Jeffrey Eugenides quotes - page 3

The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
All wisdom ends in paradox. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you begin. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
During a warm winter rain... the basins of her collarbones collected water. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
The trees like lungs filling with air My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Scars crossed her welded wrists. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Every letter was a love letter. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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 mycould never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
She wanted out of that decorating scheme. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
To start with, look at all the books. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
But, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived-bound, in other words, for life. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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 knew I had to close that window or else she'd go on jumping out of it forever. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides