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 EugenidesThe only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.
Jeffrey EugenidesShe had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.
Jeffrey EugenidesThe ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.
Jeffrey EugenidesDepression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.
Jeffrey EugenidesThere are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.
Jeffrey EugenidesPlanning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.
Jeffrey EugenidesThe television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.
Jeffrey EugenidesAnd in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.
Jeffrey EugenidesShe'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read.
Jeffrey EugenidesI 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 EugenidesThe 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.
Jeffrey EugenidesThe Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.
Jeffrey EugenidesHer eyes watered and she was a foot taller than any of her sisters, mostly because of the length of her neck which would one day hang from the end of a rope
Jeffrey EugenidesShe lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.
Jeffrey EugenidesThe Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.
Jeffrey EugenidesBut, like anyone in love, Madeleine believed that her own relationship was different from every other relationship, immune from typical problems.
Jeffrey Eugenides