504 Quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

Planning 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.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.

There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

The more she thought about it, the more Madeleine understood that extreme solitude didn't just describe the way she was feeling about Leonard. It explained how she'd always felt when she was in love. It explained what love was like and, just maybe, what was wrong with it.

The lover`s discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn`t physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men.

Supimos de esa cárcel que es ser chica, de los impulsos y sueños que genera y por qué acaban sabiendo qué colores combinan y cuáles no.