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At Night The Cries Of Cats Making Love Or Fighting, Their Caterwauling In The Dark, Told Us That The World Was Pure Emotion, Flung Back And Forth Among Its Creatures, The Agony Of The One-eyed Siamese No Different From That Of The Lisbon Girls, And Even The Trees Plunged In Feeling.

-Jeffrey Eugenides

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At Night The Cries

Jeffrey Eugenides

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At Night The Cries Of Cats Making Love Or Fighting, Their Caterwauling In The Dark, Told Us That The World Was Pure Emotion, Flung Back And Forth Among Its Creatures, The Agony Of The One-eyed Siamese No Different From That Of The Lisbon Girls, And Even The Trees Plunged In Feeling.

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At Night The Cries Of Cats Making Love Or Fighting, Their Caterwauling In The Dark, Told Us That The World Was Pure Emotion, Flung Back And Forth Among Its Creatures, The Agony Of The One-eyed Siamese No Different From That Of The Lisbon Girls, And Even The Trees Plunged In Feeling.

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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.

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The Zipper Opened All The Way Down Our Spines.

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Remember That Day You Said You Loved Me? Remember That? See, You Could Do That Because You're Basically A Sane Person, Who Grew Up In A Loving, Sane Family. You Could Take A Risk Like That. But In My Family We Didn't Go Around Saying We Loved Each Other. We Went Around Screaming At Each Other. So What Do I Do, When You Say You Love Me? I Go And Undermine It.

The Perishable Nature Of Love Is What Gives Love Its Profound Importance In Our Lives. If It Were Endless, If It Were On Tap, Love Wouldn't Hit Us The Way It Does.

I Spend Most Of Every Day Writing. I Like To Write Every Day If I Can. I Don't Start Extremely Early.

Bubble Gum Angels Swooped From Top Margins Or Scraped Their Wings Between Teeming Paragraphs, Maidens With Golden Hair Dripped Sea Blue Tears Into The Books Spine, Grape-colored Whales Spouted Blood Around A Newspaper Item (pasted In) Listing Arrivals To The Endangered Spieces List. Six Hatchlings Cried From Shattered Shells Near An Entry Made On Easter. Cecilia Had Filled The Pages With A Profusion Of Colors And Curlicues, Candyland Ladders And Striped Shamrocks.

I Always Work In A Room Where There's No Internet To Keep From Being Distracted So Easily.

They Were Bound For College, Husbands, Child-rearing, Unhappiness Only Dimly Perceived- Bound, In Other Words, For Life.

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.

And 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.

Depending On The Year Or The Therapist He Was Seeing, He'd Learned To Ascribe Just About Every Facet Of His Character As A Psychological Reaction To His Parents' Fighting: His Laziness, His Overachieving, His Tendency To Isolate, His Tendency To Seduce, His Hypochondria, His Sense Of Invulnerability, His Self-loathing, His Narcissism.

You Used To Be Able To Tell A Person's Nationality By The Face. Immigration Ended That. Next You Discerned Nationality Via The Footwear. Globalization Ended That.

What I Do When I Create A Character Is Put In Details From All The People I Know Who Might Be Like That Person, And Then Put In A Huge Amount Of Myself.

She 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.

Though At This Moment She Felt Abused, Abandoned, And Ashamed Of Herself, Madeleine Knew That She Was Still Young, That She Had Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her--a Life In Which, If She Persevered, She Might Do Something Special--and That Part Of Persevering Meant Getting Past Moments Just Like This One, When People Made You Feel Small, Unlovable, And Took Away Your Confidence.

I Approach Writing Female Characters The Same Why I Approach Writing Male Characters. I Never Think I'm Writing About Women, I Think I'm Writing About One Woman, One Person. And I Try To Imagine What She Is Like, And Endow Her With A Lot Of My Own Thoughts And History.

The Humming Of My Parents' Voices From Behind My Bedroom Wall, Which Throughout My Childhood Had Filled Me With A Sense Of Security, Had Now Become A Source Of Anxiety And Panic.

My Change From Girl To Boy Was Far Less Dramatic Than The Distance Anybody Travels From Infancy To Adulthood.

I Remember Liking To Write Stories Pretty Early On. In Fourth Or Fifth Grade, They Would Give Us The Beginning Of A Story, And We Were Supposed To Finish It. I Remember Liking That. But I Didn't Think About Deciding To Become A Writer Until High School At About The Age Of 16.

Regret, Already Sogging Me Down, Burst Its Dam. It Seeped Into My Legs, It Pooled In My Heart.

