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I've Never Had The Right Words To Describe My Life, And Now That I've Entered My Story, I Need Them More Than Ever.
-Jeffrey Eugenides
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I've Never Had The

Jeffrey Eugenides
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I've Never Had The Right Words To Describe My Life, And Now That I've Entered My Story, I Need Them More Than Ever.

Understanding the Quote: "i've never had the right words to describe my life, and now..."

This quote by Jeffrey Eugenides reflects deeply on the theme of needs. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Needs, Stories, Right Words, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Jeffrey Eugenides interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides is celebrated for insightful thoughts on needs and stories. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Needs
Stories
Right Words
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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.
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I Have A Very Beautiful Room In My House... It's Glass On Three Sides, And You'd Think That's The Perfect Place To Write. Somehow In That Nice Room I Feel Too Exposed, And... I'm Too Distracted By Things Going On, So I End Up Writing In A Not-very-nice Office Bedroom.
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Regret, Already Sogging Me Down, Burst Its Dam. It Seeped Into My Legs, It Pooled In My Heart.
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He Had The Feeling That There Was Something Physically Behind His Eyes, Blocking The Light.
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The 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.
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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.
Self
Mind
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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.
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Acting
I'm Hopefully Making The Reader Feel A Lot About The Characters And Then About Their Own Life.
Character
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She Held Herself Very Straight, Like Audrey Hepburn, Whom All Women Idolize And Men Never Think About.
Men
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This Can't Be True But I Remember It.
Remember
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I Went Into The Desert To Forget About You. But The Sand Was The Color Of Your Hair. The Desert Sku Was The Color Of Your Eyes. There Was Nowhere I Could Go That Wouldn't Be You.
Eye
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So Do Boys And Men Announce Their Intentions. They Cover You Like A Sarcophagus Lid. And Call It Love.
Boys
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I Want An Ending That’s Satisfying. I’m More Of A Classical Writer Than A Modernist One In That I Want The Ending To Be Coherent And Feel Like An Ending. I Don’t Like When It Just Seems To Putter Out. I Mean, Life Is Chaotic Enough.
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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.
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Historical Fact: People Stopped Being People In 1913. That Was The Year Henry Ford Put His Cars On Rollers And Made His Workers Adopt The Speed Of The Assembly Line. At First, Workers Rebelled. They Quit In Droves, Unable To Accustom Their Bodies To The New Pace Of The Age. Since Then, However, The Adaptation Has Been Passed Down: We've All Inherited It To Some Degree, So That We Plug Right Into Joy-sticks And Remotes, To Repetitive Motions Of A Hundred Kinds.
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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.
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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.
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Baby
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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.
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But Maybe The Charm Bracelets Understood More About Life Than I Did. From An Early Age They Knew What Little Value The World Placed In Books, And So Didn't Waste Their Time With Them. Whereas I, Even Now, Persist In Believing That These Black Marks On White Paper Bear The Greatest Significance, That If I Keep Writing, I Might Be Able To Catch The Rainbow Of Consciousness In A Jar.
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Some Pulitzer Winners - Novelists - Have Confided To Me That Getting The Prize Screwed Them Up. It Messed With Their Heads. That Hasn't Been My Experience.
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Sourmelina's Secret (as Aunt Zo Put It): 'lina Was One Of Those Women They Named The Island After.
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Added To Their Loveliness Was A New Mysterious Suffering, Perfectly Silent, Visible In The Blue Puffiness Beneath Their Eyes Or The Way They Would Sometimes Stop In Mid-stride, Look Down, And Shake Their Heads As Though Disagreeing With Life.
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Can You See Me? All Of Me? Probably Not. No One Ever Really Has.
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She Thought A Writer Should Work Harder Writing A Book Than She Did Reading It.
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There Comes A Moment, When You Get Lost In The Woods, When The Woods Begin To Feel Like Home.
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Now All The Mute Objects Of My Life Seem To Tell My Story, To Stretch Back In Time, If I Look Closely Enough.
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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.
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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.
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Paris Was A Museum Displaying Exactly Itself.
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It Was One Of Those Humid Days When The Atmosphere Gets Confused. Sitting On The Porch, You Could Feel It: The Air Wishing It Was Water.
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It Was As If, Before She`d Met Him, Her Blood Had Circulated Grayly Around Her Body, And Now Ir Was All Oxygenated And Red. She Was Petrified Of Becoming The Half-alive Person She`d Been Before.
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To Be Inclusive You Must Accommodate Different Levels Of Sophistication.
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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.
