Jeffrey Eugenides Grandparent Quotations

He knew a lot about his grandparents - and perhaps he feels he's been endowed with abilities to go into people's heads who are long dead - but, to a certain extent, he's making it up.

I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time traveling. In this life we grow backwards.

The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.