I'm The Final Clause In A Periodic Sentence, And That Sentence Begins A Long Time Ago, In Another Language, And You To Read It From The Beginning To Get To The End, Which Is My Arrival.

Everyone Struggles Against Despair, But It Always Wins In The End. It Has To. It's The Thing That Lets Us Say Goodbye.

I Was Born Twice: First, As A Baby Girl, On A Remarkably Smogless Detroit Day In January Of 1960; And Then Again, As A Teenage Boy, In An Emergency Room Near Petoskey, Michigan, In August Of 1974.

Every Letter Was A Love Letter.

Jerome Was Sliding And Climbing On Top Of Me And It Felt Like It Had The Night Before, Like A Crushing Weight. So Do Boys And Men Announce Their Intentions. They Cover You Like A Sarcophagus Lid. And Call It Love.

You Begin Always Knowing Nothing. You Remain Forever An Amateur, A First Timer.

Knowing Nothing

What Are You Doing Here, Honey? You're Not Even Old Enough To Know How Bad Life Gets." (...) "obviously, Doctor," She Said, "you've Never Been A Thirteen-year-old Girl.

She Held Herself Very Straight, Like Audrey Hepburn, Whom All Women Idolize And Men Never Think About.

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Three Times A Day Petrovich Showed Up At The Nurse's Office For His Injections, Always Using The Hypodermic Needle Himself Like The Most Craven Of Junkies, Though After Shooting Up He Would Play The Concert Piano In The Auditorium With Astounding Artistry, As Though Insulin Were The Elixir Of Genius.

Yes, You Need A Passport To Prove To The World That You Exist. The People At Passport Control, They Cannot Look At You And See You Are A Person. No! They Have To Look At A Little Photograph Of You. Then They Believe You Exist.

My House Fly Theory Is Related To My Theory About Why Time Seems To Go Faster As You Get Older." "why's That?" The Girl Asked. "it's Proportional," Leonard Explained. "when You're Five, You've Only Been Alive A Couple Thousand Days. But By The Time You're Fifty, You've Lived Around Twenty Thousand Days. So A Day When You're Five Seems Longer Because It's A Greater Percentage Of The Whole.

Mitchell Had Answered That, As Far As He Understood Them, Mystical Experiences Were Significant Only To The Extent That They Changed A Person's Conception Of Reality, And If That Changed Conception Led To A Change In Behavior And Action, A Loss Of Ego.

Mystical Experiences

She Thought A Writer Should Work Harder Writing A Book Than She Did Reading It.

The Statue Of Liberty's Gender Changed Nothing. It Was The Same Here As Anywhere: Men And Their Wars.

But What Humans Forget, Cells Remember. The Body, That Elephant

To Be Inclusive You Must Accommodate Different Levels Of Sophistication.

I Was Unemployable When I Got Out Of College.

There Comes A Moment, When You Get Lost In The Woods, When The Woods Begin To Feel Like Home.

The Worst Thing About Religion Was Religious People.

Dr. Armonson Stitched Up Her Wrist Wounds. Withen 5 Minutes Of The Transfusion He Declared Her Out Of Danger. Chucking Her Under The Chin, He Said, "what Are You Doing Here, Honey? Your Not Even Old Enough To Know How Bad Life Gets." And It Was Then Cecelia Gave Orally What Was To Be Her Only Form Of Suicide Note, And A Useless One At That, Because She Was Going To Live: "obviously, Doctor," She Said, "you've Never Been A 13 Year Old Girl.

Dieting Fooled You Into Thinking You Could Control Your Life.

I Know That Attaching Memories To Books May Be Going Out Of The World, But While It Lasts, It's A Strong Record Of Your Life.

On The Morning The Last Lisbon Daughter Took Her Turn At Suicide- It Was Mary This Time, And Sleeping Pills, Like Therese- The Two Paramedics Arrived At The House Knowing Exactly Where The Knife Drawer Was, And The Gas Oven, And The Beam In The Basement From Which It Was Possible To Tie A Rope.

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.

Virgin Suicides

College Wasn't Like The Real World. In The Real World People Dropped Names Based On Their Renown. In College, People Dropped Names Based On Their Obscurity.

But, Like Anyone In Love, Madeleine Believed That Her Own Relationship Was Different From Every Other Relationship, Immune From Typical Problems.

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.

The Window Was Still Open.” Mr Lisbon Said. “i Don’t Think We’d Ever Remembered To Shut It. It Was All Clear To Me. I Knew I Had To Close It Or Else She’d Go On Jumping Out Of It Forever

I Was Thinking How Amazing It Was That The World Contained So Many Lives. Out In These Streets People Were Embroiled In A Thousand Different Matters, Money Problems, Love Problems, School Problems. People Were Falling In Love, Getting Married, Going To Drug Rehab, Learning How To Ice-skate, Getting Bifocals, Studying For Exams, Trying On Clothes, Getting Their Hair-cut And Getting Born. And In Some 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.

