Latest Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Book, Writing, Emotional

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• 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.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Reading, Solitary Life, Voice

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• When I'm creating a character, it's a little bit like what my theater teachers used to tell me about Stanislavsky, like if you're using sense memory to do a scene - if you have to cry in a scene, you try to remember something in your life that made you cry and you use that in order to get the tears.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Teacher, Memories, Character

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, House

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Character, Acting

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I wanted to be an actor. My parents were not too keen on that.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Parent, Actors, Wanted

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Real, Writing, School

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, School, Thinking

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Doubt, Excitement, Moments

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

• Detroit's a great music town. If your interaction with it was mainly musical, I'm sure you have a good opinion of the place.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Musical, Detroit, Towns

  Interview by Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.