Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.

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.

There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.

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 it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other.

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.

Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.