I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

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.

Logical positivism is philosophy from the neck up.

And there's you. You're just beautiful. Effortlessly beautiful, like nature. You have the trinity of beauty: a beautiful heart, a beautiful mind, and a beautiful soul.

Limitlessness is the emotion that sunny mornings evoke in me now. A new appreciation for the present moment, untainted by the past or unknown future.

I don't understand love quite honestly. I think compassion is important but love fizzles out eventually. But if there is compassion in a relationship, things can always be worked out.

Puerto Rico lacks resources, but that's not the fault of the U.S.

There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.

As a citizen, as a public scientist, I can tell you that Einstein essentially overturned a so strongly established paradigm of science, whereas Darwin didn't really overturn a science paradigm.

I think when you're really stressed out and can't really face reality... you shop.

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.

If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it.