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.

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.

It's just a bad day, not a bad life.

I truly believe that before I retire from public office, I'll be voting for a woman for president.

I don’t look ahead. I’m right here with you. It’s a good way to be.

She is my first and only love. Most people know that their first love will not be their only love. But for me, she is both.

No evil is so worse than worst you fall in hate with love.

Between these two, the denying of sins, which we have done, and the bragging of sins, which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!

It is so tempting to return rudeness with rudeness!

"Is God a Man or a Woman ?" The answer to this question is neither God is That. But if you must give God a gender, God is more female than male, for he is contained in She.

The only way you can serve God is by serving other people.

It doesn't take any more energy to create a big dream than it does to create a little one.