I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

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.

Maybe the world would be better if people didn't hate so much and kill animals.

All the power's in the hands of people rich enough to buy it.

The kick [of comedy] is to think quickly. It's a great kick.

One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them.

When digging ceases to be a great game and becomes, as in Egypt, merely business, it will be a bad thing.

People will always be more willing to give you things that they think you don't need.

Politics is its own world. It is a court and if the king's eye lights on you, you are a powerful figure. If the king's eye wanders elsewhere, you are out, whatever your title.

Sometimes when you read the Bible, you find yourself asking, "How does this book know that about me? How does it know that about our world - especially when it was written so long ago?"

The risk from terrorism remains acute and the private market cannot continue to operate without a government backstop.

Radiate an energy of serenity and peace so that you have an uplifting effect on those you come into contact with.