Quote

When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jeffrey Eugenides
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: March 8
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Detroit
Michigan
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides
Voice
Narrative
Found
Suicide
Able
Wrote
Suicides
Would
Rules
Virgin
Gave
Virgins
Boys
Report
Told
Strict
Seen
Reports

More quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides

Image
The window was still open.” Mr Lisbon said. “I don’t think we’d ever remembered to shut it. It was all clear to me. I knew I had to close it or else she’d go on jumping out of it forever
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
He knew a lot about his grandparents - and perhaps he feels he's been endowed with abilities to go into people's heads who are long dead - but, to a certain extent, he's making it up.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
No matter how long your've been at it, you always start from scratch.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
All wisdom ends in paradox.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. Putting up Christmas lights after your own daughter does it--that makes no sense. What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.” -Mrs. Karafilis
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
People don't save other people. People save themselves.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
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
Image
She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn't just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she'd always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.
Jeffrey Eugenides