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I Studied English Literature In The Honors Program, Which Means That You Had To Take Courses In Various Centuries. You Had To Start With Old English, Middle English, And Work Your Way Toward The Modern. I Figured If I Did That It Would Force Me To Read Some Of The Things I Might Not Read On My Own.
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I 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.
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Basically What We Have Here Is A Dreamer. Somebody Out Of Touch With Reality. When She Jumped, She Probably Thought She'd Fly
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They Had Killed Themselves Over Our Dying Forests, Over Manatees Maimed By Propellers As They Surfaced To Drink From Garden Hoses; They Had Killed Themselves At The Sight Of Used Tires Stacked Higher Than The Pyramids; They Had Killed Themselves Over The Failure To Find A Love None Of Us Could Ever Be. In The End, The Tortures Tearing The Lisbon Girls Pointed To A Simple Reasoned Refusal To Accept The World As It Was Handed Down To Them, So Full Of Flaws.
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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.
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They Were Bound For College, Husbands, Child-rearing, Unhappiness Only Dimly Perceived- Bound, In Other Words, For Life.
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The Trees Like Lungs Filling With Air. My Sister, The Mean One, Pulling My Hair.
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I Was Beginning To Understand Something About Normality. Normality Wasn't Normal. It Couldn't Be. If Normality Were Normal, Everybody Could Leave It Alone. They Could Sit Back And Let Normality Manifest Itself. But People-and Especially Doctors- Had Doubts About Normality. They Weren't Sure Normality Was Up The Job. And So They Felt Inclined To Give It A Boost.
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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.
Past
People
Special
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.
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Boys
Night
You Never Get Over It, But You Get To Where It Doesn't Bother You So Much.
I Hate You
Bother
Over It
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Reading
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Voice
We Greeks Are A Moody People. Suicide Makes Sense To Us. Putting Up Christmas Lights After Your Own Daughter Does It--that Makes No Sense. What My Yia Yia Could Never Understand About America Was Why Everyone Pretended To Be Happy All The Time.” -mrs. Karafilis
Daughter
Suicide
Light
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Real
Writing
There Is A Small Window Of Opportunity For Freckled Girls To Tan.
Girl
Opportunity
Window
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.
Calling
Misfits
Virgin Suicides
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.
Girl
Baseball
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Wonderful Life
Virgin Suicides
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Risk
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Is There Anything As Incredible As The Love Story Of Your Own Parents? Anything As Hard To Grasp As The Fact That Those Two Over-the-hill Players, Permanently On The Disabled List, Were Once In The Starting Lineup? It's Impossible To Imagine My Father, Who In My Experience Was Aroused Mainly By The Lowering Of Interest Rates, Suffering The Acute, Adolescent Passions Of The Flesh.
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Passion
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Chunks Of His Life Fell Away, So That While We Were Moving Ahead In Time, He Was Moving Back.
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Moving Ahead
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And She Had Succeeded, On The Second Try, In Hurling Herself Out Of The World
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Virgin Suicides
Pregnancy Humbles Husbands. After An Initial Rush Of Male Pride They Quickly Recognise The Minor Role That Nature Had Assigned Them In The Drama Of Reproduction.
Husband
Drama
Pregnancy
Biology Gives You A Brain. Life Turns It Into A Mind.
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Life
Learning
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Heart
Instruction
Over It
We're All Made Up Of Many Parts, Other Halves. Not Just Me.
Half
Other Half
Made
It Was Amazing How It Worked: The Tiniest Bit Of Truth Made Credible The Greatest Lies.
Lying
Deceit
Made
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Kids
People
Stories
There Was Nowhere I Could Go That Wouldn't Be You.
Be You
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Smart
Writing
Dumb
I Was Aware That You Weren't Supposed To Write About Suburbia, That It Was Undignified In Some Way, The Subject Matter Not Momentous Enough. And So, For A Long Time, That Kept Me From Writing About It. But Once I Began, I Realized It Was Just As Interesting As Anywhere Else.
Writing
Long
Interesting
When I Wrote The Virgin Suicides, I Gave Myself Very Strict Rules About The Narrative Voice: The Boys Would Only Be Able To Report What They Had Seen Or Found Or What Had Been Told To Them.
Suicide
Boys
Narrative Voice
That Was The Deal Basically: Catatonia Without; Frenzy Within
Deals
Frenzy
There Are Some Books That Reached Through The Noise Of Life To Grab You By The Collar And Speak Only Of The Truest Things.
Book
Noise
Speak
The Worst Thing About Religion Was Religious People.
Religious
People
Religion
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.
