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d6e1322
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because we watched her so closely out of the corners of our eyes, everything she did made too much noise, her cigarette smoke got into everything, she drank too much wine at dinner.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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3a7736e
|
The sonogram didn't exist at the time; the spoon was the next best thing.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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10705d9
|
And yet sometimes she worried about those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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02ca76e
|
Though the weather was cool, the beach at Herringsdorf was dotted with quite a few diehard nudists. Primarily men, they lay walrus-like on towels or boosterously congregated.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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8dedf4a
|
Out past the weekly glimpsed windows, out past the street, lived the world, which had, Old Mrs. Karafilis knew, been dying for years.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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0254e93
|
Wouldn't it be nice to be done with it? To be done with sex and longing? Mitchell could almost imagine pulling it off, sitting on a bridge at night with the Seine flowing by. He looked up at all the lighted windows along the river's arc. He thought of all the people going to sleep or reading or listening to music, all the lives contained by a great city like this, and, floating up in his mind, rising just above the rooftops, he tried to fee..
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longing
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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679963a
|
Next to it were five potted photographs of the Lisbon girls, pinned with rusty tacks. We didn't remember putting them up, but there they were, dim from time and weather so that all we could make out were phosphorescent outlines of the girls' bodies, each a different glowing letter of an unknown alphabet.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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c0bf75e
|
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. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders - you don't see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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b00320a
|
After all the screaming in our house, there reigned, that winter on Middlesex, only silence. A silence so profound that, like the left foot of the President's secretary, it erased portions of the official record.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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6238d90
|
As much as he hated his lithium, here it was his friend. Leonard could feel the huge tide of sadness waiting to rush over him. But there was an invisible barrier keeping the full reality of it from touching him. It was like squeezing a baggie full of water and feeling all the properties of the liquid without getting wet.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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9aa920e
|
Luce even analyzed my prose style to see if I wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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6aa082f
|
It is wonderful barefoot in New York. It is like walking on one big giant tomb!
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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3ab9b8c
|
Find the Bad Guy means how, when you're arguing with your spouse, both people are trying to win the argument. Who didn't close the garage door? Who left the Bigfoot hair clump in the shower drain? What you have to realize, as a couple, is that there is no bad guy. You can't win an argument when you're married. Because if you win, your spouse loses, and resents losing, and then you lose, too, pretty much.
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relationship
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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c45d645
|
in Detroit, in July of 1967, what happened was no less than a guerrilla uprising. The Second American Revolution.
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race-riot
detroit
middlesex
riots
revolution
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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396816b
|
I should also mention, with the vestigial pang of a once flat-chested girl, Desdemona's voluptuous figure.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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c756af0
|
Stomach-sleepers like me were in retreat from reality, given to dark perception and the meditative arts. This
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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fa0189f
|
Whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever he seemed to be would become what he was - already an American, in other words.
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becomes-the-truth
becomes-what-he-was
whatever-happens
whatever-he-seemed
american
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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b02ac75
|
It seemed especially cruel, then, three days later, in the hospital when the doctor came into the room to tell Leonard that he suffered from something that would never go away, something that could only be "managed," as if managing, for an eighteen-year-old looking out on life, could be any life at all."
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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aad1227
|
La depresion no es algo de lo que uno se quita. No puedes desengancharte de la depresion. Depresion es como un moreton que nunca se te quita. Un moreton en la mente. Tienes que tener mucho cuidado de no tocarte donde duele. Pero esta siempre ahi
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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920703d
|
When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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d89414a
|
From my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn't do much of anything and then did everything at once, my genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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8a1ff72
|
By cutting off my hair I was punishing myself for loving someone so much.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e511fdc
|
They lined you up in kindergarten, alphabetically. On fourth-grade field trips you took your partner's hand to push past the musk ox or the steam turbine. School was a perpetual lineup, ending in this final one.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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8e8ff9a
|
a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical--because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stori..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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d29297e
|
Desdemona oli tottunut nakemaan heidan siamilaisvarjonsa iltaisin vasten valkeaksi kalkittua talonseinaa, ja aina kohdatessaan vain oman varjonsa hanesta tuntui kuin se olisi halkaistu kahtia.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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820e351
|
But it rained all the time, fog covered the fields, and by then he was reading Tolstoy. 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.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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34e1dbd
|
As meninas estavam enormes naqueles vestidos de cerimonia, construidos a volta de uma estrutura de arame. Tinham quilos e quilos de cabelo, bem presos, na cabeca. Embriagadas, beijando-nos, ou a desmaiar nas cadeiras, estavam destinadas ao ensino superior, aos maridos, a educacao dos filhos, a infelicidade que dificilmente se percebia - enfim, a vida.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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4e6f184
|
Desde temprana edad eran conscientes del escaso valor que el mundo daba a los libros, de manera que no perdian el tiempo con ellos. Mientras que yo, incluso ahora, persisto en creer que esos signos negros trazados en papel blanco son de la mayor importancia, y que si continuo escribiendo lograre atrapar el arco iris de la conciencia y guardarlo en un tarro.
