If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your 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.

Never ask a woman about other men.Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.

Forgive other people before you ask for forgiveness… As you forgive, you will be forgiven.

The Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament.

I'm thankful to have time to write.

We must never allow the majority to overrule the clear teaching of the Word of God.

That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

There's nothing quite so stultifying as having someone around who has all the answers-and gives them to you.

A Bavarian is half-way between an Austrian and a human being.

Every student, without exception, should be able to succeed well at something consequential.