“We're all well-acquainted with depression, we all know what the low mo...” — Jeffrey Eugenides Quote

“We're all well-acquainted with depression, we all know what the low moods are, but the mania was not something I knew much about. I didn't know that it would make someone dress extravagantly or start to pun, and to stay up and drink.”

“I'm aware of cliches and I'm aware of experiments that have been done and I'm aware of a kind of deadness to a lot of realism both in the language and in the structure of a book.”

“What I do when I create a character is put in details from all the people I know who might be like that person, and then put in a huge amount of myself.”

“Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.”

“I was born in 1928 and by 1931 the Depression was beginning to mount.”

“I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor.”