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One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos.

Jeffrey Eugenides

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Jeffrey Eugenides
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: March 8
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides
Actually
Art
Order
Reason
Sometimes
Coherent
Feels
Orders
Important
Chaos
Life
Reasons

More quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides

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I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.
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There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.
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it's amazing what you can get used to.
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Where else would she feel more comfortable than in this subterranean realm where people wrote down what they couldn't say, where they gave voice to their most shameful longings and knowledge?
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At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling.
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We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.
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Mitchell had answered that, as far as he understood them, mystical experiences were significant only to the extent that they changed a person's conception of reality, and if that changed conception led to a change in behavior and action, a loss of ego.
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Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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I had a briefcase at one point, but it was a kind of 1980s New Wave briefcase. It was made of some kind of cardboard and it had metal hinges. It was kind of faux industrial looking, and I used to carry my books in it rather than a backpack. I didn't want to have normal student accoutrements.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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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.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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Her eyes watered and she was a foot taller than any of her sisters, mostly because of the length of her neck which would one day hang from the end of a rope
Jeffrey Eugenides
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People don't save other people. People save themselves.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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The time has to be right and the heart willing.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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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.
Jeffrey Eugenides
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Three times a day Petrovich showed up at the nurse's office for his injections, always using the hypodermic needle himself like the most craven of junkies, though after shooting up he would play the concert piano in the auditorium with astounding artistry, as though insulin were the elixir of genius.
Jeffrey Eugenides