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.

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

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.

She may have looked normal on the outside, but once you'd seen her handwriting you knew she was deliciously complicated inside.

Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.

I hated all this: the mystery of myself.

They’re criminal, but I’m a villain in someone’s untold story.

But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.

Trouble is a part of life and if you don't share it you don't give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.

But a dandy can never be a vulgar man

Pride - Lord of human kind

To be honest, I'm not that good at staying friends. I like to move on after a relationship ends. If I break up with somebody, I don't want to see her or hear from her.

No one should be forced to delay health care because politicians have the audacity to presume to know what is best for a woman and her family.

Any idea that turns out to be truly great can be harvested for tens of years. On the other hand, if you want to continue to be great, you've got to bet on new things, big, bold bets.