Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.

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.

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

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.

Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly

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.

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.

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.

You never get over it, but you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.

It was like autumn, looking at her. it was like driving up north to see the colors.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.

You’re a grown woman, and a clever one. I believe you understand the situation. And I’m going to trust that you know your own mind.

When you sing with love, everyone will listen.

I thought people wouldn't take me seriously if too much acting was involved in the singing. But now I love the idea of mixing everything together.

When I heard Bjork's debut, that was when I first realized that I could be a singer, even with my unusual voice.

Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies.

Life is too short to learn everything by personal experience.

Politics has slain its thousands, but religion has slain its tens of thousands.