Jeffrey Eugenides: Trending quotes (page 2)

“She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.”

“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.”

“You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in…”

“She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.”

“The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.”

“People don't save other people. People save themselves.”

“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”

“But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.”

“She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself.”

“and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world.”

“What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.”

“Winter is the season of alcoholism and despair.”

“They're just memories now. Time to write them off.”

“The zipper opened all the way down our spines.”

“The time has to be right and the heart willing.”

“He remained heartbroken, which meant one of two things: either his love was pure and true and earthshakingly significant; or he was addicted to feeling forlorn, he liked being heartbroken.”

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

“The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.”