Quotes By Jeffrey Eugenides

At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

I spend most of every day writing. I like to write every day if I can. I don't start extremely early.

I was engrossed with the book, I was having difficulties with it, and I just didn't notice the years were going by.

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

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.

But I care about the reader, and I'm trying to keep the reader's attention for as long as I can.

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.

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

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

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.

The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

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.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. 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 can notice I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.