504 Quotes by Jeffrey Eugenides

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.

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

She 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.

It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality.

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

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

The following doodle: a girl with pigtails is bent under the weight of a gigantic boulder. Her cheeks puff out, and her rounded lips expel steam. One widening steam cloud contains the word Pressure, darkly retraced.