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 More Quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides More Quotes From Jeffrey Eugenides 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 with wax paper before putting it away in the fridge--even into these prophylactically secure desserts my hair found its way! Jet black hairs wound themselves around bars of soap. They lay pressed like flower stems between the pages of books. They turned up in eyeglass cases, birthday cards, once--I swear--inside an egg Tessie had just cracked. The next-door neighbor's cat coughed up a hairball one day and the hair was not the cat's. Jeffrey Eugenides cat flower book Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. Jeffrey Eugenides emotion language feelings We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me. Jeffrey Eugenides other-half half made 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 what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name. Jeffrey Eugenides names together country The zipper opened all the way down our spines. Jeffrey Eugenides spine zippers way 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. Jeffrey Eugenides veins sad suicide I saw the movie, he said. I know what it's about. Listen to this. When girls get to be about twelve or so - he leaned toward us - their tits bleed. Jeffrey Eugenides twelve saws girl We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in. Jeffrey Eugenides virgin-suicides parenting world But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. 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 writing believe book 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 girl powerful self We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too. Jeffrey Eugenides virgin-suicides misfits calling girls forbidden to dance would only attract husbands with bad complexions and sunken chests. Jeffrey Eugenides forbidden husband girl Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds. Jeffrey Eugenides car people years Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- 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 broken heart two She wanted out of the decorating scheme. Jeffrey Eugenides decorating schemes wanted and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world Jeffrey Eugenides virgin-suicides trying world that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep Jeffrey Eugenides suicide sleep night 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 before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time traveling. In this life we grow backwards. Jeffrey Eugenides grandparent father past 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 create the noise that seemed to fascinate them. Jeffrey Eugenides girl noise jobs Don't waste your time on life. Jeffrey Eugenides dont-waste-your-time waste
