We listened to them, but it was clear they'd received too much therapy to know the truth.

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.

Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.

The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it.

I would not recommend a teen getting into modeling if they're not solid when it comes to their grades and school. That comes first. My mother always told me that came first.

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.

Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.

Nobody needs to worry about my toughness.

I hate how people say I'm growing up fast.

Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights.

The groups of which we are a part impact our decisions and our decisions shape the future.

Success doesn't bring happiness. Only material stuff like money, cars and iPods can do that. And I've already got all that. So I have to find other ways to amuse myself.