She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
No matter how long your've been at it, you always start from scratch. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share 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… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
The book has many different characteristics: some are extremely old-fashioned storytelling traits, but there are also a fair number of postmodern traits,… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
If love were endless, if it were on tap, it wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
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 Image
I was aware that you weren't supposed to write about suburbia, that it was undignified in some way, the subject matter not… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“Almost overnight it became laughable to read writers like Cheever or Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“There’s something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“She wasn't all that interested, as a reader, in the reader. She was still partial to that increasingly eclipsed entity: the writer.… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be. — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
“She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing -… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think… — Jeffrey Eugenides Copy Share Image
I have a very beautiful room in my house... It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to… — 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
![“The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.” quote by Jeffrey Eugenides](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/357/jeffrey-eugenides-462_book_the-ideas-for-my-books-come-about-in-two_541787.png)
