Quote

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.

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
Kind
Goes
Head
Acting
Place
Character
Writing

More quotes by 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
During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
They're just memories now. Time to write them off.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
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
Image
The Pulitzer Prize is an idea it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
Lux spent the ride dialing the radio for her favorite song. It makes me crazy, she said. You know they're playing it somewhere, but you have to find it.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
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
Image
In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.
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
No matter how long your've been at it, you always start from scratch.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Image
It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.
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
Image
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