that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep

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.

We need both Socrates and Aristotle in the search for knowledge, but in education today there is too much Aristotle and too little Socrates.

Create your own future

Adversity will always show up but it doesn't always have to come up.

As far as he was concerned, there were only two all-important laws on earth:1. Don’t murder people.2. Never swear in front of Lilly.

I thought I would attend school and get an assistant position and work my way up but being in NY and seeing the pace of everything, is very inspiring.

Well, you could become a Southern Baptist. I mean, instead of having to obey the Pope, you could just obey your husband.

Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to- to live.

Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has.

Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind.

Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is always about time.