I was unemployable when I got out of college.

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.

Be the kind of woman who, when your feet hit the floor each morning, the devil says "Oh, no! She's up.

You have the grace to manifest good deeds:

When a solid first draft of an original tale is complete...you feel as if you could do anything.

Never expect anything from anyone, if you wants to live a happy life.

Smoking does not make one ill, but worrying makes. Drinking two pegs in the evening would not make you ill, but sleeping with tensions and worries would definitely do that.

I think of dieting, then I eat pizza.

I just love Rome. It really does cast a spell on you.

Real power comes by empowering others.

I didn't have that many friends my first few years of high school. It was very cliquey and I'm super shy, so it was hard to make friends.

Forgiveness is both a decision and a process.