When you stood between somebody you loved and death, it was hard to be awake and it was hard to sleep. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“His lost look of a man who realized that all this dying was going to be the only life he ever had.” — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“This, Tolstoy says, is our human predicament: we're the man clutching the branch. Death awaits us. There is no escape. And so… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“And all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / and to die is different from that anyone supposed, and luckier.” — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Even the air seemed on fire, subtly aflame with energy as it does when you are young, when the synapses are firing… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Out past the weekly glimpsed windows, out past the street, lived the world, which had, Old Mrs. Karafilis knew, been dying for… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“We had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us... calling them out of those rooms… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Discussing it later, many of us felt we suffered a mental dislocation at that moment, which only grew worse through the course… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Mr. Lisbon knew his parental and neighborly duty entailed putting the retainer in a Ziploc bag, calling the Kriegers, and telling them… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Only the Lisbon house remained dark, a tunnel, an emptiness, past our smoke and flames.” — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
“She had just started living like a grown-up and she'd never felt more vulnerable, frightened or confused in her life.” — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
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. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
“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… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
I was aware that you weren't supposed to write about suburbia, that it was undignified in some way, the subject matter not momentous enough.… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
“Dr. Armonson stitched up her wrist wounds. Within five minutes of the transfusion he declared her out of danger. Chucking her under the chin,… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
“I don't approve of women driving, mind you. And now they get to vote!" He grumbled to himself. "Remember that play we saw ("The… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
I know that attaching memories to books may be going out of the world, but while it lasts, it's a strong record of your… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters,… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
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. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share
