Jeffrey Eugenides Reading Quotations

I think, especially when you're in college, each book that you're reading tends to tell you who you are.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men.

Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of reading and doing the voices and telling the story.

She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.