Jeffrey Eugenides Quotes

A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb

The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens, whether the threat is a domestic one or from abroad.

Humans may be destroying their chances for decent survival. It won't kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.

In Venezuela, when I was living there, crime was growing. You couldn't feel safe anywhere. You couldn't leave your car in the street because it would be stolen. You coun't live in your house if you didn't have a high-security alarm system, because you would be burglarized seven times a week.

When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.

Always Wear Flats and Have Your Friends Sleep Over: A Step-by-Step How-To Guide for Avoiding Getting Murdered

In a world where survival is always seen as a struggle, and in which some pitfalls always exist, if something brings into question our confidence in our own coping ability, it will threaten our safety.

Global warming threatens the survival of our species.

I’m fighting for my life, I have to defend myself. If I don’t defend myself, no one else will.

The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire.

With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they'd be cooking chips at this hour was anyone's guess.

People die', she says. 'People tear down houses. But furniture, fine, beautiful furniture, it just goes on and on, surviving everything.' She says, 'Armoires are the cockroaches of our culture.

The minute I leave my house - that is where I feel safe - I'm immediately in the jungle. The key is to survive through the cold world.

Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are remarkably potent biologically, almost as powerful as those to our very survival.

Two of the actors, Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom, have been caught between two landslides and are now trapped in a tiny town in the middle of the South Island. They have been taken in by a kindly woman who has offered them food and a bed. They were last reported to be cooking spaghetti and cracking into a bottle of red wine.

We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.

I stood on the street, staring up at the most normal-looking house in the world. My house. I'd lived there my entire life. It was home. It was safe. It was haunted. The only other explanation was that I was demented. I couldn't say which I was rooting for.

I think the important thing about sisters is that they share the same minute, familiar life-style, the same little sets of rules. Therefore they can keep house with each other late in life, because they share the same bunch of housewifely prejudices. The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It's one reason they don't die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups.

Water is more precious than oil. Both are more precious than music. Music won't heat a house or help a plant to grow.

We the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency-a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential...the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising...Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on earth itself.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.

It is taken care of. Nothing will not break into my Pit or the Far Reaches! I cannot speak for the other parts of the House, but we have Nothing well in hand here. I understand Nothing as no one else does! - Grim Tuesday

Paralysis seems to happen on the steepest slope of the survival arc—where almost all hope is lost, when escape seems impossible, and when the situation is unfamiliar to the extreme.

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.