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Stupid
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Detroit
Towns
I Think, Especially When You're In College, Each Book That You're Reading Tends To Tell You Who You Are.
Book
Reading
College
Well, Marriage Doesn't Function In The Way It Used To In Terms Of Deciding Our Fate, But It's In Our Heads, And It Determines A Lot Of Our Actions. Like, Right Now, If You Think About Gay Marriage - And They Just Started Having The First Gay Marriages In New York - It Shows What A Potent Idea Marriage Remains For People.
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Fate
Gay
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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Cat
Dark
We Listened To Them, But It Was Clear They'd Received Too Much Therapy To Know The Truth.
Too Much
Clear
Therapy
No Reason To Mention My Peculiarities, My Wandering In The Maze These Many Years, Shut Away From Sight. And From Love, Too.
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Years
Mazes
The Statue Of Liberty's Gender Changed Nothing. It Was The Same Here As Anywhere: Men And Their Wars.
War
Men
Liberty
I Spend Most Of Every Day Writing. I Like To Write Every Day If I Can. I Don't Start Extremely Early.
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Writing
Ifs
But What Humans Forget, Cells Remember. The Body, That Elephant
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Elephants
Body
That's The Way I Will Write Characters, Put A Fair Amount Of Myself In Them, And Then Everyone Else Who Was Like That Person, I Will Pick And Choose.
Writing
Character
Way
In The Midst Of My Skeptical, Cynical, Often Pessimistic Nature Exists A Slender Capacity To Believe, If Only Temporarily, In A Guiding, Unseen Power, And Whenever This Happens, I Go With It. That's What Inspiration Is. You Don't Get It From The Gods. You Make It.
Believe
Inspiration
Cynical
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.
Easter
Book
Angel
I Think There's A Real Connection Between Acting And Writing Novels Because The Way I Write Characters Has A Little Bit To Do With The Method Acting That I Was Taught In High School And College.
Real
Writing
School
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.
Writing
School
Thinking
We Knew, Finally, That The Girls Were Really Women In Disguise, That They Understood Love And Even Death, And That Our Job Was Merely To Create The Noise That Seemed To Fascinate Them.
Girl
Jobs
Noise
My Goal In Life Is To Become An Adjective.
Goal
Adjectives
Life Is
My Change From Girl To Boy Was Far Less Dramatic Than The Distance Anybody Travels From Infancy To Adulthood.
Girl
Distance
Boys
She Could Become A Spinster, Like Emily Dickinson, Writing Poems Full Of Dashes And Brilliance, And Never Gaining Weight.
Writing
Weight
Spinsters
Novelists Are Always Resisting Autobiographical Readings Of Their Work, Because They Know How False Those Can Be.
Reading
Writing
Novelists
Their Desire Was Silent Yet Magnificent, Like A Thousand Daisies Attuning Their Faces Toward The Path Of The Sun.
Desire
Path
Faces
Every Letter Was A Love Letter. Of Course, As Love Letters Went, This One Could Have Been Better. It Was Not Very Promising, For Instance, That Madeleine Claimed Not To Want To See Him For The Next Half-century.
Half
Letters
Want
It's Amazing What You Can Get Used To.
Used
Engines
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.
Wall
Voice
Childhood
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.
Character
Fighting
Self
All Of A Sudden America Wasn't About Hamburgers And Hot Rods Anymore. It Was About The Mayflower And Plymouth Rock. It Was About Something That Had Happened For Two Minutes Four Hundred Years Ago, Instead Of Everything That Had Happened Since. Instead Of Everything That Was Happening Now!
Rocks
Years
Two
But I Care About The Reader, And I'm Trying To Keep The Reader's Attention For As Long As I Can.
Long
Trying
Attention
Emotions, In My Experience, Aren't Covered By Single Words. I Don't Believe In "sadness", "joy", Or "regret". Maybe The Best Proof That The Language Is Patriarchal Is That Is Oversimplifies Feeling. I'd Like To Have At My Disposal Complicated Hybrid Emotions.
Regret
Believe
Sadness
Everyone Struggles Against Despair, But It Always Wins In The End. It Has To. It's The Thing That Lets Us Say Goodbye.
Goodbye
Struggle
Winning
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.
Girl
Sight
Differences
The 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.
Dream
Reality
Together
The Television Replaced The Sound Of Conversation That Was Missing From My Grandparents' Lives.
Grandparent
Missing
Sound
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.
Girl
Suicide
Mean
It Took Courage To Let Things Fall Apart So Beautifully.
Fall
Falling Apart
Balconies
Whenever We Got A Glimpse, Their Faces Looked Indecently Revealed, As Though We Were Used To Seeing Women In Veils.
Glimpse
Veils
Faces
That Since Cecilia’s Suicide, The Lisbon’s Could Hardly Wait For The Night To Forget Themselves In Sleep
Suicide
Sleep
Night
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.
Children
Connections
World
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.
Girl
Suicide
Doctors
But, Like Anyone In Love, Madeleine Believed That Her Own Relationship Was Different From Every Other Relationship, Immune From Typical Problems.
Typical
Different
Problem
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.
Girl
Couple
House
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.
Writing
Character
Thinking
She'd Become An English Major For The Purest And Dullest Of Reasons: Because She Loved To Read.
Reason
English Major
Majors
On Their Best Days, Writers All Over The World Are Winning Pulitzers, All Alone In Their Studios, With No One Watching.
Being Alone
Creativity
Winning
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.
Believe
People
Needs
She May Have Looked Normal On The Outside, But Once You'd Seen Her Handwriting You Knew She Was Deliciously Complicated Inside.
Handwriting
May
Normal
She Was A Large, Disordered Woman, Like A Child's Drawing That Didn't Stay Within The Lines.
Children
Drawing
Lines
Children Learn To Speak Male Or Female The Way They Learn To Speak English Or French.
Children
Speak English
Males
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.
Solitude
Lovers
Solitary
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.
Becoming One
House
Survival
It's Often Said That A Traumatic Experience Early In Life Marks A Person Forever, Pulls Her Out Of Line, Saying, "stay There. Don't Move.
Moving
Forever
Lines
I Wanted To Be An Actor. My Parents Were Not Too Keen On That.
Parent
Actors
Wanted
Virgin Suicide What Was That She Cried? No Use In Stayin' On This Holocaust Ride She Gave Me Her Cherry She's My Virgin Suicide
Suicide
Holocaust
Use
All Sixteen Mentioned Her Jutting Ribs, The Insubstantiality Of Her Thighs, And One, Who Went Up To The Roof With Lux During A Warm Winter Rain, Told Us How The Basins Of Her Collarbones Collected Water.
Rain
Winter
Water
She Wanted Out Of The Decorating Scheme.
Schemes
Decorating
Wanted
I Have A Good Memory For Early Life. My Visual Memory Is Good About Childhood And Adolescence, And Less Good In The Last 10 Years. I Could Probably Tell You Less What Happened In The Last 10 Years. I Remember What Houses Looked Like, Sometimes They Just Pop Into My Head.
Memories
Years
House
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.
Plato
Two
Forever
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.
Loss
Reality
Mystical Experiences
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.
Matter
Birth
Given
-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.
Thinking
Attractive
Knows
It Was Possible To Feel Superior To Other People And Feel Like A Misfit At The Same Time.
People
Misfits
Feels
We're All Well-acquainted With Depression, We All Know What The Low Moods Are, But The Mania Was Not Something I Knew Much About. I Didn't Know That It Would Make Someone Dress Extravagantly Or Start To Pun, And To Stay Up And Drink.
Depression
Dresses
Drink
Heartbreak Is Funny To Everyone But The Heartbroken.
Heartbreak
Heartbroken
They Thought Depression Was Like Bieng 'depressed'. They Thought It Was Like Being In A Bad Mood, Only Worse. Therefore, They Tried To Get Him To Snap Out Of It.
Depression
Bad Mood
Mood
Words, Words, Word. Once, I Had The Gift. I Could Make Love Out Of Words As A Potter Makes Cups Of Clay. Love That Overthrows Empire. Love That Binds Two Hearts Together, Come Hellfire & Brimstone. For Sixpence A Line, I Could Cause A Riot In A Nunnery. But Now -- I Have Lost My Gift. It's As If My Quill Is Broken, As If The Organ Of My Imagination Has Dried Up, As If The Proud -illegible Word- Of My Genius Has Collapsed.
Heart
Two
Broken
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.
Solitude
Feelings
Way
Lux’s Frequent Forged Excuses From Phys. Ed. She Always Used The Same Method, Faking The Rigid T’s And B’s Of Her Mother’s Signature And Then, To Distinguish Her Own Handwriting, Penning Her Signature, Lux Lisbon, Below, The Two Beseeching L’s Reaching Out For Each Other Over The Ditch Of The U And Barbed-wire X.
Mother
Two
Wire
Winter Is The Season Of Alcoholism And Despair.
Winter
Despair
Alcoholism
Maybe The Best Proof That The Language Is Patriarchal Is That It Oversimplifies Feeling.
