Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.

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.

....but talking to a ghost about a demon when you’re in a room full of people who can’t see either of them is not to be recommended.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. It will not have its intended effect until we feel desperately the need for a Savior.

If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

incurable lover of the grotesque

The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong

The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spiderweb of the micrometer.

One matter Englishmen don't think in the least funny is their happy consciousness of possessing a deep sense of humor.

The absolutist trumpets his plain vision; the relativist sees only someone who is unaware of his own spectacles.

I can't wait to work for Rick Kaplan. He's a great producer. I would host an infomercial if he would produce it.