The Pulitzer Prize is an idea; it's a vote of confidence. Like literature, it exists purely in the mind.

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.

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list.

Cinema and emotion trump reality for me.

It's baseball. You've got to be the same guy every day, no matter if you go 4-for-4 or 0-for-4.

We know how to organize warfare, but do we know how to act when confronted with peace?

Today I will simply accept. I will relinquish the need to be in resistance to myself and my environment in any way. I will move forward in joy by accepting where I am right now.

Still, wouldn't you, even if entirely secure in your own sense of direction, be at least curious where others were heading, even as you struck out on your own ?

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

I'm trying to find my own version of what makes me feel beautiful.

The Russians have had and continue to have an active program to undermine American society.