Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness, " "joy, " or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. Jeffrey Eugenides
Some Similar Quotes
  1. When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always. - Mahatma Gandhi
  2. They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now - Unknown
  3. Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. - Clive Barker
  4. Tonight I can write the saddest lines I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. - Pablo Neruda
  5. Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart. - Unknown
More Quotes By Jeffrey Eugenides
  1. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least...
  2. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
  3. In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.
  4. Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and see you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you. Then they believe you exist.
  5. It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.
Related Topics