Jeffrey Eugenides quotes - page 5

Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predicament of her life we would never understand. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Usually my ideas are small. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I always work in a room where there's no Internet to keep from being distracted so easily. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I have a good memory for early life. My visual memory is good about childhood and adolescence, and less good in the last 10 years. I could probably tell you less what happened in the last 10 years. I remember what houses looked like, sometimes they just pop into my head. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I was unemployable when I got out of college. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
We're all well-acquainted with depression, we all know what the low moods are, but the mania was not something I knew much about. I didn't know that it would make someone dress extravagantly or start to pun, and to stay up and drink. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
What I do when I create a character is put in details from all the people I know who might be like that person, and then put in a huge amount of myself. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
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 life. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.' View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
Some Pulitzer winners - novelists - have confided to me that getting the prize screwed them up. It messed with their heads. That hasn't been my experience. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides
I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough. View quote
Jeffrey Eugenides