She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.

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.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

The purpose exceeds the pain.

The theater is like a faithful wife. The film is the great adventure - the costly, exacting mistress.

In high school, I was kind of a loner because I had moved to a new school.

It doesn't really matter how you feel about your character; it just matters what you do with it.

I always thought it was a trap to fit into ideologies, and maybe that's a luxury position, but my work is a reflection of my being here. My being here is not a reflection of an idea.

Marriage is not a word; it is a sentence.

I've been called many things. But I suppose 'the devil' is as good a name as any.

A man can be a hero in any profession

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.