was calm, but inside she was tense.

If you used your head, if you became aware of how love was culturally constructed and began to see your symptoms as purely mental, if you recognized that being in love was only an idea, then you could liberate yourself from its tyranny

The worst thing about religion was religious people.

Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities.

Fiction should be specific rather than general, because people are specific.

I climbed the stairs and got back into bed, pulling a pillow over my face to block out the summer light. But there was no hiding from reality that morning.

When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.

Father Mike was popular with the church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height.

She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.

Nous savions que les filles étaient nos jumelles, que nous existions tous dans l'espace comme des animaux qui avaient la même peau, et qu'elles savaient tout de nous alors que nous étions incapables de percer leur mystère. Nous savions, enfin, que les filles étaient en réalité des femmes déguisées, qu'elles comprenaient l'amour et même la mort, et que notre boulot se bornait à créer le bruit qui semblait tant les fasciner.

Semiotic was the form Zipperstein`s midlife crisis had taken... Instead of buying sports car, he'd bought deconstrution.

I'm not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness.