The Window Gave Onto A View Of Dove-gray Roofs And Balconies, Each One Containing The Same Cracked Flowerpot And Sleeping Feline. It Was As If The Entire City Of Paris Had Agreed To Abide By A Single Understated Taste. Each Neighbor Was Doing His Or Her Own To Keep Up Standards, Which Was Difficult Because The French Ideal Wasn't Clearly Delineated Like The Neatness And Greenness Of American Lawns, But More Of A Picturesque Disrepair. It Took Courage To Let Things Fall Apart So Beautifully.

-Jeffrey Eugenides

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The Window Gave Onto

Jeffrey Eugenides

Topic

Fall

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More From Jeffrey Eugenides

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.

Success

Novelists

Winner

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.

Memories

Real

Writing

She Wanted Out Of The Decorating Scheme.

Schemes

Decorating

Wanted

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.

Believe

Book

Writing

When I'm Creating A Character, It's A Little Bit Like What My Theater Teachers Used To Tell Me About Stanislavsky, Like If You're Using Sense Memory To Do A Scene - If You Have To Cry In A Scene, You Try To Remember Something In Your Life That Made You Cry And You Use That In Order To Get The Tears.

Teacher

Memories

Character

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

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

When You Stood Between Somebody You Loved And Death, It Was Hard To Be Awake And It Was Hard To Sleep.

Sleep

Awake

Hard

Dieting Fooled You Into Thinking You Could Control Your Life.

Thinking

Dieting

Fooled

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

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.

Father

Passion

Player

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

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.

Rome

Hands

Cities

Maybe The Best Proof That The Language Is Patriarchal Is That It Oversimplifies Feeling.

Feelings

Emotion

Language

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

The Trees Like Lungs Filling With Air. My Sister, The Mean One, Pulling My Hair.

Mean

Hair

Tree

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.

Wall

Thinking

Overcoming

The Worst Thing About Religion Was Religious People.

Religious

People

Religion

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

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

In The End We Had The Pieces Of The Puzzle, But No Matter How We Put Them Together, Gaps Remained, Oddly Shaped Emptinesses Mapped By What Surrounded Them, Like Countries We Couldn't Name.

Country

Names

Together

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

Different

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.

Years

People

Car

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.

Girl

Doctors

Years

This Can't Be True But I Remember It.

Remember

Being True

Depression Is Like A Bruise That Never Goes Away. A Bruise In Your Mind. You Just Got To Be Careful Not To Touch It Where It Hurts. It's Always There, Though.

Depression

Hurt

Mind

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

Pain

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.

Beautiful

Stupid

Good Luck

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

Children

Husband

College

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.

Blood

Half

Alive

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

Typical

Different

Problem

I Was Unemployable When I Got Out Of College.

College

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

Jacques Derrida Is A Very Important Thinker And Philosopher Who Has Made Serious Contributions To Both Philosophy And Literary Criticism. Roland Barthes Is The One I Feel Most Affinity For, And Michel Foucault, Well, His Writing Influenced My Novel, 'middlesex.'

Philosophy

Writing

Criticism

Now All The Mute Objects Of My Life Seem To Tell My Story, To Stretch Back In Time, If I Look Closely Enough.

Looks

Stories

Enough

The World, A Tired Performer, Offers Us Another Half-assed Season.

Tired

Half

World

I Saw The Movie, He Said. I Know What It's About. Listen To This. When Girls Get To Be About Twelve Or So - He Leaned Toward Us - Their Tits Bleed.

Girl

Twelve

Saws

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

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

Children

Drawing

Lines

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.

Mean

Want

Life Is

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

Aunt

Islands

Secret

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

Half

Other Half

Made

Basically What We Have Here Is A Dreamer. Somebody Out Of Touch With Reality. When She Jumped, She Probably Thought She'd Fly

Life

Reality

Dreamer

If You Think Of Even Tolstoy Or A Book Like 'anna Karenina,' You Go From Character To Character, And Each Section Is From The Third Person Perspective Of A Different Character, So You Get To See The Whole World A Little More Kaleidoscopically That Way. That's Traditional Narrative Manner, And I Haven't Done A Book Like That Before, But I Enjoyed It.

Book

Character

Thinking

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.

Grief

Night

Blue

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

I Think It Is Important To Remind People Of The Extent Of Our Free Will.

Thinking

People

Important

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

Children Learn To Speak Male Or Female The Way They Learn To Speak English Or French.

Children

Speak English

Males

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

Block

Eye

Light

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

Girl

Husband

Forbidden

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

Every Novelist Should Possess A Hermaphroditic Imagination.

Imagination

Novelists

Should

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

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

Some Cities Have Fallen Into Ruin And Some Are Built Upon Ruins But Others Contain Their Own Ruins While Still Growing.

Cities

Growing

Ruins

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

Home

Woods

Moments

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

We Value Love Not Because It's Stronger Than Death But Because It's Weaker. Say What You Want About Love: Death Will Finish It. You Will Not Go On Loving In The Grave, Not In Any Physical Way That Will At All Resemble Love As We Know It On Earth. The Perishable Nature Of Love Is What Gives Love Its Importance In Our Lives. If It Were Endless, If It Were On Tap, Love Wouldn't Hit Us The Way It Does.

Love

Giving

Stronger

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

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

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.

Path

Environment

Genes

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.

Real

College

Names

So Do Boys And Men Announce Their Intentions. They Cover You Like A Sarcophagus Lid. And Call It Love.

Boys

Men

Intention

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.

Eye

Blue

Suffering

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.

Long

Finals

Language

It Was Morning By The Clock But Deepest Nighttime In His Body.

Morning

Body

Clock

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

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

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

School

Cutting

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

War

Men

Liberty

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

Book

Reading

Writing

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

Knowing Nothing

Always Knowing

Forever

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

Technology

Rooms

Internet

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

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

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.

Mean

Honor

Literature

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.

Girl

Baby

Teenage

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

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

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.

Risk

Remember

My Family

She Understood That Her Heart Operated On Its Own Instructions, That She Had No Control Over It Or, Indeed, Anything Else.

Heart

Instruction

Over It

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

That’s How People Live, By Telling Stories. What’s The First Thing A Kid Says When He Learns How To Talk? “tell Me A Story.” That’s How We Understand Who We Are, Where We Come From. Stories Are Everything.

Kids

People

Stories

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

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

I Think, Especially When You're In College, Each Book That You're Reading Tends To Tell You Who You Are.

Book

Reading

College

There Is A Small Window Of Opportunity For Freckled Girls To Tan.

Girl

Opportunity

Window

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.

Beautiful

Nice

Writing

Paris Was A Museum Displaying Exactly Itself.

Museums

Paris

Scars Crossed Her Welded Wrists.

Scar

Wrists

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

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

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.

Writing

Character

Acting

Capitalism Has Resulted In Material Well-being But Spiritual Bankruptcy.

Spiritual

Virgin Suicides

Well Being

Chunks Of His Life Fell Away, So That While We Were Moving Ahead In Time, He Was Moving Back.

Moving

Moving Ahead

Moving Back

The Zipper Opened All The Way Down Our Spines.

Zippers

Way

Spine

Heartbreak Is Funny To Everyone But The Heartbroken.

Heartbreak

Heartbroken

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.

Confused

Air

Water

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

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

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

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

Winter Is The Season Of Alcoholism And Despair.

Winter

Despair

Alcoholism

It's Amazing What You Can Get Used To.

Used

Engines

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

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

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.

Love Is

Giving

Profound

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

Biology Gives You A Brain. Life Turns It Into A Mind.

Love

Life

Learning

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

That Was The Deal Basically: Catatonia Without; Frenzy Within

Deals

Frenzy

The Television Replaced The Sound Of Conversation That Was Missing From My Grandparents' Lives.

Grandparent

Missing

Sound

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

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

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

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

I Don’t Know What You’re Feeling, I Won’t Even Pretend

Feelings

Wonderful Life

Virgin Suicides

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

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

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.

Crush

Boys

Night

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

Hair

Color

There Was Nowhere I Could Go That Wouldn't Be You.

Be You

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

Work

Writing

Ifs

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

Regret

Heart

Dams

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.

Long

People

Grandparent

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.

Facts

Essentials

Repetition

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

The Ideas For My Books Come About In Two Ways. There Can Be An Intellectual Idea That Seems To Be The Reason For Writing The Book. [...] The Other Motive Is Unconscious. There Is Something Deeply Psychological And Emotional That Draws Me To The Material In The First Place.

Book

Writing

Emotional

To Start With, Look At All The Books.

Book

Looks

Emotions, In My Experience Aren't Covered By Single Words. I Don't Believe In "sadness," "joy," Or "regret." I'd Like To Have At My Disposal Complicated Hybrid Emotions, Germanic Traincar Constructions Like, Say, "the Happiness That Attends Disaster." Or: "the Disappointment Of Sleeping With One's Fantasy." ... 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." I've Never Had The Right Words To Describe My Life.

Disappointment

Regret

Believe

I Tell My Students That When You Write, You Should Pretend You’re Writing The Best Letter You Ever Wrote To The Smartest Friend You Have. That Way, You’ll Never Dumb Things Down. You Won’t Have To Explain Things That Don’t Need Explaining. You’ll Assume An Intimacy And A Natural Shorthand, Which Is Good Because Readers Are Smart And Don’t Wish To Be Condescended To.

