I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.

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.

And I remember this man who never ran out of poems telling me once that 'knowing a book by heart is like carrying a house inside your chest.

Why not laugh again, and let your joy be my monument?

Despite the obstacles of race and class, I was always taught that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. African-American writers, for me, were a beacon, a guiding force.

Rent is the portion of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the user of the original and indestructible powers of the soil

Victoria Beckham looks like she has a dump once every four years. That's probably how David knows that there's a World Cup coming up.

Time is the element that controls the consciousness, the very being of the people.

Seeking of the truth should be not only part of the Justice Department and part of our judicial system, but also should be... a goal of reporters today.

My femininity is always something I've tried to preserve in this dog-eat-dog world.

Vaccines are not traditionally big money makers. They're given once or a few times in one's life, so they're never going to be blockbusters.

One of the failures of cellular communication is that tiredness often comes across as sadness.