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|
middlesex
pulitzer
eugenides
libros
escritura
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
b8bb831
|
The pains they took to make themselves smooth! The rashes the creams left! The futility of it all! The enemy, hair, was invincible. It was life itself.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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55538b1
|
Lefty had seen Desdemona undress many times, but usually as no more than a shadow and never in moonlight. She had never curled onto her back like this, lifting her feet to take off her shoes. He watched and, as she pulled down her skirt and lifted her tunic, was struck by how different his sister looked, in moonlight, in a lifeboat. She glowed. She gave off white light. He blinked behind his hands. The moonlight kept rising; it covered his ..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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451514f
|
that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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c56964f
|
Postepenno um't mu stana s'shcho tolkova fragmentaren, kolkoto poemite na Safo, koito taka i ne uspia da v'zstanovi, i nakraia edna sutrin pogledna litseto na zhenata, koiato beshe obichal poveche ot vsichko, i ne ia pozna. V tozi mig prezhivia treti udar; kr'vta nakhlu v moz'ka mu za posleden p't, otmivaiki i poslednite fragmenti ot negovata lichnost.
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middlesex
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
4b43bfe
|
Nakon pet minuta transfuzije objavio je da vise nije u zivotnoj opasnosti. Pomilovavsi je ispod brade, rece: 'Sto ces ovdje, duso? Jos si tako mlada da ni ne znas kako zivot zna biti gadan.' Cecilia je nato usmeno dala svoju jedinu samoubilacku poruku, usput receno i beskorisnu jer ce prezivjeti. 'Doktore', rekla je, 'ocito nikad niste bili trinaestogodisnja djevojcica.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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434254c
|
Nikad nismo shvatili zasto je curama tako bitno da budu zrele, ili zasto osjecaju potrebu da jedna drugoj dijele komplimente, no kad bismo katkad naglas procitali dugi odlomak dnevnika, morali smo susprezati nagon da se pocnemo grliti i jedan drugomu govoriti kako smo zgodni. Osjetili smo kako si sputan kad si cura, kako ti zato mozak postane okretan i sanjarski i kako naucis slagati boje. Znali smo da su nam cure blizanke, da u prostoru po..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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3b91a22
|
Na kraju nije bilo bitno koliko su godina imale niti da su bile cure, nego samo da smo ih voljeli, a one nisu cule nas zov; ne cuju nas ni danas, dok ih prorijedene kose i salastih trbuha iz kucice na drvetu dozivamo da izadu iz soba, kamo su otisle da zauvijek budu same - same u samoubojstvu, a samoubojstvo je dublje od smrti - i gdje mi nikad necemo naci djelice da ih nanovo sklopimo.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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efaf18a
|
There's a scabbard for every dagger,' the madam says in Turkish as the whores laugh.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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d69efd9
|
Tessio Zizmo had been a virgin when she married Milton Stephanides at the age of 22. Their engagement,which coincided with the Second World War, had been a chaste affair. My mother was proud of the way she'd managed to simultaneously kindle and snuff my father's flame,keeping him at a low burn for the duration of a global cataclysm.... She didn't surrender until after Japan had.
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|
second-world-war
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e5b0b35
|
It's then I smell smoke. "You even smoke while you brush your teeth?" She looks at me sideways. "Menthol", she says."
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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1dd4ac1
|
Their hearts were wrung with anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as astonishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings ... [426]
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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aed71e8
|
Cecilia had unleashed her blood in the bath, Amy Schraff said, because the ancient Romans had done that when life became unbearable, and she thought when Dominic heard about it, on the highway, amid the cactus, he would realize that it was she who loved him.
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|
suicide
life
jeffrey-eugenides
the-virgin-suicides
unbearable
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
54f684b
|
Her tragedy hadn't made her more approachable, and in fact lent her the unknowable quality of a person who had suffered more than could be expressed.
|
|
tragedy
suffering
unapproachable
jeffrey-eugenides
the-virgin-suicides
unknowable
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
a3d6b8b
|
They had killed themselves over the failure to find a love that none of us could ever be.
|
|
suicide
love
jeffrey-eugenides
the-virgin-suicides
unattainable
impossible
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
f9e7f6b
|
The experience of watching Leonard get better was like reading certain difficult books. It was like plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina, until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were so enthralled that you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
|
61f8c46
|
Though some of us saw Lux as a force of nature, impervious to chill, an ice goddess generated by the season itself, the majority knew she was only a girl in danger, or in pursuit, of catching her death of cold.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |