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
I want an ending that's satisfying. I'm more of a classical writer than a modernist one in that I want the ending to be coherent and feel like an ending. I don't like when it just seems to putter out. I mean, life is chaotic enough.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a desire for a meaningful and coherent resolution in storytelling, reflecting life's inherent chaos.
In this quote, Jeffrey Eugenides articulates a preference for narrative endings that provide closure and fulfillment, opposing the modernist tendency to leave stories open-ended. He suggests that just as life is unpredictable and chaotic, a satisfying conclusion in art and literature is essential to convey meaning and comfort to the audience.
Themes
EndingSatisfactionNarrativeClosureChaos
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a writing workshop to emphasize the importance of a satisfying conclusion in storytelling.
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
The true Christian is like sandalwood, which imparts its fragrance to the axe which cuts it, without doing any harm in return.
Sadhu Sundar SinghRead
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.
John PerkinsRead
Rather than trying to put an end to Eminem or some other rapper, politicians should think about why they're rapping. It's easier to try to censor some kid who's swearing about poverty than it is to stop the poverty.
Willie NelsonRead
there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.
Mario PuzoRead
War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.
William FaulknerRead
Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.
Desiderius ErasmusRead