Smart

Writing

Dumb

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'm Hopefully Making The Reader Feel A Lot About The Characters And Then About Their Own Life.

Character

Emotion

Reader

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

For The Eternity That Lux Lisbon Looked At Him, Trip Fontaine Looked Back, And The Love He Felt At That Moment, Truer Than All Subsequent Loves Because It Never Had To Survive Real Life, Still Plagued Him, Even Now In The Desert, With His Looks And Health Wasted. 'you Never Know What'll Set The Memory Off,' He Told Us. 'a Baby's Face. A Bell On A Cat's Collar. Anything.' They Didn't Exchange A Single Word. But In The Weeks That Followed, Trip Spent His Days Wandering The Halls, Hoping For Lux To Appear, The Most Naked Person With Clothes On He Had Ever Seen.

Baby

Memories

Real

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

Too Much

Clear

Therapy

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

Detroit's A Great Music Town. If Your Interaction With It Was Mainly Musical, I'm Sure You Have A Good Opinion Of The Place.

Musical

Detroit

Towns

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

-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

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

I'm Not Really An Autobiographical Writer, Though I Use Lots Of Stuff From My Life To Make My Stories Seem Real. But When I Actually Write About Myself, I Get Very Confused.

Confused

Real

Writing

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

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

To Be Inclusive You Must Accommodate Different Levels Of Sophistication.

Different

Levels

Sophistication

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

Doubt

Excitement

Moments

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

No Reason To Mention My Peculiarities, My Wandering In The Maze These Many Years, Shut Away From Sight. And From Love, Too.

Sight

Years

Mazes

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

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

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.

Girl

Simple

Pyramids

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

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

Men

Thinking

Virgin Suicides

Her Eyes Watered And She Was A Foot Taller Than Any Of Her Sisters, Mostly Because Of The Length Of Her Neck Which Would One Day Hang From The End Of A Rope

Eye

Feet

One Day

Novelists Are Always Resisting Autobiographical Readings Of Their Work, Because They Know How False Those Can Be.

I Had A Briefcase At One Point, But It Was A Kind Of 1980s New Wave Briefcase. It Was Made Of Some Kind Of Cardboard And It Had Metal Hinges. It Was Kind Of Faux Industrial Looking, And I Used To Carry My Books In It Rather Than A Backpack. I Didn't Want To Have Normal Student Accoutrements.

Book

Want

Normal

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

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.

Flower

Book

Cat

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

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

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

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

Whenever We Got A Glimpse, Their Faces Looked Indecently Revealed, As Though We Were Used To Seeing Women In Veils.

Glimpse

Veils

Faces

One Of The Reasons That Art Is Important To Me Is Sometimes It Actually Feels More Coherent Than Life. It Orders The Chaos.

Art

Order

Important

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

People

Misfits

Feels

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

Every Letter Was A Love Letter.

Letters

Love Letter

People Don't Save Other People. People Save Themselves.

People

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.

Strong

Memories

Book

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

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

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.

Writing

Heart

Winning

She'd Become An English Major For The Purest And Dullest Of Reasons: Because She Loved To Read.

Reason

English Major

Majors

In The End, It Wasn't Death That Surprised Her But The Stubbornness Of Life.

Death

Stubbornness

Ends

Can You See Me? All Of Me? Probably Not. No One Ever Really Has.

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.

Jobs

Doctors

People

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

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

Christian

People

Good Christian

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.

Nurse

Way To Live

Best Way

Their Desire Was Silent Yet Magnificent, Like A Thousand Daisies Attuning Their Faces Toward The Path Of The Sun.

Desire

Path

Faces

They're Just Memories Now. Time To Write Them Off.

Memories

Writing

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

You Never Get Over It, But You Get To Where It Doesn't Bother You So Much.

I Hate You

Bother

Over It

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

Suicide

Sleep

Night

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.

Daughter

Suicide

Morning

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

My Goal In Life Is To Become An Adjective.

Goal

Adjectives

Life Is

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

Teenager

Problem

Virgin Suicides

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.

Girl

Cat

Dark

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

They Made Us Participate In Their Own Madness, Because We Couldn't Help But Retrace Their Steps, Rethink Their Thoughts, And See That None Of Them Led To Us.

Depression

Steps

Helping

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.

Father

Past

Grandparent

I Wanted To Be An Actor. My Parents Were Not Too Keen On That.

Parent

Actors

Wanted

It Took Courage To Let Things Fall Apart So Beautifully.

Fall

Falling Apart

Balconies

Being A Writer Is A Solitary Life. So The Little Part Of Me That's An Actor Still Enjoys The Theatrical Part Of Reading And Doing The Voices And Telling The Story.

Reading

Solitary Life

Voice

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

Cells

Elephants

Body

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

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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