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Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Blocks category:
- The Virgin Suicides...
I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Books category:
I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Choices category:
I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Complexity category:
- Middlesex...
I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Creativity category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Depression category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Destiny category:
Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Dissatisfaction category:
It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Doubt category:
You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Education category:
I was unemployable when I got out of college. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Emotion category:
I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Environment category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Finishing category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Gender category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Ideas category:
Usually my ideas are small. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Importance category:
One of the reasons that art is important to me is sometimes it actually feels more coherent than life. It orders the chaos. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Language category:
-Middlesex...
Emotions aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Memory category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Mirrors category:
-Middlesex...
I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Pleasure category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Politics category:
Capitalism has resulted in material
well-being but spiritual bankruptcy. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Profession category:
I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Progress category:
It wasn't conscious, but I guess that one book is the reaction to the other. The first is so imprisoned in a male point-of-view, and the second is a point-of-view that can go anywhere it wants. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Realism category:
I'm aware of cliches and I'm aware of experiments that have been done and I'm aware of a kind of deadness to a lot of realism both in the language and in the structure of a book. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Revelation category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Rewards category:
The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Satisfaction category:
I want an ending that's satisfying... coherent and feels like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Solitude category:
On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Studio category:
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 write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and... I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Success category:
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Suffering category:
-The Virgin Suicides...
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. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Technology category:
I always work in a room where there's no Internet to keep from being distracted so easily. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Time category:
I was engrossed with the book, I was having difficulties with it, and I just didn't notice the years were going by. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Windows category:
-The Virgin Suicides...
'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 it or else she'd go on jumping out of it forever.' (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Wisdom category:
All wisdom ends in paradox. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Words category:
-Middlesex...
I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Words category:
I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Work category:
I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Writing category:
Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Writing category:
But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Jeffrey Eugenides - From the Writing category:
Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
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