Quotes from Jeffrey Eugenides

Mas talvez as Pulseiras de Pingentes soubessem mais da vida do que eu. Desde muito cedo compreendiam que o mundo dava pouco valor aos livros, e por isso não gastavam seu tempo com eles. Ao passo que eu, até hoje, persisto na crença de que essas manchas pretas sobre papel branco têm a maior importância, e que, se seguir escrevendo, talvez consiga capturar num pote o arco-íris da consciência.

Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.

Ugye, megmondtam, hogy a jó szerencsére mindig bánat jön!

The adaptation [to assembly lines] has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into the joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.

Like the Sun Belt or the Bible Belt, there exists, on this multifarious earth of ours, a Hair Belt.

The ground was uneven, treacherous with roots, but the pine needles were soft underfoot. For a moment, despite my foul mood, I felt it: the crisp northern Michigan delight. A slight chill to the air, even in August, something almost Russian. The indigo sky above the black bay. The smell of cedar and pine.

Én vagyok a pont egy összetett mondat végén, amely mondat hosszú-hosszú évekkel ezelÅ'tt, egy másik nyelven kezdÅ'dött, és amelyet az elejétÅ'l kell olvasni, hogy érteni lehessen a végét – azt, amikor megérkeztem én.

compatriots in the search for a little passion on earth.

obviously, dr, she said, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

The only trust fund I have is this story, and unlike a prudent Wasp, I'm dipping into principal, spending it all...

He had been a teacher so long he had a sink in his room.

Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.

So, to recap: Sourmelina Zizmo (née Papadiamandopoulos) wasn't only my first cousin twice removed. She was also my grandmother. My father was his own mother's (and father's) nephew. In addition to being my grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty were my great-aunt and -uncle. My parents would be my second cousins once removed and Chapter Eleven would be my third cousin as well as my brother.

Aunt Zo, who never missed a chance to lament her marriage, had said at dinner in her comedienne's voice, "My husband. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

After the first roll of her eyes the Object resettled her gaze on mine, and then what she was feeling showed only there, in the green depths her eyes revealed. Otherwise she was motionless. Only my hand moved, and my feet on the rail, pushing the swing. This went on for three minutes, or five, or fifteen. I have no idea. Time disappeared. Somehow we were still not quite conscious of what we were doing. Sensation dissolved straight into forgetting.

Úgy döntött, hogy nem ragadhat le, élni kell tovább.

If you want to have a career, my advice is don't get married. You think things have changed and there's some kind of gender equality now, that men are different, but I've got news for you. They're not.

The smell of things burning that aren't meant to burn wafts across the city: shoe polish, rat poison, toothpaste, piano strings, hernia trusses, baby cribs, Indian clubs. And hair and skin. By this time, hair and skin.

For instance, as the police arrive, there are girls lined along the street, girls in miniskirts, thigh-highs, and halter tops. (The sea wrack Milton hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jellyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel.)

What's the reason for studying history? To understand the present or avoid it?

Olyannak akarta érezni a világot, mint ahol csak most kezdÅ'dik az élet – holott valójában épp véget érni készült.

So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that's the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize.

It was still years before Desdemona, cutting cucumbers, would lean against the corner of the kitchen table and, without realizing it, would lean in a little harder, and after that would find herself taking up that position every day, the table corner snug between her legs.

When he smiled, however, you saw the softness in his eyes, which made it clear that Lefty was in fact no gangster but the pampered, bookish son of comfortably well-off parents.