Feelings
Emotion
Language
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.
Mean
And Love
Birth
If I Write A Character, Instead Of Looking From The Outside, Like Maybe A Journalist Would, Trying To Describe Them Physically And Figuring Out What Kind Of Things They Might Be Interested In Or Have In Their House, I Don't Really Do It That Way. I Try To Feel What It Would Be Like To Be Inside This Person, To Be Them.
Writing
Character
House
Scars Crossed Her Welded Wrists.
Scar
Wrists
To Start With, Look At All The Books.
Book
Looks
You Begin Always Knowing Nothing. You Remain Forever An Amateur, A First Timer.
Knowing Nothing
Always Knowing
Forever
Normality Wasn't Normal. It Couldn't Be. If Normality Were Normal, Everybody Could Leave It Alone. They Could Sit Back And Let Normality Manifest Itself.
Normal
Manifest
Ifs
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.
Heartbroken
Two
Feelings
Capitalism Has Resulted In Material Well-being But Spiritual Bankruptcy.
Spiritual
Virgin Suicides
Well Being
It Didn't Matter In The End How Old They Had Been, Or That They Were Girls, But Only That We Had Loved Them, And That They Hadn't Heard Us Calling, Still Do Not Hear Us, Up Here In The Tree House With Our Thinning Hair And Soft Bellies, Calling Them Out Of Those Rooms Where They Went To Be Alone For All Time, Alone In Suicide, Which Is Deeper Than Death, And Where We Will Never Find The Pieces To Put Them Back Together.
Girl
Suicide
Hair
They're Just Memories Now. Time To Write Them Off.
Memories
Writing
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.
Creativity
Character
People
I'm Constantly Having Doubts And Moments Of Depression And Then Excitement And Then Back Into The Slough Of Despond.
Doubt
Excitement
Moments
We Realized That The Version Of The World They Rendered For Us Was Not The Version Of The World They Really Believed In.
Parenting
World
Virgin Suicides
Where Else Would She Feel More Comfortable Than In This Subterranean Realm Where People Wrote Down What They Couldn't Say, Where They Gave Voice To Their Most Shameful Longings And Knowledge?
Voice
People
Longing
I'd Like To Show How 'intimations Of Mortality Brought On By Aging Family Members' Connects With 'the Hatred Of Mirrors That Begins In Middle Age.
Mirrors
Hatred
Age
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.
Girl
Clouds
Boulders
Dieting Fooled You Into Thinking You Could Control Your Life.
Thinking
Dieting
Fooled
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.
Reading
Men
Hands
Lux Spent The Ride Dialing The Radio For Her Favorite Song. "it Makes Me Crazy," She Said. "you Know They're Playing It Somewhere, But You Have To Find It.
Song
Crazy
Radio
You Don't Understand Me. I'm A Teenager. I've Got Problems!
Teenager
Problem
Virgin Suicides
Girls Forbidden To Dance Would Only Attract Husbands With Bad Complexions And Sunken Chests.
Girl
Husband
Forbidden
That Was When Leonard Realized Something Crucial About Depression. The Smarter You Were, The Worse It Was. The Sharper Your Brain, The More It Cut You Up.
Depression
Cutting
Brain
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.
Grieving
People
Sick
People Don't Save Other People. People Save Themselves.
People
The Girls Took Into Their Own Hands Decisions Better Left To God. They Became Too Powerful To Live Among Us, Too Self-concerned, Too Visionary, Too Blind.
Girl
Powerful
Self
I Think The Suicides In My First Book Came From The Idea Of Growing Up In Detroit. If You Grow Up In A City Like That You Feel Everything Is Perishing, Evanescent And Going Away Very Quickly.
Suicide
Growing Up
Book
In The End, It Wasn't Death That Surprised Her But The Stubbornness Of Life.
Death
Stubbornness
Ends
It Was Morning By The Clock But Deepest Nighttime In His Body.
Morning
Body
Clock
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.
Play
Piano
Nurse
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.
Sadness
Rooms
Excitement
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
Suicide
Self Harm
Thinking
I've Never Had The Right Words To Describe My Life, And Now That I've Entered My Story, I Need Them More Than Ever.
Needs
Stories
Right Words
When You Stood Between Somebody You Loved And Death, It Was Hard To Be Awake And It Was Hard To Sleep.
Sleep
Awake
Hard
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.
Immigration
Able
Next
I Was Unemployable When I Got Out Of College.
College
You Can Tell When Something's Not Moving Forward Anymore. When The Doubts You Have About It Don't Go Away.
Moving
Moving Forward
Doubt
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