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.

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.

Most fools think he is the wisest person but the most wise person thinks he is a fool.

The guilty are uncomfortable with silence.

The sweet fragrance of a fresh New Year!

Success is relative. We shouldn't compare the financial success between a person born into riches and the one born into abject poverty.

The Universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers."Stanley Kunitz

President Clinton signed a $10 million deal to write a book by 2003. Isn't that amazing? Yes, and get this, not only that, President Bush signed a $10 million deal to read a book by 2003.

this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.

Songwriting is a really fortunate skill to have to frame living and to find new ways to observe things you're going through.

The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.

That which you condemn will condemn you, and that which you judge, you will one day become.