Quotes from Jeffrey Eugenides

Who had known they talked so much, held so many opinions, jabbed at the world's sights with so many fingers? Between our sporadic glimpses of the girls they had been continously living developing in ways we couldn't imagine, reading every book on the bowdlerized family bookshelf. Somehow, too, they'd kept up dating etiquette, through television or observation at school, so that they knew how to keep the conversation flowing or fill awkward siliences.

Néha észre se vesszük, ami majd kiböki a szemünket.

A terrible thing happens when you water-ski. After you release the rope, you keep skimming over the water for a while, free. But there comes an inevitable moment when your speed fails to sustain your forward progress. The surface of the water breaks like glass. The depths open up to claim you. That was how I felt on land, watching the Object ski past. That same plunging, hopeless feeling, that emotional physics.

The girls had created a shrine to their dead sister. Those who attended church said the window resemled the Grotto at St. Paul's Catholic Church on the Lake, but instead of the neat ascending rows of votive candles, each alike in size and importances like the souls they pilot-lighted, the girls had engineered a phantasmagoria of beacons. ... The candles were a two way mirrow between worlds: they called Cecilia back, but also called her sisters to join her.

I've lived more than half my life as a male, and by now everything comes naturally. When Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment. Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It's a little like being possessed.

Emerson said, "I am more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in the still, small voice.

It was all new to him: the memorization of strategic speeches, the trial runs of possible conversations, the yogic deep breathing, all leading up the blind, headlong dive into the staticky sea of telephone lines. He had never felt the pain of the lacklust responses, the dread of Oh...hi, or the quick annihilation of Who?

The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.

All this led up to the day Desdemona dangled a utensil over my mother's belly. The sonogram didn't exist at the time; the spoon was the next best thing.

The mouth is small but well shaped, kissable, musical

Miért tanulunk történelmet? Azért, hogy megértsük a jelent vagy azért, hogy megússzuk?

General John L. Throckmorton set up the headquarters of the 101st Airborne at Southeastern High, where my parents had gone to school.

How long could we remain true to the girls? How long could we keep their memory pure? As it was, we didn't know them any longer, and their new habits—of opening a window, for instance, to throw out a wadded paper towel—made us wonder if we had ever really known them, or if our vigilance had been only the fingerprinting of phantoms.

I remember the first time we took off our clothes in front of each other. It was like unwinding bandages. I was as much of a man as Olivia could bear at that point. I was her starter kit.

To my grandparents Detroit was like one big Koza Han during cocoon season. What they didn't see were the workers sleeping on the streets ...

Though auditing a class at the Sorbonne taught by Luce Irigaray and titled The Mother-Daughter Relationship: The Darkest of Dark Continents, Claire had followed maternal example by setting out guest towels.

We were happy when Joe the Retard showed up. He arrived on his mother's arm, wearing his baggy Bermuda shorts and his blue baseball cap, and as usual he was grinning with the face he shared with every other mongoloid.

Una bala por presión familiar. Una bala por predisposición genética. Una bala por malestar histórico. Una bala por un impulso inevitable. Las otras dos balas son imposibles de nombrar, pero esto no quiere decir que las cámaras estuvieran vacías.

Une femme n'est pas une pastèque dans laquelle on fait un trou pour voir si elles est sucrée.

Ölüm, kendini giderek yaÅŸlanan aile bireyleriyle ima eder.

Most people remember the Day of Grieving as an obscure holiday. The first three hours of school were canceled and we remained in our homerooms. Teachers passed out mimeographs related to the day's theme, which was never officially announced, as Mrs. Woodhouse felt it inappropriate to single out the girls' tragedy. The result was that the tragedy was diffused and universalized. As Kevin Tiggs put it, It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry for everything that ever happened, ever.

But it's mostly the act itself that brings relief, the self-forgetfulness, the diving and plunging into other lives.

It had to do with Leonard. With how she felt about him and how she couldn't tell anyone. With how much she liked him and how little she knew about him. With how desperately she wanted to see him and how hard it was to do so.