|
45ffeb2
|
He remained heartbroken, which meant one of two things: either his love was pure and true and earthshakingly significant; or he was addicted to feeling forlorn, he liked being heartbroken.
|
|
love
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
2ff39ac
|
I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
ea4a74f
|
They're just memories now. Time to write them off.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
031f940
|
The time has to be right and the heart willing.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
710043f
|
Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
68429d6
|
Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
3f87446
|
The zipper opened all the way down our spines.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
f814e6b
|
During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.
|
|
collarbones
rain
skinny
suicide
the-virgin-suicides
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
9d364c6
|
We had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us... calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
47adcf4
|
The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
10dc4f7
|
Added to their loveliness was a new mysterious suffering, perfectly silent, visible in the blue puffiness beneath their eyes or the way they would sometimes stop in mid-stride, look down, and shake their heads as though disagreeing with life.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
5d6b079
|
The world, a tired performer, offers us another half-assed season.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
103646c
|
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
aacf290
|
It was possible to feel superior to other people and feel like a misfit at the same time.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
1e36501
|
Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too try, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and mat..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
a9dcbe1
|
But maybe they understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.
|
|
value-of-books
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
6e31f63
|
So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
190dd9a
|
They said nothing and our parents said nothing, so we sensed how ancient they were, how accustomed to trauma, depressions, and wars. We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and for all their caretaking and bitching about crabgrass they didn't give a damn about lawns.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
840b1fc
|
There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. A Confession was a book like that. In it, Tolstoy related a Russian fable about a man who, being chased by a monster, jumps into a well. As the man is falling down the well, however, he sees there's a dragon at the bottom, waiting to eat him. Right then, the man notices a branch sticking out of the wall, and he grabs o..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
d68bc96
|
The trees like lungs filling with air My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
ce3097f
|
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide--it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese--the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.
|
|
suicide
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
cc49d46
|
When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
ebb8be0
|
Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
9d4d505
|
College wasn't like the real world. In the real world people dropped names based on their renown. In college, people dropped names based on their obscurity.
|
|
humor
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
238a7de
|
Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
37408f6
|
I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sky was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
5bf87dc
|
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative. If you grew up with emotionally stunted parents, who were unhappy in their marriage and prone to visit that unhappiness on their children, you didn't know they were doing this. It was just your life. If you had an accident, at the age of four, when you were supposed to be a big boy, and were later served a plate of feces at the dinner table - if you..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
984b5fd
|
The lover`s discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn`t physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.
|
|
solitude
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
f1daae6
|
Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
f2180f2
|
Grief is natural,' she said. 'Overcoming it is a matter of choice.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
7969c6b
|
Scars crossed her welded wrists.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
2dd7b14
|
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 is oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions."
|
|
language
patriarchal
words
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
8929041
|
The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.
|
|
war
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
5399f9b
|
Every letter was a love letter.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
1b0440e
|
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 could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.
|
|
pretend-happiness
suicide
the-virgin-suicides
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
48235af
|
It's often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, "Stay there. Don't move."
|
|
traumatic-experiences
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
dfef54d
|
We became acquainted with starry skies the girls had gazed at while camping years before, and the boredom of summers traipsing from back yard to front to back again, and even a certain indefinable smell that arose from toilets on rainy nights, which the girls called "sewery." We knew what it felt like to see a boy with his shirt off, and why it made Lux write the name Kevin in purple Magic Marker all over her three-ring binder and even on h..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
e4e6b91
|
She wanted out of that decorating scheme.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
eaebc00
|
You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
2648c81
|
Bubble-gum angels swooped from top margins, or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs. Maidens with golden hair dripped sea-blue tears into the books spine. Grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item (pasted in) listing arrivals to the endangered species list. Six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on Easter. Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, Candyland ladde..
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
ac93f57
|
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.
|
|
design
detroit
london
money
paris
rome
urban-planning
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
6861c1e
|
To start with, look at all the books.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
27cfa3b
|
There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
7bc8121
|
Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.
|
|
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |