Usually my ideas are small.

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.

I may not look like much, but I'm an expert at pretending to be a ninja.

holding a tiny dixie cup in my hand makes me feel like a giant human being that can crush things

How badly arranged the world is. What is the purpose of ugliness, suffering, sadness? Why our powerless dreams? Why everything?

As the unexpected becomes ordinary, the spotlight shifts once again to land where your brain thinks it will get more informational bang for the attentional buck.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory

I don't think most people know how to meditate - they fall asleep and they call it meditation.

If I were to name my favorite pastime, I'd have to say talking about myself. I love it and I think most other people do too. We need, people like us, more listeners and less talkers.

He looked at her uncomfortably; blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep.

I have no ill feelings for nobody, I wish everybody the best, and I'm cool with everybody.

America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.