Collin Powell

“So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“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, Middlesex

“IN the book of my heart, pages keep falling out, many of them marked "Mom and Dad.”
― Darryl Pinckney, Black Deutschland

“German wasn’t good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn’t interrupt.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex