We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
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 is oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that human emotions are complex and cannot be adequately described by simple words.
Jeffrey Eugenides argues that the limitations of language fail to capture the full spectrum of human emotions, which are often hybrid and nuanced rather than fitting neatly into defined categories like 'sadness' or 'joy'. He highlights the patriarchal nature of language that often simplifies feelings, advocating for a richer vocabulary that reflects our complicated emotional landscape.
Themes
EmotionsLanguageComplexityNuanceFeelings
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health, this quote can highlight the inadequacy of one-word descriptions of feelings.
More from Jeffrey Eugenides
All quotes →It was the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
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.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
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.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Similar quotes
When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated.
Rem KoolhaasRead
I don't care what color you are, what size you are, where you're from. It is disturbing that there's an idea that only tall, thin, willowy, size 0 women are attractive - even for the tall, thin, willowy, size 0 woman! We all should get to feel like there's something powerful and beautiful about who we are.
Shonda RhimesRead
A man could not always be where he belonged, though.
George R. R. MartinRead
War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.
William FaulknerRead
The same kinds of stereotypes and hunches that George Zimmerman used when deciding that, you know, Trayvon Martin seemed like a threat in his neighborhood, law enforcement officers employ all the time.
Michelle AlexanderRead
I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.
William Butler YeatsRead