Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

213 quotes in 2979 categories

• In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.
• 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…
• We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.
• no reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. and from love, too.
• 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…
• But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths…
• Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.
• 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…
• Don't waste your time on life.
• We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to…
• She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.
• I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and…
• My family suffered. My hair turned up in every corner, every drawer, every meal. Even in the rice puddings Tessie made, covering each little bowl…
• Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.
• We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.
• You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.
• 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…
• Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly
• The zipper opened all the way down our spines.
• We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.

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