Falling In Love

It Was Possible To Feel Superior To Other People And Feel Like A Misfit At The Same Time.

The Essential Matrimonial Facts: That To Be Happy You Have To Find Variety In Repetition; That To Go Forward You Have To Come Back To Where You Begin.

I'm Constantly Having Doubts And Moments Of Depression And Then Excitement And Then Back Into The Slough Of Despond.

We're All Made Up Of Many Parts, Other Halves. Not Just Me.

She Was A Large, Disordered Woman, Like A Child's Drawing That Didn't Stay Within The Lines.

You Don't Understand Me. I'm A Teenager. I've Got Problems!

Virgin Suicides

There's A Kind Of Acting That Goes On In My Head When I'm Writing A Character Where I Put Myself In Their Place.

To Start With, Look At All The Books.

My Family Suffered. My Hair Turned Up In Every Corner, Every Drawer, Every Meal. Even In The Rice Puddings Tessie Made, Covering Each Little Bowl With Wax Paper Before Putting It Away In The Fridge--even Into These Prophylactically Secure Desserts My Hair Found Its Way! Jet Black Hairs Wound Themselves Around Bars Of Soap. They Lay Pressed Like Flower Stems Between The Pages Of Books. They Turned Up In Eyeglass Cases, Birthday Cards, Once--i Swear--inside An Egg Tessie Had Just Cracked. The Next-door Neighbor's Cat Coughed Up A Hairball One Day And The Hair Was Not The Cat's.

But I Care About The Reader, And I'm Trying To Keep The Reader's Attention For As Long As I Can.

He Knew A Lot About His Grandparents - And Perhaps He Feels He's Been Endowed With Abilities To Go Into People's Heads Who Are Long Dead - But, To A Certain Extent, He's Making It Up.

If Mitchell Was Ever Going To Become A Good Christian, He Would Have To Stop Disliking People So Intensely.

We Listened To Them, But It Was Clear They'd Received Too Much Therapy To Know The Truth.

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.

Girls Forbidden To Dance Would Only Attract Husbands With Bad Complexions And Sunken Chests.

It Was Something Every Child Knew How To Do, Maintain A Direct And Full Connection With The World. Somehow You Forgot About It As You Grew Up, And Had To Learn It Again.

I Live My Own Life And Nurse My Own Wounds. It's Not The Best Way To Live. But It's The Way I Am.

But That Was In The Days When They Expected Perils To Come From Without, And Nothing Made Less Sense By That Time Than A Survival Room Buried In A House Itself Becoming One Big Coffin.

You Went Out With A Girl At First Because The Sheer Sight Of Her Made You Weak In The Knees. You Fell In Love And Were Desperate Not To Let Her Get Away. And Yet The More You Thought About Her, The Less You Knew Who She Was. The Hope Was That Love Transcended All Differences. That Was The Hope.

It Was The Combination Of Many Factors... With Most People, Suicide Is Like Russian Roulette. Only One Chamber Has A Bullet. With The Lisbon Girls, The Gun Was Loaded. A Bullet For Family Abuse. A Bullet For Genetic Predisposition. A Bullet For Historical Malaise. A Bullet For Inevitable Momentum. The Other Two Bullets Are Impossible To Name, But That Doesn't Mean The Chambers Were Empty.

Sourmelina's Secret (as Aunt Zo Put It): 'lina Was One Of Those Women They Named The Island After.

There Have Been Hermaphrodites Around Forever, Cal. Forever. Plato Said That The Original Human Being Was A Hermaphrodite. Did You Know That? The Original Person Was Two Halves, One Male, One Female. Then These Got Separated. That's Why Everybody's Always Searching For Their Other Half. Except For Us. We've Got Both Halves Already.

He Had The Feeling That There Was Something Physically Behind His Eyes, Blocking The Light.

She Wanted Out Of The Decorating Scheme.

That Since Cecilia’s Suicide, The Lisbon’s Could Hardly Wait For The Night To Forget Themselves In Sleep

I'd Like To Have A Word For 'the Sadness Inspired By Failing Restaurants' As Well As For 'the Excitement Of Getting A Room With A Minibar.

-who Are You, Anyway? -just Someone Who Knows, From Personal Experience, How Attractive It Can Be To Think You Can Save Somebody Else By Loving Them.

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